Home, thoughts on America and Europe

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

I'm home and life has wrapped its warm sameness back around me, all its varied tendrils latching back on, down to/including my lethargy towards research. Of course, I can blame some of that on recovering from 2 weeks of mathmathmath, but it's mostly just a convenient excuse. I am unenthused.

It was jarring to walk around Chicago from one train station to another. Black people! Cabbies! The poor, the disenfranchised. The land of unfulfilled dreams, of unrealized hopes.

On the plane there was a program about how the Danes were the "happiest" country in the world. The Danes interviewed said that perhaps what was meant was "most content". The average work week is more like 35 hours. The country pays for as much college as you want, as long as it takes you. Everyone is roughly in the same income/living-bracket, all middle class. And their advice to America? Give up on the American dream. More is not better. More will not buy you happiness.

I was amused that the first movie following this was "The Bucket List", whose moral really is that the RichDivorcedWhiteMan's money will buy happiness, with the very slight catch that he only thinks to buy happiness and achieves it by sharing it with PoorButReligiousAndFamilyOrientedBlackMan.

We are a young country. We reward youth. We tear down the old to build up the new. Our attention spans are short and we dream big. We deny our mortality. We forget to take care of the old, of the environment -- we will live forever, we live now, we don't need to preserve anything because it's all about us. About our quest for happiness. Our guarantee to pursue happiness. Our entitlement.

Leaving Germany

My last day in Cologne/Germany, I re-check the train departure times and note that the ones heading straight to the Frankfurt Flughaven (Airport) are all ICE, or fast-trains. I remember Inna telling me that Eurail passes would not get me on such a train, and I remember also that when I read the rules, travel was allowed on all rail in Germany. So, deciding to perhaps play a little Russian roulette (if you have the wrong ticket, you are subject to fines on the order of 100 euro, which is 20 more euro than an actual ticket on this train costs), I get on the train that will put me in Frankfurt's airport about 3 hours before my flight. I board the train and ask to sit down to a nice little old German lady, who, against trends for people in Germany her age, actually does speak English. I look a bit worried as I realized I should have probably re-read the rules to make sure and the lady asks if I'm on the wrong train. I say no, but my ticket might not work. So, I settle in and wait for the conductor to eventually come by. Or not. The woman I am sitting next to is going to Munchen (Munich) to her nephew's wedding - he's marrying a korean girl, but came back to get married in Germany. Then they're going on a vacation by car to Austria.

Eventually the ticket-person came by and, indeed, Eurail passes work on superfast trains. Score. I should have been riding them all along. The regional trains are terrible (and, terribly cheap). If I make it back to Germany with another Eurail pass, I will make sure to either buy less days or travel more, but randomly. You know, hop a train to Hamburg to just tool around for one hour, and then hop on another train. Of course, I would like my next trip abroad to be less stressful. Inna pointed out that it probably would have been a better idea to travel before the workshop and conference, just due to how exhausted we were by the time we traveled. Then, you know, biking 70 km(about 43.5 miles, the furthest I've ever biked in one go) and hiking up a hill to sleep on uncomfortable beds didn't help. I think that probably shouldn't have been our first day of travel post-conference, because it really wiped me out.

Ah, so I got to the Frankfurt airport. This is not a good example of German efficiency. I think it has been cobbled together haphazardly over time, and is generally rather unpleasant and confusing.

The flight was close to 9 hours and followed by about 1.5 hours in customs, a 1 hr train ride to the Amtrak station and about 2.5 hours on the Amtrak train to Champaign. I didn't sleep on the train and got to bed around 3 am. I'm a trooper :P

Customs sucked. A lot. Also, now, if you want to visit the US, you have to be fingerprinted and photographed. No wonder people hate us.

The Cathedral in Cologne and a strange (uncomfortable) conversation

Yesterday I basically passed out when I hit the bed. I didn't have the energy to undress or brush my teeth or anything. I eventually woke up enough to do these things at some time in the morning, and Inna left at 5am to go back to the states (flying out of Cologne).

