Bus Ride

So, I was riding the bus into town a little early today and had a nice quiet ride. Usually the bus is packed and I have to stand the whole time. Being able to sit gave me a chance to look at the city around me and being an architecture student I was of course analyzing everything along the way. Things such as why a light is in a certain place or a driving lane is here instead of there. This made me realize what a great transit system they really have. Little things such as having the cars park on the street and putting the bike lane between the parked cars and the sidewalk make it worked much better. At the intersections there are lights for not only the cars, but for the bikes and the buses. The lights for the buses and bikes turn green a couple of seconds earlier to give them a chance to get out of the way of cars or to allow the bus to get in the left lane for a left hand turn. The lights themselves instead of turning straight from red to green they have a yellow in between, just like the yellow is in between the green and red. This I thought was great, that way cars aren't pulling out before it actually is green. I think the best thing about there transit system though is that there are buses running at a higher frequency and stopping more times along the route. You would think that this slows them down, but it actually speeds them up. I was amazed. All of this just makes it so easy to love this city and I can't wait to explore it more.

Tourist

So, we played tourist today and saw some of the sights of Copenhagen. We started with some pictures of where we live and the buildings we have classes (thanks for the suggestion mom). The rooms are kind of small, but I have my own so that is nice. There are two buildings in the complex and it is right next to the bus stop that I have to take to school. It is very useful.












There is really no campus for the university, but rather a collection of buildings in downtown. Everything I need for classes is in the buildings right downtown. Some people have to go farther for classes so I am glad that I don't. The picture on the left is of vestergade which is the street that DIS is located on. The right picture is the main building of DIS and the bottom picture is my studio space.





















From DIS we started wondering around the city. I knew I wanted to get a picture of the City Hall so we headed there first.

Emilie than remembered that a statue of Hans Christian Anderson (the inventor of the little mermaid) was next to City Hall and since we were doing the tourist thing we decided that we should get our picture taken with him. We than continued to wander and came across the national museum and remembered that all the museums in Copenhagen are free on Sunday so we went in. It turned out to be well worth our time. They had a lot of pieces of art from around Europe. I got to see my first Monet and Van Goh. That was pretty cool, but of course no pictures were allowed in that section. We were able to take some pictures of the statues from Greece, Rome and Egypt though. Here are some of my favorites.

The art work itself was great, but we were all also amazed at how well the building was designed. The great spaces created were far better than anything I've seen in the states. I think I will learn a lot from my time here just by observing.We continued around the city and came across the main train terminal. That should come in handy later. We headed back towards our bus stop and found a couple of other neat little things such as this building that kind of looks like the Pantheon. All in all it was a good day especially since it wasn't raining which seems to be a trend of the city. If you would like to see more pictures I created a flickr account the link is here. www.flickr.com and my screen name on it is Elliot6, so if you just search for it you should find my photos. I will try and get as many pictures up there as possible, but I am only allowed so many in a month, so we'll see.

First Week

So, the first week is done. It was a very crazy, but fun one. I've learned a lot of things about Denmark that is quite interesting. First off you are allowed to drink on the streets and yes I have taken advantage of it. Second the Danes are not nearly as closed down as I thought. They can be very friendly and talkative. Third I've learned there is a lot of stuff to see here even though it is usually to windy and rainy to get good pictures. Here are some that I've taken though. Hope you enjoy them.





The Queens House



The Main Church



The Little Mermaid (Hans Christian Anderson is from Denmark)





The Queens personal guard (they patrol the city when she is home)



The Parliament building, notice the cross on the top. Church and state is not separate.







The New opera house.

Denmark

So, I arrived in Denmark today. It was nice to finally get out into the fresh air after many many hours of being in airports and airplanes. We had to go through three separate security checks, one for each time we were in a new airport. That was not much fun, but it was worth it. The flights went well and the one from Stockholm to Copenhagen was amazing. The lakes and waters between the two cities is amazing. Well, I should probably get some sleep since it has been a while and I have a busy week ahead of me. Take care everyone and have a good spring.

Leaving

So, tomorrow is the day I leave. I can't believe it is already here. It's kind of frightening and exciting all at the same time. Oh well, Europe should be fun. To all my friends and family take care and I will see you when I get back.