Hamlet's Castle and Western Denmark!

So after 2 days of classes, I had my first cultural trip. I signed up for a Saturday morning in Elsinore and Kronborg Castle, both of which were beautiful. What I remember most about this trip was that it was extremely cold that Saturday morning, in no small part due to the fact that we were right on the coast. We spent a little over an hour exploring Elsinore on our own, where I got a lovely meal that was much more affordable than nearly anything in Copenhagen.

The castle was beautiful, and, like most things in Copenhagen, had been burnt down and rebuilt several times over the last several hundred years. I believe this was the 3rd model. 

                                                    

Perhaps the most interesting thing to me about this trip was because we were so close to the northern tip of Denmark, Sweden was visible several miles across the water. Although living in New York had not left me a stranger to bordering another country, I still marveled at how connected and close everything is in Europe--it made me all the more excited for making travel plans this semester.

                                                                           (Hi Sweden!)
After 2 weeks of classes, my Bio-Medicine class went away for our short study tour--3 days touring Biotech companies and getting some culture in western Denmark. We spent the first evening in Odense, after going to the Medical Biotechnology Center at Syddansk University and seeing their research facilities. Afternoon we saw the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and toured his home town, and that night we went bowling and then went to a jazz club, then had a night to ourselves in Odense.

                                           
On day two we traveled to Aarhus, where we visited two more companies in the biotech industry. First, we went to Østjysk Innovation, which is a company that is essentially made of state-funded venture capitalists. They review bio-tech research ideas, and several teams in the organization are allowed to fund a certain amount of money per year to ideas they think will be successful. Østjysk gets a percentage, usually 25%, of the profits that the idea makes--and the more successful the ideas they fund are, the more money the state gives them to invest. All around, very interesting concept and a look into a side of biotech one doesn't usually consider.

To conclude the academic portion of our short study tour, we headed to The Department of Medical Biochemistry at Aarhus University, where we heard from yet another side of biomedicine--a man who has worked on developing two drugs, one of which failed and one of which succeeded in getting funding and proceeding through clinical trials. He discussed what he did wrong the first time in terms of patenting and sources of funding, as well as what he did right the second time. It was not only interesting to hear both the biology of what he was working on (drugs to end brain death and potentially pain), but also to learn more about the business end of bio-research.

That afternoon we also went to the Aarhus Museum, which was both beautiful and surprising in its contemporary displays. By far, everyone's favorite exhibit was "The Smoke Room," an enormous room filled with smoke and colored lights that only allowed one to see a couple of feet in any direction. Crazy experience.

That night we stayed in cabins in Skanderborg and roasted hot dogs wrapped in dough, which is apparently a Danish thing. Not the easiest to tell when the dough was cooked all the way through, but I guess that's part of the fun of it! The next morning we headed to a castle which was inexplicably full of really high-tech lanterns. Not complaining, just seemed a little anachronistic (that one's for you, Danny). After the castle, we had a great lunch, and headed home from what was an exhausting, informative, and altogether wonderful trip!

           
                                                           

So a college student and some great Danes walk into a bar...

When landing in Copenhagen, I was running on about an hour of sleep from what was an incredible last night in London. Suffice to say, my extremely high levels of excitement rivaled my desire to curl up in my new bed on Store Kannikestræde, right in the heart of Copenhagen. Now in the spirit of learning from experience and not books, I had done very little research on Copenhagen before arriving, so when greeted by streets older than the United States with shops titled with letters I had never seen used before, I was immediately drawn into the fantastic land of Denmark.

As the day progressed, I became accustomed to my new home in the Danish Residential Community (DRC), which is basically like a dorm for students studying abroad in Copenhagen. Many students in my program live outside the city with host families, danish roommates, or in apartments; while they have a more cultural living situation, we have the benefit of not having to take a bus to get to school and to go home.

I live with 8 Americans on my floor and have a Danish RA--I share a bedroom with 2 guys, and there are 2 rooms for the 6 girls. The apartment comes with a full kitchen, wireless internet, living room, 2 bathrooms, dish washer, and laundry--all things I'm incredibly grateful to have.

Our first week here we had orientation events, which included social events with our individual programs here (mine is Biomedicine), applying for a residence permit, and a scavenger hunt around Copenhagen--which brought us to many points of interest, such as Parliament!

