So a bunch of us decided to spend a Saturday in Malmo. It's pretty cool being able to take a train 30 minutes to another country. The city was pretty small, and we saw almost all of it in about 4 hours. It's always nice to see something different though.
The Turning Torso is the tallest building in Sweden. I guess its paint is very light-reactive so one minute it was white, the next it was gray.
The parks in the city were huge and beautiful.
All DIS students have Wednesdays off because that's when there we have our field studies, short field trips in/around the city. This is the first Wednesday I didn't have one, so I decided to have an adventure. Most kids will just get drunk Tuesday night and sleep most of the day away but I felt like doing something special. My friend Carly and I both wanted to do this so we searched for day trips around Copenhagen. We heard of a place called Møn; home of the White Cliffs, supposedly one of the most beautiful places in Denmark. The cliffs themselves were gorgeous but we had more fun attempting to get there.
Train
We took a train from central Copenhagen to Vordingborg, which the tour book said is 1.5 hours south. After an hour the train came stopped with no announcement. A minute later we looked out the window and realized it was our stop! We jumped up just as the train started to pull away. The conductor was really nice and stamped our cards so we wouldn't have to pay extra to get back to where we wanted to be, luckily the next stop was only 20 minutes further. When we got on the train back the conductor checked our tickets. I showed him the stamp and started to explain what happened when he stopped me and simply said, "I know" and moved on. I guess the train conductors have been gossiping about the stupid American tourists! Finally, we arrived in Vordingborg an hour and a half after we were supposed to get there.
Bus
From Vordingborg we took the bus to Stege, the main town of Møn. It was only a 30 minute ride but cost $9 because of the crazy zone system in Denmark. In Stege we asked the people at the Tourist Information center how to get to the cliffs. They said there is no direct bus but there is a frequent one that goes fairly close. The bus arrived and we hopped on it. Well, the bus decided to change routes after we sat down and the bus driver only told us this after the one we were supposed to take drove away! Another 30 minutes until our bus. By the way, it was pouring with rain this whole time. It finally came and we took it to the other side of the island. I asked the driver when to get off, "Oh! You want to walk through the forest?" "Sure..." We got off and walked about a kilometer in the rain through the woods.
Cliffs
We made it! After 6 hours we finally made it to the cliffs. They were absolutely gorgeous. There were huge white cliffs rising 500 feet with the water being surprisingly blue for such a gray day. The rocks from the cliffs were like chalk, very white and soft. For a nice change of pace the rain decided to stop right when we got to the beach and it held off until we were finished there.
Bus #2
The woman at tourist information informed there was one direct bus from the cliffs...which came at 4 and then never again. We arrived at the cliffs at 3:30, meaning we had 30 minutes to see what had traveled 6 hours to see. After taking all our pictures and soaking up as much of the landscape as possible, we rushed back to the bus stop. We were waiting at a big sign that said BUS...which apparently is not the bus stop. We realized this at 3:58 when the bus drove by on the road 200ft away. Well, time to walk back through the woods and hope the bus we took there was still running. It was! and we made it back to Stege.
Stege
We were cold, wet and tired and just wanted to relax. We found the local brewery and had a cup of hot chocolate before enjoying a much deserved sample of the local beers. Sitting down and drinking something had never felt so good.
The Way Back
We had learned from our previous blunders and made it back to the train and eventually Copenhagen without a problem. It may have sounded like we ran into too many problems, but isn't that exactly what an adventure is? If I've learned anything from Indiana Jones, things aren't supposed to go smoothly and that's just part of the fun. Even if we had never made it to the cliffs it still would have been a great day. After 4 buses, 3 trains, 280km and 11 hours, we were home.
Everyone thinks Vikings are cool. Everyone. Being in their homeland is really interesting, for the Danes it's not some far off ancient peoples; it's their ancestors and their history. My Nordic Mythology class is probably the most interesting and fun class I've ever taken, I actually enjoy all of the readings. We've had two field studies so far, one to the National Museum which has the largest collection of Viking Age artifacts in the world, and another one around Zealand, looking at a bunch of different things from the Viking Age and before.
On our Zealand trip yesterday we first went to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. Roskilde was the main port before Copenhagen existed and 50 years ago they found 5 ships underneath the fjord there. They took the pieces and put them back together to get an idea of what the ships were like. Some were large and built for trading, others were small and meant for the warriors.
Burial mounds are all over Scandinavia and only a small number of them have been excavated. This one is from the Stone Age and it's about 5000 years old. Oh yeah, we got attacked by a bat.
Heorot hall, also known as Hleiðargarðr, is the biggest and most famous hall of Viking times. It's the main hall in Beowulf and it's what Tolkien modeled Meduseld (Theoden's hall in Edoras) after. Not much to see now mostly just the ridgeline of the foundation, but still interesting. My teacher is pretty much a Viking.
Probably looked like this at one point:
This is a round fort which was a base for a few hundred Vikings. They would carry out raids and then return here to the barricaded walls. The original mounds for the walls are still in tact and the foundations for the building have all been recreated.
Runic stone at a Christian church. They still used runes after the Viking age, as it was part of their tradition.
Pretty cool.