I finally got up around 8:30 am or so, showered and traipsed downstairs to check email and try to plan the day a little. I gave up on planning and went to the Dom, the miraculously-preserved gothic cathedral that Dominates the landscape here. The Dom was beautiful in the early morning light, quiet, and mostly empty. And of course I ran out of batteries as soon as I started taking pictures. So, I went on a quest and found a place that looks a lot like a Best Buy and bought 4 AAs for about 5 euro.

After trying to follow various walking tours poorly marked on maps, I gave up and just walked around. Since the town was so damaged in WWII, the city has rebuilt, and the town feels very young. Outside of the fact that everything is in German, and there are cobbles, it could pass for an upscale suburb of Chicago, even.

Eventually coming back to the Dom, I sat and read a copy I'd made of what Lonely Planet had to say about Cologne. A guy came up and spoke to me in German, asking where I was from. He didn't speak any English, so I had to use my incredibly sparse and grammatically incorrect German to try to communication. He's Kurdish, 35, and works in a restaurant here. He thinks I'm very pretty and objected to my assertion that I wanted to walk with a "halb-metre" between us. He also commented on my "Angst" (fear) which was my discomfort...I was somewhat uncomfortable. I didn't find him attractive and didn't want to lead him on, and I'm told in more...religious...countries, that showing skin was taken as an invitation. So, I was a bit worried. He wanted to hold my hand and I shied away and he talked about how in Germany if people are not married they'll decide to have sex with each other after only knowing each other an hour. This happens in the states, too, I suppose, but I assume it's mostly local to a certain age bracket, i.e. my students. He said he had a Ukranian girlfriend for 6 months and asked if/when I'd had a boyfriend (very annoyingly, Freund is ambiguous as either boyfriend or male friend). He said I seemed confident and was good at explaining what I meant with body language and what German I could cobble together. I had no idea what the word in German for "safe" was so I had trouble explaining that I disagreed with his assessment of Copenhagen as being a ghetto (same word in English and German), even though it was dirty (schmutzig). From what I gathered, Cologne is very multicultural and liberal, unlike regions of germany like Munchen (Munich) and Bavaria.

We parted ways and I felt sort of bad for being a typisch (typical) American, raised in our culture of fear...but this kind of wraps into a conversation (rather inappropriate) I'd had in the castle with math boys about how I know a LOT of women who've been raped, and I have worked very hard to be very careful around men.

:/

And now I'm hiding inside to recover from my sunburn. I'll probably venture forth in a bit to scrounge up dinner and maybe check out the cathedral of St Ursula who was killed by an arrow after getting married and trying to retain her chastity. Weird.

Weekend bike ride along the scenic Rhine

I biked 70 km yesterday (gestern, auf Deutsch) from Bonn to Koblenz. The ride was beautiful. Pics will be delayed because to save room/weight we only brought one camera. The Rhein (Rhine) is beautiful, lush and green. We biked by fields of wheat and baled hay, as well as through small old towns. The old towns here all seem to have an Altstadt (old city) with a fortified outer wall and tower. Each records the height of past floodings of the Rhein, with notable high-years including so recently as 1995.

We explored the Altstadt of a town named Remagen (Reh-MAH-gen), where I was chided by an old German lady for dragging "deine Jacke an die (auf dem?) Erd" (along the ground) and I had two espressos and a plateful of gnocchi. Germans seem to go crazy with desserts. There are a lot of ice cream cafes (Eis Cafe) where you can buy any of at least 30 variants on dessert, many dripping with fresh fruit or nuts or covered in delicious chocolate sauce. We took a break for some ice cream at such a place in the Altstadt of Andernach, and then went down by the Rhein to rest and stretch out.

The path along the Rhein also drew us up abreast of a nuclear power plant. I feel like a similar path in the states would not do that.

