Haha Praha

PRAGUE. Great times in Prague. Carly, Nicki, and I took a 5 hour train from Vienna and while they slept I read my Top 10 book and prepared for Prague. It was unfortunately really rainy when we got there so we just went to the hostel, went to lunch, and hung out in a mall for a little bit. Carly and I went to a Passover seder at the Prague Chabad and that was a very interesting experience. There were almost 30 tables filled with 15 or so people (can't do the math on that one) and it was complete chaos. We didn't know when to eat what, we couldn't hear over the crying babies, and there was a table of drunk Israeli guys singing for the whole time without fail...it was an experience, and thankfully they were generous with the wine. Saturday we went on a walking tour around the city and had lunch in Old Town Square.

tourist trap

We walked down the Charles Bridge and then we walked back across the bridge and back to our hostel to meet up with Dan and Elyssa, our Rochester friends who are studying in London this semester.

Dan, Elyssa, Carly, and me

Me, Carly, Dan and Elyssa had dinner in Old Town Square then got ready for a pub crawl. It was really fun and funny and random and when we met a Danish couple, Nicki and I just screamed Danish words at them like "sommetider" (sometimes) and "gulerødder" (carrots). Why they kept talking to us, we will never know. The pub crawl ended up at Karlovy Lazne, a 5 story club, but we were so tired that we just did a run-through and went home to break passover and got pizza. 

the club

The next day we went back across the Charles Bridge and up to the church at the top of the hill, where we stopped to take pictures and record a video for Rochester's Relay for Life - we were all on the executive board of Colleges Against Cancer together last year so we made the video to show our support for this year's Relay. Then it started to snow on us and as we walked towards Old Town Square the snow didn't let up so we sought solace in the Starbucks and took advantage of its free wifi so I could instagram some picz. 

snow happy

We then walked back across Charles Bridge to see the lock bridge and the John Lennon wall - super artsy indeed.

We walked back across Charles Bridge and to Old Town Square for some more snacks - at this point we had tried one of everything - and headed back to rest up.

fried dough with cheese on top

The next day, Monday, we went to Terezin, the concentration camp north of Prague, and had a tour there. It was really sad so I don't really want to elaborate on it. We then came back, had lunch at Old Town Square, and then saw the 5 Synagogues and a cemetery in the Jewish Quarter. We started to get loopy around synagogue number 3 so we decided to head back to the hostel and rest before going out for our last night in Prague. Our tour guide had told us that Czechs drink beer by the meter - so we decided it was our duty as tourists to drink a meter of beer at dinner - it started out as an individual effort but then it became a collective task. After dinner we decided to go to a casino and Elyssa won 1250 Czech Koruna, so like 55 bucks, playing blackjack. It was random.


Overall, Prague was awesome. It was so great to be reunited with Rochester friends and eating good salty, meaty food and drinking good beers. It was really great and despite all the climate changes I had a blast. Definitely going back to Prague at some point. I mean how can you resist a zebra party boat in front of an old church and palace? Answer: you can't.

Vienna Vidi Vici

Part two of my spring break adventures brought us to Vienna, Austria. We took a train from Budapest to Vienna on Wednesday morning and after arriving and settling in our hostel, we set out for lunch and sight seeing. The weather was so nice and warm and I even got a bit of a sunburn from walking around. We walked down the main street, Mariahilfer Straße, and thought we had been transported back to New York City. There were so many shopping stores and small cafes and gelato stands it was nice being back in the hustle and bustle of a city street. We wound up at the Museums Quartier and explored around central Vienna, stopping at the Easter Markets, and eventually winding up at the Jewish Museum, where we learned about Hollywood and how Jews pretty much started the business.

the hills are alive

I prefer cadbury creme eggs

he was actually collecting money for this

We then wandered around some more and relaxed in a park in the sun for a little before figuring out dinner.

what we thought we looked like

what we actually looked like

After dinner we hung out at the hostel and called it an early night, as we were tired from traveling in the morning. The next day we went on a free walking tour given by our hostel and went to Naschmarket for lunch. Naschmarket is a long stretch of restaurants (mostly sushi) and other stands selling dried fruits and nuts, fresh fish and meats and vegetables, others selling scarves and other things.. it was really cool and we each bought like 5 pounds of dried fruits and nuts. We took our food and sat in another park and decided to head back to the hostel for a siesta. We had schnitzel for dinner and then went to see a concert of Mozart music and opera singers and dancers. It was interesting.

happy campers

We left at intermission and headed back to the hostel so we could relax before waking up early the following morning to take a train to Prague. So yeah Vienna was kind of boring, but it was nice to have some down time before heading to........Prague!

