Yum

The restaurant we went to in Christiania last night was REALLY good (also really expensive, but in Copenhagen I wouldn’t expect it any different.)

Today is the Fam’s last full day in Copenhagen. Next, they are going to London for a couple of days – my Aunt Judy lives there, so they are going to stay at her house. I am going to send my computer back with them so that I don’t have to carry it around while I am traveling around Europe on the trains with Anna and Ryan, so this will probably be my last entry for a while. I will write a final one once I get home about my 2 weeks of traveling through Europe.

The open house for our projects is tonight. After that, we have a DIS dinner. I think my dad and sister are planning on going to the Denmark vs. Chile soccer game. I’d like to go to a soccer game while I am in Europe – maybe I’ll be able to while we are traveling around Europe for 2 weeks.

Critiques

My critique went well. I am back in my room at the Kollegium and am ready for a nap after getting just a few hours of sleep last night. My dad, sister, and aunt should be returning to Copenhagen from Struer tonight. It will be nice to have the time to show them around Copenhagen tonight and tomorrow without worrying about my studio project. I am thinking that I will take them to a restaurant that I saw last time I was in Christiania. Its on the top floor of one of the buildings on the perimeter – its pretty cute and looks really good. The stairwell up to the restaurant reeks of pot – we’ll see if that scares my aunt at all.

Back to Copenhagen

I had a great time today seeing the area that my family came from. Our first stop this morning was at Paul Eric’s (pronounced Polly-eg) house. According to him and Jahn, my great grandmother lived with her family on the farm next door until she was sold to a wealthier family at the age of 12 to take care of the kids and the house. Paul Eric didn’t speak English, but he was one of the most interesting people to listen to. He speaks Danish like he is singing a song – the tone of his voice is constantly changing.

After Paul Eric’s house we went to see some Viking burial mound, and then to the church where my great grandmother and grandfather were married before they moved to America. Jahn told us the legend of the beautiful church. Apparently, a young couple – a prince and his lover- were made to dance to death as a punishment for their forbidden love.

We drove towards the coast and stopped to see fishermen unloading the day’s catch. We walked up the steps of a lighthouse for a spectacular view of the Danish coastline, and then we headed back for another delicious dinner.

I am on the train back to Copenhagen. I should get in around 3:00 am, and I have critiques at 8:00. Woof.

Visiting the Fam

So we are up in Struer, Denmark right now. I’m at my great grandmother’s cousin’s grandson’s house (or something like that) and it is absolutely beautiful. The house is a “sail house” by the Danish architecture firm, KPF. It’s one of several black, modern row houses along the banks of a beautiful fjord. A large, retractable sail on the rear of each of the homes gives them their name – it also shades the house from the bright sun.

Struer is the home of Bang and Olufsen, the upscale electronics and technology company, so the house came fully wired and outfitted with all of the new B&O products. My distant relatives just moved into their new home a couple of week ago, but they’ve already got the place filled with furniture, a lot of which I recognize from our Scandinavian Furniture Deign lecture.

When we arrived, Jahn (my super-distant uncle) and his wife Abigail had a delicious dinner waiting for us on their designer dining room table. We started with some smoked salmon and greens served with the best white wine I’ve had. For the main course we had fillet mignon and new potatoes with sauce. For desert we had fresh fruit and ice cream. Mmmmmmm.

Tomorrow we are going to go on a road trip around Struer to see where our family came from – I’m looking forward to it.

More Visitors

My family is arriving in Copenhagen later on today. My aunt, dad, and sister Alice are visiting me for about a week. I’m hoping to show them around, but it will be tough to find time since our final project is due in a couple days. On Sunday, once my project is done (hopefully), we are planning to go up to Struer, Denmark to visit some very distant relative. My Aunt Judy is very interested in our family history and genealogy and has managed to find and contact some of my grandmother’s (her mother’s) cousin’s children and grandchildren. It should be interesting to meet them.

In the mean time, I am busy at work on this my studio project, a sports complex. We had desk crits with another professor the other day – mine did not go so well, so I’ve scrapped a lot of things. I’m hoping it will all come together in the end.

Study Tour: part deux

The Western Denmark tour was great! Our last stop was the Trapholt art museum, the museum that I built a model of for my first project. It was strange visiting a building for the first time but knowing so much about it. It was less monumental than I had imagined. The building has a strange geometry on one side, but you hardly even see that side of the building when you visit the site.

After we visited Trapholt, on our way back to Copenhagen, the bus driver pulled off of the main road into a residential neighborhood. The bus stopped and the group leader announced that the bus was broken. It could not go above the kilometer equivalent of 30 mph, so we would all have to leave the bus and join the other study tour group on their already full, but supposedly bigger bus. Our luggage, the said, would meet up with us later in Copenhagen. Everybody grumbled, but got off of the bus and began walking towards where we thought the other bus was waiting. On our way we walked through a churchyard during a wedding. They led us to the cemetery in the rear, and then surprised us with shots to celebrate the end of a great last study tour.