Catching You Up

After almost a month I am no longer without a camera which is very exciting. Unfortunately, however, I currently have no way of getting my pictures onto my laptop so I will try and make this as riveting a read as possible.

Coming back from Lisbon was a very strange sensation and all five of us felt it. Whilst we weren't going home, we were going back to a home and not another travel destination. We were all very excited to get back to our lives here in Copenhagen but saying "going home" didn't sound right and in the end we gave up trying to work out how to define it. We arrived home on the Thursday before semester began, though I still had another almost week of holidays.

On the Tuesday it was my roommate, Evelyn, and another girl called Alice's birthday and Alice had a bunch of us over for a celebration on the roof of her apartment building. Situated in the near centre of town the view was breathtaking, reminding me of rooftop scenes in action movies where the backdrop is so perfect it's clearly blue screened. Every single one of us had the same reaction and by the end of the night it still didn't appear real. Since I do not trust my unlabelled oven enough for baking I ended up making an Australian favourite: Fairy Bread. It was well received to say the least.

Now obviously my trip can't be all parties, travelling and socialising as I do have a degree to complete so I guess it's about time I talked a little about university. I'm taking 3 classes here: French Literature, Nordic Mythology and Danish. So far I've only had two French Literature class, one Nordic Mythology and I start beginners 2 Danish today.

The Nordic Mythology course is pretty self explanitory and so far it doesn't disappoint. It's an international student only course so I already know a few others in my class.

My French Literature course is obviously on French literature but more specifically we're studying the history and depiction of French cuisine and food culture through/within French literature. There is one other exchange student, a girl from Luxembourg, and also a French guy in my class but I am the only student that can't speak Danish. Every time the teacher switches to explaining in Danish I get a few looks from the other students but I don't mind. I am in their country after all and the Luxembourgish girl translates if it's anything important. What (for want of a better word) weirds me out the most is that other than the novels we have to read, all our other readings are in French and English with almost a 50/50 split. English is most of the students second language, third or fourth for a couple of others and the teacher himself had to read the books these excerpts came from to research for this course. Suffice to say I feel inadequate with my two languages knowing full well that my French is not adequate to be used to research for something like my history courses back home.

Last but not least the Danish course is simply a continuation of the course I did in August in which I did surprisingly well.

As for the students: mostly I've only met other exchange students, for obvious reasons, though I have met a few Danes at various events in my building and through other students. There are quite a few American, German and British students as well as an array of people from other places. As for Australians, as per usual we are in abundance. However nearly all of them are studying law with only three others that I know of that aren't. I have met only one other Uni of Adelaide student so far (yes, studying law) though we're adamant that we can't be the only Adelaide-ians. And, as per Adelaide rules we have mutual friends.

I guess that is as much information as I have to offer at the moment. Summer is most definitely over her in Copenhagen and whilst I wouldn't call it cold just yet, it's most definitely getting close to what would be classified as winter back home. I'm, as you all can probably tell, having a fantastic time. I'm even enjoying my uni homework (for now), and I can already feel the reverse home sickness looming over February, waiting for when I return.

Next post should hopefully have some more pictures from my fabulous new second hand camera but I hope it wasn't all bad without them. xx

Long Overdue Lisbon part 2

After our trip out of Lisbon day 3 was spent once again in the city centre. In the morning we decided to do the second walking tour which focused on the older district of Lisbon, Alfama. This time we had a different guide and a much larger group. The tour was again very informative and took us to many different viewing spots over the city. We were also shown some great pieces of (legal) street art and were given some more history lessons on Lisbon and portuguese culture.

In the afternoon we went to a richer suburb of Lisbon, Belém, famous for a custard tart type pastry, with two german girls we had met in the hostel. Realising that we had all missed lunch we were starving and each ate our fair share of pastiés. Afterwards we visited the church attached to the monastery, the modern art museum and the Tower of Belém.

For our last full day in Portugal we took another day trip; this time to the beach. The town, called Cascais, was stunning and the weather was perfect (despite the water being a bit to cold for my liking). A few of us stopped for lunch at a restaurant and there we got advice from the family who ran it on which beach to go to. It turned out they gave us directions to a secluded bit of beach with very few people and even some shade for myself to hide in. Later on another girl and I split off from the rest and took a walk through the village itself taking time to window shop and eat more icecream than we probably needed to. That night we went to a local Fado (for want of a better word) club run by a family. The sangria there was the best we had all ever had and the music was traditional as any with patrons singing along to many of the songs.

On our final day we took a walk in the morning and had what our first tour guide told us is the best gelati in Lisbon. It was pretty darn good gelati and the people working there were super friendly. It was the perfect end to the trip, after that we went back to get our luggage from the hostel and then went straight to the airport.

Next post will be in a few days and whilst I have no photos to accompany it I will try my best to make it a good read x.

Long Overdue Lisbon

Sorry for the absence but the past two weeks went so quickly and recently I've been swapped with uni readings. So before I catch you up on life and university here in Copenhagen I thought I'd share my photos from Lisbon.

After finishing the Danish language course we all had a week break before semester began so myself and four others took the chance to visit Portugal for one last week of summer before the weather got miserable back here. Our flight in was a late one so we didn't actually arrive in Lisbon centre until around midnight. After getting lost/confused by the directions to our hostel we met a Portuguese couple who were nice enough to pull up google maps on their phone for us. That night we had pizza that you pay for by the kg which confused us all thoroughly and briefly checked out the nightlife in Barrio Alto, where our hostel was situated.

On the first day Gilda, a girl from Tasmania, and I took a wander down to the shoreline and back  admiring the colourful buildings along the way. Afterwards we all headed out to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian which contains both ancient and modern(ish) art.

In the afternoon we went on a walking tour in and around the centre of lisbon. I can't remember the guides name but he was excellent and in a small group of only 7 it felt much less "touristy" than in a group of 20. On the tour we saw many interesting sights, most notable was the church of São Domingos. In 1506 a massacre of Jewish citizens was instigated there and took place in the square in front. The death toll reached almost 2000 and the instigators were duly punished. Then in 1945 a huge fire took place destroying most of the interior and, other than the roof, the city of Lisbon decided to leave it as is. The square it sits in is now called the Square of Tolerance and many speculate that the fire was punishment from god for the atrocities committed, even if it was a few centuries late.

Towards the end of the tour my camera had the audacity to break so from here on in the quality of my photos diminishes dramatically as I begin to try and use my phone instead.

Day 2 we left Lisbon to visit a nearby village with a few different palaces and beautiful gardens, Sintra. The first to be visited was the Moorish castle built from the 9th Century onwards. The next, Pena Palace, was most definitely the highlight. Originally built as a monastery and left to decay until bought by King Ferdinand II who set about rebuilding and extending the existing buildings and turning the place into a palace. The last monument we visited was the Sintra National Palace which, after Pena, paled into almost insignificance. However the palace itself has been well preserved and now stands, mostly, as a museum. Before leaving we stopped for crêpes, perused the shops, mainly for ceramics, and visited a local art gallery. That night we ate an amazing meal of curried chicken and portuguese grilled chicken at a local restaurant.

As this post has become exceptionally long, I'll save the rest of the photos for another post tomorrow x.