Thursday
My tour was pretty busy, and when we came back all I wanted to do was sleep, but I will try to include everything. Thursday we left Copenhagen at 7:15 am. The first city we went to was Aarhus (pronounced Arhoos), about five hours from Copenhagen in Jutland, the mainland portion of Denmark. When we arrived we went to the University Hospital, a teaching and research hospital in Aarhus. Here they gave us a tour of their radiology department and showed us some of their research projects. It was interesting to see what kind of research they were doing (mostly cognitive mapping of the brain) since Denmark is seen as a leader in medical research here in Scandinavia. After our hospital tour, we had some downtime, so our bus driver parked at IKEA and we grabbed some food for lunch. Definitely one of the highlights of the day.
After our quick lunch we went just outside the city to visit a general practitioner's office. In Denmark, the GP connects all patients to the medical world; a referral from one is like your golden ticket for treatment. The GP we met with was passionate about his job, and made general medicine seem much more interesting than people give it credit for. Coincidentally he studied abroad in the US, and when I asked him where, he told me he lived 20 minutes from where I grew up for an entire year! I was shocked, nobody knows about Maine at all. Such a small world! After meeting with the GP we headed to our hostel, which was SO much nicer than any hostel I've ever stayed in! Private bathrooms, hot water, a table and chairs in the room... it was nice. After leaving our things in the rooms we headed back to downtown Aarhus for dinner. DIS paid for two meals on the trip (plus three hostel meals) and this was delicious! I can't wait for my long study tour and the meals we'll have then! Thursday night I explored the city with my new friends I had met, and we stumbled upon ARoS, a modern art museum. It houses "boy" a larger than life statue I learned about in my art history class in high school. Unfortunately somehow we missed the massive sculpture... But we did take great pictures from the roof!
Friday
Friday I woke up with a cold. A miserable, sore throat and stuffy nose cold. But since our first activity was a scavenger hunt of Aarhus with a cash prize, I sucked it up and headed out into the cold (northern Denmark was so much colder than Copenhagen!). My team did well, but didn't win. We did learn a lot about Aarhus, though. After the scavenger hunt we had some free time, so I bought some postcards and explored the stroget (walking street). Departing downtown Aarhus at one for our next leg of the adventure, we drove towards the largest hospital in Northern Jutland for a tour of their research and bioengineering departments. Here I stood next to a pig during open heart surgery, saw a mouse heart beating outside the body in solution, learned about the physics behind heart valve replacements, and compared the pros and cons of natural versus man made valves. It was a great visit and our two presenters were fabulous!
This was the end of the academic portion of our trip, and now we just had adventures ahead of us! Our final stop for Friday was Den Gamle By, or "The Old Town", an open air museum created by relocating houses from different time periods from all over Denmark. It is like a Danish version of Plymouth Plantation. We had a medically-based tour of the town and met a very curious horse! On the way out, we even crossed paths with the Danish Cultural Minister, who was touring the museum with his entourage. Piling back onto our bus, we settled in for a two hour drive to Vejle (Vi-leh) where our next hostel had dinner waiting for us. This hostel was even nicer than the first, I have to give DIS credit for choosing great places to stay! Dinner was fabulous, and everyone in my room was so tired, we went to bed at 10!
Saturday
The last day was all fun and games. I wasn't feeling much better but had fun anyway. First we went to Jelling (pronounced yelling) to see the Jelling Stones. The story behind the rocks and mound formations is incredibly interesting, and I promise to make a blog dedicated just to them in the near future, because it was really cool. The church in the town is the first church in Denmark, built by the Vikings and ordered by their king Harold Bluetooth, who converted the Vikings to christianity. It was also interesting to see the cemetery - too many people want to be buried at the church so they bury you for a few years, and then send you somewhere else so another person can be buried there. A bit strange, but practical.
After Jelling we drove to Odense (pronounced the same, but with a little emphasis on the last 'e') to tour Hans Christian Anderson's childhood houses and the cathedral he was confirmed in. It was a beautiful day and our tour guide (a teacher at DIS) explained everything so well! She even planned the tour so we would end at the restaurant we had lunch at. Hamburgers and fries were exactly what we needed after a long trip around Denmark. We ate as much as we could, keeping in mind we were going gokarting next... This was one of my favorite parts of the trip. We just zoomed around the track, crashing into people (by accident I promise, Leanna!) and racing tournament-style (we kept track of points and had a championship race at the end). Sunday I woke up so sore from all the bumps and crashes. But we had a great time!
Sorry this blog is long, I had a lot going on last weekend! Tomorrow I will put what I did last Sunday on here, and you will love it, I promise!
Until then,
Devon.
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