Including breaks, the trip took 9 hours from Bonn to Koblenz itself. Then we had a ferry crossing and had to haul our bikes up about 4 flights of stairs to cross a bridge. Post-bridge we had a long haul uphill to our youth hostel, in a fortress atop the hill. The walk was very steep and probably took about half an hour. The view at sunset was great, and after some confusion about my reservation, we ate food, I had a glass of wine, we showered and slept.

I have to say, I hate the fortress. Passionately. The walk up sucked, and we almost have to bike back down. And the bed folded completely around me so that the middle of my back hurt as well as everything else that was hurting anyway.

LESSON LEARNED:
If you decide to spend a day biking, fork over the extra money to stay someplace
a) nice (where nice == decent/comfy beds and free internet. Or, just the former)
and
b) NOT at the top of a hill

Today we groggily got up, crankily went to Koblenz proper to see a monument that Napolean erected preemptively for his "Victory against the Russians", which the Russians came back to and wrote on it "Seen and approved" (all in french). Pretty hilarious.

Then (regional) train to Bonn to return bikes and region train to Koeln. Thankfully, our hostel seems pretty hip and has free wireless. I love them.

However, regional trains are awful. Maybe they're more awful on days when Germany will be playing a very important game in the Eurocup. I don't know.

Observation about trains in Germany: NO AIR CONDITIONING. How do people ride these all the time without dying?!?!

:P Now I am exhausted and want to take a long nap. I think I will get a Koelsch since I'm in Koeln (where Koelsch is made). This was the reason for the Riesling in Koblenz, since Koblenz ==  the confluence of the Mosel and Rhein rivers, and I like Rieslings from the Mosel region.

I leave in two days. I am ready for my bed and shower and going to the gym again.

"Theme Park Germany", minus Leiderhosen.

Germany won [in the Euro-cup] against Turkey yesterday, and there were loud, drunken, flag-draped Germans running around singing and yelling "DEUTSCH-LAND!" when we stopped by the bus station for the last bus to the youth hostel. One of the other UIUC math grads said that he felt he was seeing "the real Germany". Then again, he also expressed the same sentiment when we went to Linz.

Linz is kind of like the German version of a quaint German town. I think I called it "Theme Park Germany". It is everything that people think of when they think of stereotypical Germany, minus the Leiderhosen. The Rhine (Rhein) floods every year, and there are labels on their main gate/tower where the worst floods in their town's history have been. Several hundred years ago, it flooded up the first story of the shops, and in 1995 it was pretty close to that.

The castle in Linz (Burg Linz) is really more of a fortified building than castle, all whitewash and wooden frames. They had a cellar that supposedly was used for torture, and several displays of old torture devices and a door with a motion sensor that would rattle at you when you walked by. Our tour guide said that the people of Linz used to live making wine and mining the volcanic stone nearby (which they sold to Holland to build dikes) and then that wasn't working so well and they discovered tourism.

The point of going to Linz (via boat -- very nice) was that this conference is in honor of the 60th birthday of a very influential topologist. Dinner included a lot of toasts and speeches and funny stories. A very very famous mathematician basically said that Haynes (the birthday mathematician) was the only mathematician who ever made him feel good about his work.

What I have learned about mathematicians on this trip is that the vast majority are insecure about their own work and how they appear in the eyes of other mathematicians. Also, that just because someone is dismissive or answers quickly  does not mean that they are a) right or b) all that much smarter or c) as fast on their feet as they appear.

As I've said to other people, I've discovered that the famous people "are real people too".

Today I'll be going on the "Beethoven walk" of Bonn. He was apparently born here.

DEUTSCHLAND! Or, the trip from copenhagen to germany

I have a traveling companion now who is a first year grad at MIT. We traveled to Bremen and then to Bonn. There wasn't a lot of sightseeing since we were both tired, but we did take a few photos, including one of a statue of the Bremen town musicians. My German is very very bad, but has been somewhat helpful. At least now I can ask someone if they speak English first before just speaking at them.


