Magical Denmark

Fun facts:
1. Number of forms of currency I currently have with me: 5! USD, GBP, EUR, NOK, DKK. Could have gotten Swedish Kroners as well, but didn't want to overdo it.
2. Legos are Danish. I went by the summer home of the guy who owns the company. Apparently he breeds horses in his spare time.
3. Sunday, I saw a porpoise.

How Denmark has maintained its quaint, idyllic, old-fashioned charm:
-Sheep instead of lawnmowers. They probably have lawnmowers as well, but I haven't seen any yet.
-Burning wood instead of oil. Also, windmills never went out of fashion here.
-Their houses and churches are all painted white with red clay brick roofs.
-Children actually fly kites on the weekend.
-It's very flat and totally surrounded by water.
-There are actual houses with medieval straw thatched roofs, that people actually live in.

It's no wonder Hans Christian Anderson hails from this part of the world, if you ask me.

Denmark is really lovely. The pace of life seems slower here. Really, it has felt slower than Brown and the US in general most everywhere I've been, with the exception of London. People are cheerful and friendly. They eat a lot of fish and build a lot of bridges. And ride a lot of bikes.

Today I have been exploring the city of Arhus. It is the second biggest city, after Copenhagen, but it is quite small. The population is something like 250,000. I'm visiting my good friend Anne, which is really great and fun. On the way here, I met two huge African-American basketball players who are playing for Danish teams for the year to build up their stats to try to get into the NBA. Really random. It was kind of nice to meet some Americans though.

Anne and I went to an Occupation Museum today, which had a lot of artifacts and information from WWII, when the Nazis occupied Denmark, but there was a fairly active resistance force in the country. We also went to the main church in the city, which was beautiful, and we went to a crazy Turkish bazaar, which was mostly just bizarre. Aarhus is totally charming, particularly the old-fashioned, European architecture, and I think I could live here, except that it's expensive, and kind of cold. Tomorrow I head to Copenhagen.

The two main things I learned from my stay in the country with Rasmus's family: I don't understand Danish, and I'm not crazy about Danish food. They were really great though. :)