Buddha Pesks

SPRING BREAK. Where to even begin. In order to keep you intrigued I have decided to write 4 posts, each one focusing on a different city I visited. This first one is all about good old Budapest. I will start: Carly, one of my best friends from Rochester who's studying abroad in Tel Aviv, Israel came up to Copenhagen Thursday, March 29 to stay with me and explore Cope before we departed with the one and only, Nicki, for Budapest on Sunday, April 1. We flew to Budapest and while Nicki and Carly slept on the plane I mentally readied myself for the trip (who am I kidding, I listened to my ipod and zoned out). We arrived in Hungary and met up with another friend, Michelle, who had taken a different flight from Cope before we set out on the train into the city center. We arrived at Carpe Noctem, the number one party hostel and our place of residence for the next three nights, and dropped off our bags before hitting the town. And by that I mean we got a lunch recommendation and then hit the town. We walked up all the stairs in St. Stephen's Basilica and saw the different parts of the city - Buda (the West) and Pest (the East).

this is what we climbed up

Me, Michelle, Nicki with Pest in the forgeround and Buda on the hill in the background

After having a mild asthma attack from climbing up all the stairs, we had the pleasure of climbing down all the stairs - which was equally as nerve-wracking as going up for someone with a slight fear of heights (aka me). The image of asian tourists and segwe tourists greeted us once we returned to flat land - rewarding, to say the least.

afternoon delight indeed

We passed the tourists and wandered over to the Danube river in the deceiving sunlight (it was freezing) and encountered a collection of adult and children shoes on the street facing the water. These shoes represented the many Jews that were brought to the river, stripped of all their valuables, and shot from behind by Nazis during the Holocaust. A heavy start to our spring break.

We visited Parliament and headed back towards the hostel, with a pit stop to pick up snacks, so we could prepare for the night - which we were told was jager train night. Didn't know what we were getting ourselves in to. We got a 500 jager bomb train.

Sunday night in Budapest

After the jager train, we all went down to the elusive "rave cave". Rave cave it was not and I was so disappointed that there was no rave that I sat in the corner sulking (exaggeration) but we left shortly after.

Yadda yadda we went home and woke up the next morning to continue exploring. In the morning we visited the Jewish synagogue and cemetery and learned that 800,000 Jews used to live in Budapest before World War II, then 600,000 of them were killed during the Holocaust and now only 5,000 Jews live there today (maybe my stats are wrong, it was difficult to understand our tour guide's thick accent). We saw a beautiful Holocaust memorial in the garden of the synagogue - a silver tree with a different name of a Hungarian Jew who had died during the war was etched onto each leaf.

hey this temple looks a lot like my temple

We walked around the Jewish Quarter and made our way over to the thermal baths for a quick dip. Since Carly and I forgot our bathing suits we tanned upstairs while Nicki and Michelle actually went into the baths.

i don't know who the freaks with their hands up are

We headed back to the city and I got a 14 dollar haircut and Carly fell down the stairs in a fur store. It was all good fun. After sitting in the park and watching/judging a young couple who were feeding pigeons we grabbed a quick dinner, and went out again to a karaoke place and really wowed the crowd with our good voices.

The next day we took the funicular up the hill to Buda and walked around the church and the palace up there - we sat around mostly and basked in the sun and it was really relaxing.

view from the funicular (Pest across the river)

Michelle left us to continue her spring break in Rome so when we dropped her off at the train station, we bought our train tickets to Vienna for the next morning and decided to walk around the nearby mall. We discovered a movie theater and decided we would see The Hunger Games in Hungary - The Hungary Games, if you will. Problem: Carly hadn't finished the first book yet. Solution: Nicki and I had a lovely dinner date while we forced Carly to finish the book. The movie was good but not great - I can analyze it with you in person if you wish to hear my thoughts.