The train from Copenhagen to Hamburg boards a ferry. Sehr kuhl.



The train from Hamburg to Bremen was very full and we sat for the first hour in the compartment basically between trains. Very loud. Then figured out we could sit in the reserved seats if we were there not during the reserved leg of the journey.

Food in Europe *is* better. So is the coffee. And, man-- the bread is awesome. Also, Americans are fat. All the Europeans I've seen are pretty slim, or a little pudgy, but no one is 300-500 pounds and oozing over their seats on the train.

And! No handicapped-accessible anything. Do they all move to the US? I have not seen a single person in a wheelchair, and if I did I would stop them and ask how they get around.

The Danes more universally spoke English than where I've been in Germany. I wonder how the tourism of the two countries compares.

Our room here is bigger (by a lot) but about 30 minutes by bus from the university. I am surrounded by so many mathematicians (250 or so?) that the applause (quiet and polite) after each talk is thunderous.

Two of the other people at the workshop and now this conference do Tango so I will probably dance at some point in Bonn and danced twice in Copenhagen.

Lunch is 3 hours and it doesn't seem like quite enough :) Oh, and the student cafeterias here and in Copenhagen are really really nice. Nice salad bars, especially. Europe isn't so bad as a vegetarian (if you're careful).

Aside:
I am so incredibly happy I have a traveling partner. All this alone would have been a bit much. I feel so foreign surrounded by people not speaking English, and I'm a lot more shy/unassertive than I would be in, say, Chicago .

Last day of math workshop, leaving Copenhagen soon

Today is the last day of the Math workshop.
The morning lectures sped up somewhere around Wednesday and the afternoon lectures have been entirely incomprehensible (I don't have a 1 year background in Algebraic Geometry).

This has been good and bad for my ego. I can answer some questions that are asked in the workshop and I can answer some questions other people have, but I really haven´t been doing math my whole life and meeting people who have is intimidating.




This has been like a flashback to first year of gradschool for most people, I think. The math is hard, and fast, and we're all unsure if it is okay to ask questions or not, leaving the question-asking to those people who are confident, arrogant, or who have already seen the material. People are quietly spread out over the auditorium, some skulking in the back where it is hard to hear and see the lecturer, but it removes you from the potential scrutiny of other grad students. Some sitting right up in front where you can almost pretend there isn't a veritable sea of talented grad students at your back.





I am very tired. Two of my roommates are checking out today, so it will be quieter tonight to sleep, which will be nice. I am probably going on a boat trip tomorrow, unless I really want to get up early, stop in Hamburg and mostly just use Bremen for sleeping and early morning traipsing (which is plausible. I will look at my options today).

I managed to only spend about 5 USD yesterday. I will make up for it and then some today I think.


Danish Keyboards
A lot of the normal US special characters like / and < and > are reorganized. One reorganization I really like is that < and > are on the same key, and one is shift + that key. One thing I don'like is that the normal location of 'is replaced by ø, which ends up with typos like "donøt" for "don´t".

Traipsing, miscellaneous Danish, etc

Out of my travel-reading-book:

"Out of a billowy upheaval of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin of Heidelberg Caste, with empty window arches, ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers-- the Lear of inanimate nature, --deserted, discrowned, beaten by storms, but royal still, and beatiful"

- Mark Twain A Tramp Abroad p.9


Agurk = Cucumber
Kylling=Chicken
Aaben= Open
Tryk= Push
Med= With
Tak= Thanks
Marked= Market/Bazaar?
Salg= Sale
Til= to/towards
i= and
Kirke= Church
Land= Land?Country?
er= is
Proverum= changing room
Sommer= Summer
Ost= Cheese
Tomat= Tomatoes
Nørre=North
Fri= Free
Fra= From

Today has been a bit long. I like people, but I also like quiet, and I think I am repleat with both sight-seeing and human interaction.  Went off to explore the city with a friend I'd maid. We were very lackadaisical and so missed seeing Christiansborg slot ruins (ruins from two previous palaces/fortresses that are underneat, including Bishop Absalon's original fortification that put Copenhagen on the map in 1128 or so). That was sad.