While settling in, I decided it might be useful to make a map of such points of interest in order to get a better handle on the city. I spent many hours using the DIS (the name of my study abroad program) website to find useful information and ended up with this map:

http://g.co/maps/eg244

In doing this, I ended up finding two local rock climbing gyms, and have since found one, Copenhagen Boulders, that I climb at twice a week now. I've met incredible people there and am loving the feeling of climbing regularly, something I haven't done for several years. While I was happy to find a rock gym, one thing I was unhappy about when coming to Copenhagen was leaving my Aerial Arts club at Brown. While I know they're in good hands, I knew I would miss learning aerial arts, something I'd been doing for the past 3 summers at home and 3 semesters at school. However, just when I was really missing Providence, providence struck! While taking a swing dancing class my first week here, I met a girl who told me that she trains regularly at a circus academy nearby. Two days later I was at AFUK, surrounded by trapezes, lyras, chinese poles, trampolines, and acrobats. Since then, I have been taking a partner acrobatics class 4 hours a week on Monday nights, and am learning so much!

Amid all this excitement, I started classes at the end of January. I'm enrolled in Biotechnology and Drug Development, Medical Exploration of HIV/AIDS, Biology of Marine Mammals, Danish 1, and Criminology and Criminal Law in Scandinavia. Classes are generally 15-25 people and I'm the only boy in my Marine Bio class (apparently DIS is 70% girls, 30% guys, so this is not uncommon), but other than that, I'm finding classes to be pretty similar to those back home. I also don't have class on Wednesdays--those are reserved for field studies, in which we get firsthand experiences immersing ourselves in our subject material in the real world. For instance, I went to the private collections of the Danish Zoological Museum today with my Marine Bio class, but more on that later!

That about wraps up my first two weeks in Copenhagen...more soon!

Londid and the search for Something Rotten

A lot has happened in the last month (I cannot believe it's been a month already), so I'll do my best to give a thorough update which will be broken into several posts. Perhaps a good place to start would be the beginning...

On January 18th, I left for what would be an unbelievable four days in London, England with Steve Fisher. He's studying abroad there with a program called BADA, which is a drama academy. After a busy day of finishing packing and saying goodbyes, I boarded the plane, which had the name "Lady Penelope" painted beautifully on the front, confirming that I was in for an incredible trip. After arriving in Heathrow, I breezed through customs (it was 6:45am), found my way to the Heathrow express, headed to Paddington station and was greeted by the most quintessential of dreary British mornings. The only thing I remember after getting to Steve's is the couch in the living room I collapsed on for a much-needed nap. Steve had class during the first 3 days I was there in the mornings and afternoons, so I took advantage of these times to sleep in, explore on my own, and meet up with several friends in the area.

I tried to do many of the touristy things before I left--I saw Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, walked on London Bridge, had fish and chips, went to the British Museum, toured The Globe, and, of course, had many pints with friends. 

I also got a chance to see my friends Melissa and Caroline from Brown for an evening and had dinner with two of my former Lake Greeley Camp counselors, Noel and Lauren--who live in England. Four days flew by, and before I knew it, I was off for Copenhagen with a 7am flight out of Heathrow. Of course, the taxi I booked 3 days prior cancelled on me at 4:45am that morning, so after frantically finding another, I get dropped off at Paddington station only to find that the Heathrow Express has been closed due to unexpected electrical maintenance. This led to me sharing a cab with 4 very nice strangers and making it through (barely) security just in time for my flight. I know many do not agree with me; however, there is no better feeling for me than starting a trip with everything clicking into place just in the nick of time. And so it was with my trip to Copenhagen. I do not believe my much smaller plane out of Heathrow had a name painted on it--I was undoubtedly too exhausted to look--but at this point I'm fairly certain I would not have been able to pronounce or understand it regardless.

 

 Tune in next time (hopefully tonight) as I continue recounting my Danish adventures!

Better Late Than Never...

So I figured now that I'm almost 3 weeks into my adventures in Copenhagen, it'd be a good time to start a blog, which I'm told is something people do when abroad. So here's my first attempt at a post--hopefully I'll update it regularly and you'll get my perspective on life in Denmark and my experiences here.



But before we get to all of that, a little about the name. I chose ZCB2012 for two reasons; first, since ZCB are my initials, and second since it answers several questions that people may have about the content of this blog:

Who is writing this (although I assume if you're reading this you know me): Zack
Where am I writing this from: Copenhagen
What am I studying here: Biomedicine
When am I doing this: 2012
Hence, ZCB2012.
As for the why and how, hopefully those will be answered throughout this blog! So introductions aside, welcome to my first attempt at blogging. Enjoy!