The Morning After

Well, I'm sure some of you were excited by last night's game, and some were quite disappointed. For those of you who were disappointed, take solace in this: at least it wasn't 4:00 in the morning when the game ended.

So, outside of that, how's Denmark? Well, the weather has been pretty nice for the second day in a row. That's the first time that's happened since I've been here. My classes are still going well, especially my class on Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism. Last Thursday we observed a protest group during class.

About a year ago, the "youth house" was torn down by the Copenhagen government. A lot of young squatters lived there, some probably more permanently than others. Regardless, there were not a lot of people happy about that. Since that time, every Thursday night they hold a demonstration. They plan on doing this until they get a new house. However, one of the things we learned from talking to them was that if their demand is not met by snowfall, they plan on rioting. When it does snow in Denmark, it usually snows in February. We'll see what happens.

On Saturday, I went to a couple of museums. First, I went with Benny and Vivi to the Aarken modern art museum in Ishøj. They had an exhibition of decidedly not modern art, with a large collection of the Skagen painters. Skagen is the area on the northern tip of Denmark, and around the turn of the 1900s it was home to several painters. Their works tended to focus on the fishermen as well as themselves. In addition to the classic Skagen works, there were two exhibitions of modern art, as well as some permanent collections. It was weird, but it certainly got a reaction from me, so I guess it succeeded at that.

The second museum I went to with a friend. We went to the Museum Erotica in downtown Copenhagen. It was certainly an experience, but the highlight was a room detailing the sex lives of such figures as Charlie Chaplin, Benito Mussolini, Hans Christian Andersen, Sigmund Freud, and Marilyn Monroe, to name a few.

Sunday was Fastelhavn, a Danish children's holiday much like Halloween. We spent most of the day at Benny and Vivi's daughter Susana's house. I don't remember exactly what town they live in, but it's about half an hour away from Ishøj. Ishøj is suburban, but where Susana and Johnni live is definitely rural. Most of the homes out there are only two years old at the most, and there's lots of open farmland. There's still quite a bit of undeveloped land in Denmark. It was quite nice. What was not so nice was being surrounded by four and five year olds who have a ton of energy and don't quite understand that you don't speak Danish. I got quite a look from one of Julia's (Susana's daughter) friends when I couldn't answer her question. On the other hand, lunch and dinner were quite good. Then we came back home to Ishøj, and I hung out for a few hours until midnight, when the Super Bowl started. And it was all downhill from there.