Although we were only in Budapest for three nights, I definitely got a good feeling for the city and was really pleasantly surprised by how navigable it was and how much history there was. Positives: the Hungarian Forint is a much nicer currency than the Danish Krone aka really cheap. Negatives: the Danes are very fashionable and we are very spoiled living in Copenhagen - eastern europe ehhhh not the easiest on the eyes.

Tuesday, April 3 we headed off to VIENNA!! (see next post for more details)

To Sensation or Not To Sensation..?

As I promised, and since I'm on a blog roll, and don't feel like doing my homework quite yet, I will elaborate on the past two weeks since long study tour. Upon returning from Germany I was greeted with a presentation, a test, a field study, and a cooking class before I could depart from Denmark yet again and head to Brussels, Belgium for the weekend for SENSATION, a techno rave that requires you to be dressed all in white (accessories and footwear could be colored). I stayed with my friend Jiore from my sorority back at Rochester and we frolicked and laughed the weekend away. Details:
I took a cab from Brussels International Airport to Jiore's apartment - it was supposed to cost 15 euro. It cost me 45 euro. I got to the apartment and didn't see any lights on, couldn't get through to Jiore's phone, the cab has left me, I didn't speak Flemish or French (the national languages of Belgium), and I was hungry. So I rang all the doorbells hoping for someone to respond, and she did! Great. I dropped off my bags and we headed to Flagey, an open square near their apartment, for some classic Belgian frites. Yum. We shared frites with two kinds of spicy mayonnaise sauces and caught up about the semester and Rochester gossip that had somehow trickled across the lake to us. In essence, it was great. We readied ourselves for the night and headed to Delirium, a bar where every single American you never wanted to see again was there, being American. We ran into some affectionate Italians who told us we would get goosebumps upon entering the Sensation arena with 50,000 people (we didn't get goosebumps) and continued on to a karaoke bar with them. Result of the night:

me and jiore and a Belgian

Saturday, more of Jiore's friends came and we toured around the Grand Place until it started raining so we took cover in a very touristy restaurant and went home to prepare for Sensation. Our original plan was to visit friends of friends at their university, halfway between Brussels and Hasselt, where the Sensation arena was, and then proceed from there. One misspelled vowel and we were at a different University, either at the Dutch campus or the French campus - we were at the one that they were not - and that is when the night began to spiral downwards. We had to take a train back into Brussels in order to first take the train to Hasselt. Three cabs to each of the main train stations in Brussels later, we realized the trains had stopped running and we would have to take a 45 minute, 150 euro cab to Hasselt - luckily there were 5 of us. We finally arrived at Sensation and got on line only to realize Jiore had brought her train ticket to Paris, instead of her sensation admittance ticket. The security guards thankfully let her in and by the time we had stored our stuff in a locker, it was 1 am.

did you get goosebumps?

We raved here and there and left at 5, but the first train out was at 6 so we got some frites and waited for the swarms of people to push us onto the train. We arrived back in Brussels at 7:30 am and ran into our other KD friend we had been trying to meet up with all weekend while waiting for the bus back to the apartment. We passed the farmer's market that was opening for business at 8 by the time we got back and crashed until 1 pm. I woke up, showered, said farewell to Belgium (without even trying a Belgian waffle) and left for the airport for my final return to Copenhagen.

When I returned I had to write a group paper and study for two tests during the week. It was a great welcoming gift. This past week I have been reading The Hunger Games avidly and now NEED to see the movie. I wasn't expecting to like a book that seems so barbaric but seriously it was fantastic. If you get tired of reading my blog, please go forth and read the hunger games. But enough of the book club.

This weekend I was finally able to relax after a whirlwind past few weeks. I walked around and explored the city, got my bearings in some more sections of Copenhagen, and started a list of things to do when visitors come to stay with me. One of my best friends from Rochester, Carly, comes Thursday morning to spend the weekend with me before we jet away on our two week long spring break! Carly, Nicki, and I are going to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague together then Nicki's splitting off to Switzerland while Carly and I meet up with two of our other best friends from school Dan and Elyssa (I call them Delyssa for short) and chilling in Prague until we throw our cautions to the wind and finally take on Rome. I can't wait.

delyssa, carly, and me sophomore year

I also can't believe that the 2 month mark has come and passed (I flew into Cope on January 20, and fly out on May 20, so March 20 is the exact middle). I also can't believe that I get to go on a two week vacation in the middle of school. And I also can't wait for my parents to come so I don't have to worry about doing conversion rates in my head for every item I think of purchasing!

