Ibis Lund

... on my way to the bus, i tried to take a picture of edinburgh when i realised i hadn't charged the new rechargable batteries i had bought. things progressed pretty well, though. got through to my gate in no time, bought some batteries and everything went well. copenhagen is a quick 1.5hr flight over the north sea. kastrup airport in copenhagen is pretty nice, for an airport. got my baggage and hopped on the train to sweden. trains ...

... right outside my building. In fact not just right outside, but from all sides. There was a rather large amount of police surrounding a smaller sized group of about 40-50 people from the rest of the people. Shortly after I went out onto the terrace, they began shouting chants back and forth at each other once again, but I had no idea what they were saying to each other because it was all in Swedish. Damnit! What to do? What to make of ...

... of a purple carrot? 'Cause I sure never heard of a purple carrot. Anyway, after I made this discovery, I rushed out to the kitchen to verify with my own eyes that my purple looking-like-carrots vegetables were actually purple carrots, and pull the package out of the fridge, when L. one of my corridor mates who knows Swedish, looks down at the package label (that's in Swedish) and says ...

... Gah! This sucks" I thought to myself. The underlying problem with everything is that I don't know any Swedish. I need to sign up for those free Swedish for Immigrants classes they told me about in the beginning. "Yeah, yeah that's what I'll do" I thought. I can't do anything about the stupid official document right now, so I'll make myself feel like I've done at least something useful with my (not supposed to have been) day off by going ahead and ...

... a quarter past because otherwise "it wouldn't be fair to the students". *However, classes at Lund are not at all guaranteed to start at the same day, time, or place that they did they week before. In fact, as all new students come to find out, the times and location of classes are very likely to change through out the term, and it is up to the student to remain vigilant in discovering the updated information. For instance ...

... by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. I wasn't overly impressed, even though his technique was great. His works didn't seem to evoke any feelings, for the most part, and didn't radiate any passion. Back to the Stroget for lunch - settled on a bakery, mainly because I could hide inside from the rain while I ate. I tried their pepperoni pizza - pretty blah; I should have tried one of their sandwiches ...

... master Hans Christian Anderson, across the city monuments and streets named after him stand as proof. And the first "attraction" that Copenhagen touted was a bronze statue of a little mermaid sitting on a rock by the riverbank. This statue lives up to it's name, it is little, about a meter tall at most, and after seeing it I realized how overrated this statue was to the tourist information board of Copenhagen. It was worth seeing because we found ourselves near it by chance, but If ...

... Sankt Albani kirke as well as the big Gefion Fountain. At first I thought they both belonged to Kastellet, but soon I realised it wasn't quite so, but that they were rather just next to it. And then I gathered that I would get there as soon as I was done with Kastellet itself. However, once out, I saw signposts for the Little Mermaid Statue, a crowd crawling in that direction, a big number of buses parked and if I had not known where I was going to, I would have believed I ...

... view from our room. Not bad... And here's our common room: It's fancy and decorated with pictures of...New York. Oh and we have a flat screen tv now. Oh and tomorrow I start classes. I also picked up a class but I have a month to drop it if I have too much. Right now I'm in: The Impact of Epidemic Disease in Europe Hans Christian Andersen and the Danish Golden Age ...

By 8:30 we were on the bus and headed into the main Copenhagen area for a city tour. We drove around the city, and our first stop was the Royal Palace where we had a quick photo stop. Our next stop was the Little Mermaid statue. The Little Mermaid was a story written by Hans Christen Anderson, which is said to have inspired Disney's The Little Mermaid. The story goes that the mermaid was in love with a prince, and made a deal to become human, but in ...