After being in Copenhagen for 6 weeks, it's finally time to say goodbye to my second home. We did our final pitches at the Charlottenlund Palace, and for the amount of the time we had to prepare, I think our group did pretty well. My flatmates and I went to Reffen Copenhagen Street Food for one last dinner. I couldn't stay for long because I had to pick up Cavina and my dad from the airport.
It was a hectic night, because some workers went on strike at the airport, so their luggage never made it to Denmark. I took them to their airbnb, went home and packed a suitcase and brought it back to where they're staying, and went home once again. By then, it was already 2am, and a few of my friends had planned to watch the sunrise, at 4:30. So my friend Libby and I stayed up, and met a few people before heading to Amager Strand Park to watch the sunrise. I cried on the way there, thinking about all the friends and memories I've made this summer. The sunrise was the perfect way to finish this program, and I don't regret not getting any sleep that day. After saying goodbye to all my friends, I spent the day with my family, showing them my favorite places in Denmark. We ate brunch at Mad & Kaffe - the place I've been dying to go since I got to Copenhagen - Nyhavn, the Trampoline Sidewalk, Torvehallen, Strøget, and Tivoli.
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On Sunday morning, a group of us attempted to go to Møns Klint, a white cliff on the South of Denmark. It was a hell of a journey getting there, because we bought the wrong tickets, and halfway through the trip half of us wanted to give up. It took us six hours to get there, and after spending $60 for transportation, we made it to the most beautiful place I've ever seen (I feel like I've been saying that a lot recently).
The shoreline was amazing, the colors were beautiful, the cliff was absolutely stunning, and everything was so perfect. The trek up the stairs was honestly the worst thing I've ever experienced - worse than Koko Head. But everything was so worth it in the end. We ended up getting back home at 11pm, and looking back at it, we spent ten hours just on transportation. Was it tiring? yes. Painful? yes. Expensive? yes. Worth it? Brah. Absolutely fucking worth it. Second stop during our study tour was Stockholm, Sweden! It was a beautiful city, and although I've never been there, it gave me major Italy vibes. Sweden was a lot more lax than our trip in Finland, because we got more free time. We got a walking tour of the Old Town and ate some pizza, before heading back to the hotel to work on our presentation for a mock investor pitch at Impact Hub.
We also visited another co-working space, SUP46 the next day and had free time until dinner, so majority of us took a little field trip to IKEA! FOR SWEDISH MEATBALLS!!! Dinner was at Boule Bar, where they served us French dishes, and we got to play a game called Pétanque and our team won! We went back to the hotel, and I got to witness my instructor get iced, which was pretty fun. A few of us wanted a Netflix & Chill night, so we grabbed snacks at 7-11 and watched Black Mirror (but we didn't have an HDMI cable so nine of us watched on one litto computer screen). On our last day, we celebrated Midsummer's Eve Festival at an open-air museum/zoo called Skansen, where we ate lunch and I GOT TO PET A GOAT it made my whole day. Before leaving for the airport, me and two of my friends went to an Ice Bar in the hotel, where EVERYTHING WAS MADE OF ICE - EVEN THE CUPS. It was pretty expensive to get in, and I did something similar in Korea, but it was amazing. We boarded our plane to Finland at 8am, and had a busy two days. We visited two co-working spaces on the first day - the Helsinki Think Company and Microsoft Flux, and the continental breakfast at the hotel was to DIE FOR. Our second day, we went to the Microsoft HQ, and it was the most amazing place I have ever seen. They made us special guest tags and showed us the up & coming technology that they were working on.
That night, we went to the forest, to a place called the Green Window and we ate traditional Finnish food, like reindeer and elk meat (which was not too bad). The chef's handpicked the mushrooms in the park for our soup and it was probably the best soup I've ever had. The girls walked down to the lake, and it was so beautiful, but five minutes after arriving, it started thunder storming, so we took cover in the the sauna's for an hour. The weather was so bipolar - one minute it was sunny, the next it was thunder storming, and just when I thought it was over, it started HAILING. IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER. A few minutes later, it was completely sunny again, and the rain had created a beautiful fog on the surface of the water. We switched with the boys, who headed to the lake, and the girls talked with the owner and host while eating cinnamon rolls, hearing him give some very wise advice about life and love. He suggested that we pick some plants to make our own tea. He showed us how to roll the leaves, and pointed out some plants we could eat raw - like a rhubarb leaf that tasted like lemons, and a very very very tiny wild strawberry. He showed us his favorite spot to take sunset photos, and it was so stunning, I cried on my way down. Usually when I make plans to travel, I skimp out because I'm a total chicken. I love experiencing new things, but can never work up the courage to actually do them. So, when I lightly proposed to my friends that we should take a weekend trip to Belgium, they were all for it - but I didn't think we would actually go.
BUT BOY WAS I WRONG because I just came back from Belgium, and it was such an amazing experience. It came with a lot of difficulties (like paying five times more for our hostel than we initially thought, overpaying for a shuttle bus, walking seven miles a day) but I honestly wouldn't have wanted to be with any other people in any other country. Brussels was absolutely stunning, with some of the most amazing architecture I have ever seen. The Grand Place was utterly jaw-dropping. As soon as we got to the area, all three of us were in awe, as we stood looking up at all the different guilds and castles. My favorite things included: THE FREE CHOCOLATE SAMPLES AT LITERALLY EVERY CHOCOLATIER (and there was at least one on every street). The amazing architecture THE FOOD - Frites, Chocolate, Waffles (my diet was so out of whack by the time I came back) The many cute Japanese tourists I had to leave Belgium a day earlier than my friends, because I booked a cheaper ticket home. The only problem was that my flight was at 6:40am, and the shuttle that took me to the airport only started service from 3:30am. All public transportation stopped at 12am, and it took an hour to walk to the shuttle center. We debated for a long time as to how I would get to the shuttle at the dead of night in an unfamiliar country, and in the end my FRIENDS CALLED AN UBER FOR ME AT 3AM TO GET TO THE SHUTTLE. At that moment I realized that there is still good left in the world, and I am so so so grateful to have such amazing people in my life. So yeah. Great food, beautiful buildings, amazing people and an experience of a lifetime <3 I'm still alive after my second week of class and internship! Once I got used to the city, the days just keep flying. I'm already in my third week, which means I'm halfway done with the program already!??! This week was packed with so many different events and sights, like walking to the Black Diamond, the Danish Design Museum, and to the very popular and utterly underwhelming Little Mermaid statue.
Distortion (which is the biggest music festival in Copenhagen) was this past week, from May 30 - June 2, and it was complete chaos - like all of Copenhagen was packed onto the few streets that they closed off, and everywhere you went, there was a bunch of drunk teens dancing. This place is a death trap for me because literally everyone smokes cigarettes. DIS also hosted a summer picnic for us, and there was so much free food - but Matthias, who was very, very, extremely, out-of-this-world-kine-drunk was cooking our food, and many of the hot dogs touch the ground :/ I've also been to the beach (pier, ocean, harbor, whatever it is) more times in the past two weeks than I have in probably like three years, back in Hawaii, because the weather is so great and everyone loves it. This week is very exciting because not only do we not have any more classes this week (Karim forgot he had a meeting, so we're having three days of class next week :/), but Libby, Shannon, and I are going tO BRUSSELS ON FRIDAY!!!! WAFFFLESSSSSSS. |