EEK time's a-ticking

Many more stories to come, hopefully in a more timely fashion. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves..

Oh Me Oh My

Oh man, I suck. I haven't written in over a month and every time I make moves to write another post, something comes up and I wind up not doing it. Clearly. Take this concentrated time now to channel your frustration at me. Ok done? Ready for recap? I begin:
Short study tour went swimmingly, as you may have read. Tuesday upon returning from the weekend in western Denmark was Valentine's Day and I was scheduled to go to a beer tasting at the Nørrebro Bryghus (I had signed up for a three-part beer tasting course through DIS before coming to Cope).  Søren, our teacher/tour guide/head brewer of the brewery, taught us about hops, malt, pale ales, lagers, yadda yadda it was a whole lot of information. And then we sampled 4 beers from the brewery. I'm not the biggest beer girl so as the night wore on, it grew increasingly harder for me not to laugh at the descriptions of the beers I thought tasted bad but everybody else enjoyed. Ironically, one of my friends Malia used to brew beer in her basement so she was taking things really seriously while I was... not. We left the brewery in the snow, I realized I had left my favorite leopard-print gloves on the bus, and I deemed the whole night a failure. Until I met this furry animal and it cheered my whole night up:

fuzzy wuzzy

Skip to the next Wednesday and I went to Frederiksberg Castle (shown above) for an assignment for my fashion class. It was interesting. That is all. That night, my fashion class viewed a documentary on Anna Wintour and our teacher made us cosmopolitans and laid out this huge spread of homemade food - I wish more American teachers did that for their students.. totally broke down the student-teacher barrier that we're used to back at school. On to the next memorable moment..


The following Wednesday (since we don't take classes on Wednesdays at DIS) I had two extra-curricular events for my classes. In the morning I viewed the independent Danish film "Hello My Name is Lesbian" for my Human Rights and Gender Perspectives class. It was an interesting insight into different lesbian relationships in different areas of Denmark - it was really informative and we were able to engage in discussions with the filmmakers after the viewing. After a quick lunch and an afternoon spent at the Black Diamond library (my home away from home), I went to a concert at Vega, this trendy concert venue in Copenhagen, to see a couple Danish bands for my Danish Language and Culture class. It was awesome. The main band actually performed first and their style was kind of reggae pop with some French accordion thrown in - it sounds weird but it worked. The opening band was actually the closing band and they were more jazzy so I decided to call it quits and head home after a long day.


That is more or less it from the month of February - I obviously left out details about different tests and papers and other assignments I had but February was a fine month nothing too exciting clearly or I'd be writing about it. March has been very busy since the beginning. It was my dear friend Nicki's birthday Sunday March 4 however we were all going on long study tour random times during the weekend so we decided to have a birthday party for her Friday night. Here she is in all her 21st birthday glory:

nickita tequila

My contribution to the festivities was managing to sprain my right ankle when walking on cobblestones in flat shoes - honestly I baffle myself sometimes. (side story: freshman year first semester I sprained my left ankle twice in 2 weeks - first time I missed a couple stairs, second time I was dancing too hard and slipped on a wet fraternity floor. oh the memories) So saturday, my very funny roommate, Amanda, and I went to the Bispebjerg Hospital to make sure it wasn't broken and we experienced the joys of universal health care. After filling out a form, we only waited 15 minutes to see a doctor that spoke perfect English. She checked my foot, and diagnosing it as just a sprain, sent me on my way with 4 free ice packs and no other hospital charges. WHAT? Fast and free? I'll take it, thanks. 