More traipsing, getting back close to 7 (so about 5 hours of traipsing). She talked nearly the whole time, which hopefully is not habitual. Typing some, labelling pictures.

Apparently Danes are known for their milk, ice cream and open-faced sandwiches (smørrebrød).

The air here is surprisingly arid. It has been windy, but I assumed that was just due to storms. One of the local mathematicians said that no, it's constant. Thus, aridity? I mean, this is a harbor. It should be wet, no?

As a result, I´ve been drinking about 3 litres of local water a day and wishing I had lotion (like the desert but greener and rainier. No serious storms, just little drizzles here and there).

Also! Nigh impossible to wash stuff out of your hair. I am going to borrow someone else´s shampoo and have a go at it, and/or go find the supermarket and buy cheaper shampoo than what I have. Or maybe a Netto (like biglots but not big) 

Odd stuff:
*Seems like Danes overall start going bald earlyish, I'd guess 30s.
*There was a train on the street. A little kiddy-sort of train, with tourists. Say what???
*I saw a woman with knee-high leather boots and a tight skirt with a bike. These people. Talented.
*One of the guys I tangoed with on Saturday is a postdoc in Math here in Copenhagen. S'funny.

Copenhagen, day 4 of travel: roommates, finding a supermarket

Last night I wanted to kill 2 of my 4 other roommates. One didn't get in until 1pm and had to knock. Another kept tossing and turning and had brought smelly food into the room and left it there, in the trash when done. This room is amazingly small. I'll try to open the blinds and get a few good pix. This thing is the size of a small closet, has four beds and a bathroom with a shower head that you use by closing a curtain around yourself (and it's a small bathroom overall). The space efficiency is amazing.

So, first person got up at 6 am (sun gets up at 4am), and I finally gave up and showered and got out around 6:40 to check email and then eat. We have a nice breakfast buffet for 50 kroner (about 10$ USD) -- yogurt, muesli, about 5 kinds of fresh bread, cheese (with a neat cheese cutter), orange juice, really good coffee, milk, meat if you want it. Good stuff.


Walked with a group to the math department a little after 8 am. Checked in and went to the first talk. I was able to follow most of it and formed a group of (super powered people) to solve some of the problems afterwards. We worked for close to 1.5 hrs or 2 and then went to eat at a place called "Tasty Kitchen". Had an egg salad sandwhich with nice bread for 28 kroner (a little more than 5 dollars).

The bread here seems uniformly awesome

Went to the second talk which was awful because he assumed about 10 chapters of varied math books worth of background. I am going to try to read up a little tonight to try to catch up, but I don't know how much I'll be able to catch up. :-/

However, I ran into probably my favorite mathematician outside of my advisor, who this conference was in honor of. I like this guy because he let me take up my time and seemed to find my questions worth answering. I saw him today. He asked what I was working on and I told him and it is so nice talking to him because he's the only person I can talk ``Randy-speak'' (Randy is my advisor) at who understands all of it. So, now I need to go back and ask him why what some of I said was clear and press him for some more details that he offered to tell me more of.

Man, I'm totally going to go visit Boston and camp outside his office for a week sometime this year.

Anywho, that totally made my afternoon.


We asked a local where Danes buy stuff, because I fail to believe anyone can live solely out of kiosks. My evidence? They don't sell paper and pens. Or trash bags. Or cookware. So, after some wrangling, I was able to convey that what I wanted was a supermarket ('grocery store' wasn't cutting it). We were directed to one, where for just shy of 5 USD I was able to get TEN razors and a travel-sized shampoo! YAY! (I KNEW there had to be SOMEplace normal people shopped. I of course failed to convey that this is what I wanted by asking a Dane "So, where do real people go to buy real things?" which I thought was perfectly intelligible.

