wien, 2011: Copenhagen & Update

School begins again NEXT MONDAY. What the heck? I forgot what it's like to be living on campus and going to classes erm... on a regular basis, haha. I don't think I'm ready to go back. It's weird to be packing up yet again. I would enjoy it loads more if I knew I was packing to go to some new and exciting place but... school? Meh. Ah well, we shall see what this year holds.

Anyway, the bulk of this entry (and the next few since I thought it would be easier to separate them) is going to be dedicated to Copenhagen, southern Norway, and Stockholm (and London, I guess...) because those are the last things that I have to really blog about in regards to my European adventures.

Honestly, most of the time I was in Copenhagen, I spent in the airport haha... However, I did have 1 full day to explore the city. Unfortunately, I did not get to explore as much as I had hoped because my shoes were in a dire condition and I seriously needed to replace them before the sole totally detached itself from everything else. Thus, much of my time in Copenhagen was spent wandering on Strøget, or the main shopping street. It was okay though because Strøget is really famous and a huge tourist destination. It's also in the middle of a lot of other interesting stuff (it's right by the famous amusement park, Tivoli, for example). Also, I did manage to find acceptable shoes.

If you walk all the way down Strøget, you'll reach Nyhavn -- a.k.a the most photographed place in Copenhagen. Not even kidding. If you don't know anything about Copenhagen, you probably still recognize Nyhavn (and maybe the mermaid statue, which is REALLY SMALL, by the way). Overall, Copenhagen was really expensive (just like all the other Nordic cities) but it was quite beautiful... though not as great as Stockholm or Bergen, haha! Oh, and I forgot if I already wrote about this or not, but the overnight train from Utrecht to Copenhagen was really nice. Definitely pay the extra money for a couchette as opposed to a seat if you ever have to take an overnight train -- it is totally worth it. I felt super rested even though the Danish authorities came and did passport checks at freaking 5AM. Interesting thing about the relations between Scandinavian languages -- the dude on the bunk across from mine was a Swedish business dude, and he didn't bring his passport because he didn't think he needed it since he's Swedish and all. However, he DID need it so he and the passport lady started arguing for a while -- him in Swedish and her in Danish. Obviously, they still somewhat understood each other (despite the fact that Swedish and Danish are actually not as mutually intelligible as Norwegian and Danish, for example). It was amusing.