Sunday my swollen foot and I spent the day being transported from Copenhagen through Germany to Poland, where my core course would be staying in Poznan for two nights. We were told we would be driving for 12 straight hours - initially I approached this day with dread, however due to the recent accident it became a blessing in disguise as I slept and kept my foot elevated on the seat next to me. We traveled by bus to the end of Denmark, where we took a 2 hour ferry to Germany and then drove straight through to Poland. 

we're on a boat

First thing we do: check into a four-star hotel in Poznan. Fine with that. Second thing: three course buffet dinner. Third thing: steam room and sauna in the spa downstairs. Fourth thing: shower and sleep. Rinse and repeat this lifestyle, please. 

view from my room on to the main drag, sweaty martian street

Monday and Tuesday were spent shadowing an OB/GYN, a Perinatologist, and a Pediatrician at the Poznan University Hospital. It was interesting to note the differences in the three different areas and the lack of hygiene at the Pediatrician's office - the woman we were observing didn't wash her hands once in between 3 different physical examinations. So I asked her if I could wash my hands in an attempt to bring to her attention that she hadn't - nope, didn't work. In addition to these academic visits, we had a mini amazing race activity that led us around Poznan to a bunch of different notable locations (none of which I can remember) and we eventually ended our day with a plate of steaming hot pierogies. The Polish Zloty is definitely a friend of mine - a plate of 10 pierogies plus a caraf of wine plus tip turned out to be less than 15 dollars. I also purchased a bottle of Garnier Fructis shampoo for 3 dollars! Done. 

authentic yum

Tuesday afternoon we drove to Berlin and upon checking into a not four-star hotel but a plain jane hostel, we went to dinner and were fed well yet again. An excursion to a beer garden that we stupidly thought would be open in the dead of winter led us to an absinthe bar:

a good view

A trip to the German Heart Institute the next morning (read free sandwiches, sodas, chocolate bars, and 40th anniversary commemorative books in both German and English) preceded a lively romp down the Berlin Wall. Some highlights:

After a yummy yet rushed dinner (our trip leaders got lost/led us around in circles), we went to the Berlin Symphony that night and enjoyed the language of music - good because nobody knew any German:

overwhelmed

So yeah, that's about it for Germany. I really liked it for the short time I was there, and definitely have an appreciation for their efficient transportation system (hey Alexanderplatz station). I will discuss about the past two weeks in a different post, this one has been too long for anyone's enjoyment so kudos if you read this all the way through - you have my undivided appreciation and admiration!

Short Study Tour Weekend

Hello all, look at how prompt I'm being! I promised I would write and here I am, writing my blog and updating you on my adventures (what a concept). This weekend I went on a short study tour with my Medical Practice & Policy Program to two cities in Western Denmark, Ebeltoft and Aarhus. Thursday morning, my roommate and I woke up at a ripe 6 am to make sure we caught our busses at 7:30 in the center of Copenhagen. We are proud to report we both made our busses and both had really fun weekends - Amanda's twenty first birthday was Friday and she was in Hamburg, Germany for the weekend which is a pretty cool free birthday present if you ask me.

So we're all on the bus, trying to sleep, when our course assistant (and second year medical student), Adam, decides it's a good idea to turn on a loud and violent movie called coincidently, Adam's Apples. It is apparently a perfect representation of Danish humor. I think it was just a very weird movie. We arrived at the Aarhus University Hospital around 11 and tried to stay awake through a lecture about the different scanners the hospital has at its PET center - they have 2 MRIs, a PET/CT scanner, an HRRT, and an MEG scanner. We took a tour of the scanning center and were all getting hungry to eat our lunches on the bus.

So I enjoyed my ziploc bag (I didn't want to use tupperware) of pasta, tomatoes, avocados and sriracha sauce as we set off to a General Practitioner's office in Skødstrup. At the Skødstrup Laegepraksis, we actually enjoyed a lecture about the universal health care system in Denmark by one of the doctors at the practice. In Denmark, every citizen chooses a GP as their primary doctor - you go to your GP for anything and everything, and then you get referred to specialists in other practices or hospitals for specific problems. Eighty-eight percent of the population visit their GPs every year, and maintain good relationships with them. Since Denmark has universal health care, the GPs focus on improving health in their own communities, and so they have a list of patients in their region that they are responsible for taking care of (and also get paid by the National Health System to take care of).  If you don't like your GP you can always switch to a different one, but you are limited by the number of GPs in your area. Even though the Danes pay between 40 to 70% of their income for taxes, some Danes opt to additionally pay for for their own private insurances. All the money that's collected from taxes goes to paying everyone's complete education and medical costs - it's pretty awesome.