The UIUC people (me, Dan and Nat) pooled our resources and had tasty bread, hummus, and fish for dinner for about 5 USD. Good stuff.


AND! post-supermarket I thought I'd lost my passport and my head started spinning and I started almost hyperventilating. I tore through my bag and found my money bag, put it on, and later hypothesized that I'd become so cheery from the adrenaline.

Posted some pics to flickr, including sculpture of a man peeing. Crazy ness.

Also, I want a bike. I cannot explain how stuffed to the gills this city is with bikes. Everywhere! Giant bike lanes! Bike lights! Bikes bikes bikes! Bikes laid against buildings, unlocked.

Last night

After assuring myself that Copenhagen is safe to walk in at any time of day, I decided to try out dancing some tango in town. It cost 60 Kroner, which is about 12 USD (conversion rate is close to 5 to 1). It was a nice dance. VERY different than Urbana. It started with few men, and soon a woman asked another to dance, so I did as well. The first follow was just wonderful. It was like hugging a good friend. Lots of fun dancers, who uniformly danced open embrace (i.e. more 'modern'). Several men followed each other and when I asked them to dance, they asked me to lead them.

The danish I learned:
Vil du danse? (Want to dance?)
Mage tak (thanks)
Untschuld (excuse me)

There's more dancing at the same place Monday night; I may go.

Danced until 2 am and slept 10 hrs.

Today
Ran into a mathematician I know (and another I didn't) who was hungry, so decided to go explore and eat. Traipsed around Copenhagen with them for a while. Saw the Rådhus (town hall) and the outside of Tivoli. Went to the National Museum and saw prehistoric denmark stuff. Very neat. They made a remark about how "we're mathematicians, we won't be long in the museum" and I thought that was weird. I like museums. I like doing stuff. I think I'm an atypical mathematician.

We ate on the Strøget, the pedestrian road. 35 Kroner (7 USD) for a sandwich, and that was cheap food. Most places more like 10-25 USD.

I also found the places to buy food! I bought apples, oranges, peaches, a neat dried chickpea + raisin mix for a little under 10 USD. Good stuff. The places to buy food (Bazaars or markeds) are, quite logically, ear the central train station. I'm kind of surprised I didn't think of this earlier.

The places to rent bicycles was closed as was the tourist info center.
I found some neat restaurants to try out, in including a Turkish place.

As I wrapped up my traipsing (feeling sunburnt and nearly out of water),  I was walking around Copenhagen's center and this was being sung at a bar as I strode past

"..and theres reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I cant remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass.."

("Long December", Counting Crows)

I thought it was appropriate.


Some extra commentary:
It is very useful to carry a small map around. I helped out three foreigners find where they were going because I was approached for directions and offered to help with my map.

Also, attitudes about inability to speak Danish differ from person to person. Some people seem completely unphased and some seem rather disdainful. Most people speak great English. I've run into a few that speak none -- mostly foreigners (to Denmark) who speak Danish + their native tongue, e.g. the guy I danced with who spoke Spanish, Danish and about 5 words of English. That was kinda fun to try to talk with him actually.

I've been debating trying to pick up Spanish this year, and I think I should. Esp if I want to try to go to Argentina.

Day 1, first trip to Europe (Copenhagen first)

Day 1: Champaign --> Chicago ---> London
Reading : A Tramp Abroad by Twain, which is about his travels in Europe, specifically Germany.

10:30/10:45 Amtrak (half hour late) to Chicago

En route, I discover I am sans Eurail pass and call my housemate to see if she can find it. She does, and we arrange for her to ship it to me at my first hotel.

1:30 arrive in Chicago

Having done this whole Amtrak - to - O'Hare business before, I don't really double check that I know how to get to O'hare, instead traipsing lost around the city until I call my friend John and get directions to the nearest blue line stop. To be fair, I was only about 3-4 blocks away.