After taking a tour of the GP's office and rooms, we set off to our hostel called Danhostel, and had a short discussion with Adam about the main differences between the health care systems in America and Denmark. We also understood how the educational system works in Denmark - primary school goes until year 13 (and you have to choose a track for high school - either math/science, language, or arts/music), and then for medical school there are 6 years of uni, 1 year doing a post-graduate internship, and then 5 years training to be a specialist. Adam told us that the final test for medical school is being able to diagnose a patient in 7 minutes or less (you get multiple tries) - very different than all the standardized testing we're used to.


After a small break, we headed into the tiny town of Ebeltoft for an amazing buffet dinner and bowling. When I heard buffet, I admit I immediately thought of huge pans of mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, different meats, salads.. this buffet wasn't exactly like that. On a small table, there were bowls of shredded lettuce and different toppings like corn, peanuts, feta cheese, etc and then there were small pans of french fries, roasted potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and finally a meat plate. Even though it was a small buffet it was delicious and everyone went up for seconds, thirds, some even went for fourths - it was a great meal. Bowling was so much fun - I hadn't been bowling since I think middle school when I had birthday parties at the glow in the dark bowling lanes at Chelsea Piers or Port Authority. I did roll a lot of gutter balls, and I definitely lost every game but it was still really fun to be doing a classic American past-time in the middle of nowhere Denmark.


After a decent night's sleep, we were up bright and early for a great continental breakfast and on the road to the AROS Art Museum in Aarhus. Little did I know a museum would be the highlight of the weekend. There were three exhibits that made the trip so awesome. One of them was a giant room filled with smoke and different color spectrum lights so each time you moved you were stepping into a different color gradient. Photos speak better than words:

The second best room was this one with different suspended metal rings/squares and lights that reflected off of them:

The third was this ring of color on top of the museum - as you moved around you saw the city of Aarhus in different shades of colors and it was really cool: 

We enjoyed a lovely lunch of potato soup and sandwiches at the museum and then went off to Skejby Hospital, the largest hospital in all of Denmark for a lecture and a tour of the facilities. The lecture was super boring and nearly everyone fell asleep buttttttt we got to see med students operating on live pigs! I didn't bring my camera in with me so I don't have any pictures but here's one I grabbed from someone's facebook album: 

After that, we traveled to the Steno Museum at the University of Aarhus and were treated like fourth graders by our tour guide as we learned about the history of medicine in Denmark. It was really weird. And there was a giant uterus display that you could climb into and relax in - I guess I was born again this weekend. Weird weird place. There was a giant pendulum attached to the ceiling that revolved around and hit different pegs according to the earth's rotation and we were all enamored by it and literally spent 10 minutes watching and oohing and aahing and eating Danish ice cream.


We traveled to our second hostel, also called Danhostel, and prepared for our night out in Aarhus. I ate dinner at a restaurant with a few friends and we got twenty dollar bacon cheeseburgers but they were really so delicious that it was worth it. Except when they charged us for a bottle of water and wouldn't give us tap water instead - weird. We walked around the shops on the canal and wound up joining a bar crawl of Danish physiotherapy students that all had numbers written with eyeliner on their cheeks. It was their orientation weekend and their tutors were herding them around like cattle. It was really entertaining to hang out with these students for a while but we eventually headed to a bodega to hang out with the other kids from our MPP program and ended the night buying snacks in the 7-11 around the corner.


Saturday, our final day of the trip, we went to see the Jelling Stones and got a tour of the museum there by this really kooky Scottish guy. The first rune-stone was created in the 10th century by King Gorm the Old in dedication of his wife Thyra. The second rune-stone was created by Harold Bluetooth, Gorm's son, and states Denmark as a Christian country for the first time. When we asked Adam what the stones said he told us they said "Denmark, bitches."

Denmark, bitches

After seeing the stones, we ate a Danish lunch of fish and meats and cheeses and then headed to a handball game in Fredericia. Very confusing sport, but very entertaining to watch the goalies stand stupidly in the goal and try to shield a mini soccer ball. After a weekend chock full of academic and cultural activities, it was nice to kick back with an ice cream and watch a sport I didn't understand at all.

Michelle gives handball a thumbs-up

This weekend was a whirlwind but very very fun indeed. I reunited with friends last night and today I slept until 1:30pm and lounged in bed and caught up with friends from Roch and spent 3 hours writing this blog on and off. I just made swedish meatballs that I accidentally stole from Ikea and even though I overcooked them, anything free still tastes delicious.