3pm Arrive at the airport.
I get bumped up to the direct flight to London that leaves the same time as my two-leg flight to london. Woot.

6 hour layover? Not so awesome..

However! Our departure is delayed about 2 hours, so the layover in London is only about 4 hours.

Also, that flight was cake. I napped some. Maybe 4 hours total? They fed us two meals and supplied lots of beverages. I was very impressed. Also, there were games and movies and stuff.

AND! Best 10 dollar purchase so far is clearly the inflatable neck pillow.


Day 2: London to Copenhagen


I can already tell I'm in Europe (well, duh, but really...). People are trendier and prettier and speaking different languages. The way Heathrow is set up is interesting. We pulled into a terminal and had to walk down and up a series of corridors and escalators...at least 8 of them. Maybe 10. And then take a bus. And another corridor and two checkpoints, one where they checked our passports and another being security.
Someone joking asked "Where's the cheese?"

Have to say, London's got some pretty ground crew people. And quite pleasant at 8 in the morning. They called us ladies and gents, told me to "come on, love" when going through the walk-though scanner and called rollerbags "wheely bags". The announcements were in four languages I think (at least three) and the kiosks took US dollars (at an exhorbitant transfer rate) so I was able to buy some food and get 2 pounds 53 pence change for my 10$USD.

Ah, here's the neat thing --- they don't announce what gate you're at until they're nearly ready to board you. This is a good idea -- it forces people to use the (very nice) lounge area, which they're probably happy about because it contains a lot of shops, and it allows for last minute gate changes that don't affect their customers.

Oh, and people clearly don't like Americans. The UK woman in front of me (maroon passport cover) handed her stuff to the flight woman, who smiled at her, and I handed her my stuff and she got grumpy.




Copenhagen
Flying into Copenhagen, I was greeted by a line of white windmills in the water, nearby what looked like a bridge that went nowhere. I think I'll ask around about that.

Danish is very foreign. A swedish woman told me a while ago that it's very much like swedish, except the people speak like they have a potato in their mouth. I would say the announcements on the plane had a woman who spoke like her tongue was stuck to a metal pole (ala Christmas story). It looks kind of Germanic. (Wikipedia confirms my guess).

I took the Metro to the stop very near my hotel. I have only noticed one person who clearly goes tanning here, and she is pretty outside of the fact that her skin is clearly damaged. Also, even trendy people are wearing socks with their sandals. And, I think I saw some of the Danish version of hipsters.

So far, the Danes are pretty, and a lot of them are quite blonde. Probably the proximity to Sweden.

On the train I didn't speak with anyone til a woman got on one stop before I got off and said something to me in Danish, and I said "Sorry", so she repeated in (very excellent) English "I'll only use up a little room" and she asked if I'd waited for a while on the train, since there had been announcements about a dog and something (I'd noticed a very large dog at one of the stops and suggested maybe it got loose). She asked if I was a tourist and I said I'm here for a conference, and that it was my first time to Europe, which surprised her and she asked where I'm from. I said the U.S. and she said "Our country is very small compared to yours" and she said she's from Jutland (another part of Denmark. Copenhagen is in Zealand, I think).

Found the hotel because of a giant sign facing the water (lake? river?) I walked across. The sidewalks are very wide, bordered by very wide bike lanes. Not much traffic. I am waffling between exploring or napping. I think I'll do a bit of both. It is current about 6pm here. We're 7 hours ahead of Chicago (Central time), i.e. 1 hr ahead of Greenwich mean time.

========
UPDATE:  I just bought a toothbrush, in Copenhagen. It cost $5USD. :P I was going to buy a razor, but I'd have to buy a 5-pack which would run me a little over $20USD.

So, for the record --- Yes, Virginia, Europe is expensive.

Also, I really really really wish I had a bike. This city is meant for bikes.