Every few years...

I deeply loved Copenhagen for the first time today. I finally got the chance to just wander around by myself, toting a too-heavy backpack as usual, and it was wonderful!

Highlights, plus random pictures unassociated with the seemingly accompanying text that precedes them:

1. Walking along the Strøde, the main shopping street (like Oxford Street in London but more spacious and less posh) that runs from the big open Town Hall square to Norreport, the train/metro station that faithfully conveys me in and out of city center every day. It was a beautiful, sunny day in Copenhagen--a rare event, let me tell you--and everyone was out eating ice cream and playing music and generally reveling.



My homestay location. Note the clouds. And that's a pretty clear day. (Today did not look like this.)

2. My first Copenhagen bookstore! Well, not really; last week, I went to a rare bookstore that I had fatefully confused with a used bookstore. The English-language titles were stored at the back, the most random collection you could imagine (think: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants next to Jorge Louis Borges next to Steven King next to the Roald Dahl Treasury next to Lolita), BUT prices proved too prohibitive to truly enjoy. So today was a commercial bookstore, with a Baresso on the bottom. Baresso is the big cafe here, owned by Starbucks and therefore reducing my shock that the company as such does not exist in Copenhagen. And I got to look at all the English and American books with the European covers, though I can neither understand why they need to be different nor discern a real pattern aside from maybe focusing more on human faces or photography rather than on stylized text without images.

I also saw a review for Barbara Kingsolver's new book, The Lacuna, which said: "Every few years, you read a book that makes everything else in life seem unimportant." Could there be any higher praise for any work of fiction? If I could ever write something that made someone feel like that, my life would be complete. But I am not in a position to allow the rest of life to feel unimportant just yet, so I left the book sitting on the shelf for now. I'll buy it for the plane. This choice also recognizes the fact that there is not a single pocket of extra room in my suitcase. (See: previous post on new jacket.)



The circus in which my youngest host daughter performed.

3. Just as I was thinking, All right, all I need right now is a cold drink...some red-shirted guy at the top of the stairs to the train station handed me a Coke Zero for free! Part of some Coke-World Cup initiative, and one that I wholly support.

4. I love the way the Norreport station platform tells you the number of minutes until your train arrives. It has sixty little slips of paper on a ring that flip automatically. So every minute, it's like the sign remembers to blink and the paper falls. When the train comes and the order shifts, the board goes through all the numbers down from sixty, fluttering its eyelashes seductively. Also, there's a separate sheet for 1/2 a minute. ALSO, why do we have 2 minutes plural, 1 minute singular, but 0 minutes plural? Oh, mysteries...



Tivoli- the famous Old Europe, Hans Christian Andersen-era amusement park on which, says Ellie, Walt Disney based Disneyland. I have not gone there yet, but plan to on Friday.

5. Ads and analyses (in Danish) for the World Cup are currently on TV in the train. Europe is obsessed. The U.S. won its game yesterday, I'm told, but I was too busy watching UK v. Slovenia on the artificial sand that Denmark constructed by the water to pretend it has a beach.



GAM3, an NGO (rare in Denmark) that teaches basketball to kids who are low-income (also rare in Denmark, not to mention relative.)

6. My group is finally (maybe) starting to make some headway with our "Action Research," the journalistic article that Fellows are supposed to produce at the end of the program before the final conference in Amsterdam. Yesterday was our last day of regular programming, where we listen to lectures and follow with a Q&A/debate session. A good thing that it's over, too, because it was getting hard to concentrate as the themes started to repeat themselves.

So now two of the girls and I have been assigned to write an article on human rights education in Denmark. Our initial and present problem is that, as you may have guessed, Denmark is a welfare state. Denmark does the whole welfare state thing quite well. So frankly, there are few glaring problems with the way that Denmark educates about human rights. However, we discovered to our delight this morning that Holocaust education is not mandatory in Danish schools. It is typically included in the curriculum anyway--except (we think) in areas with high percentages of Middle Eastern immigrants, where other examples of discrimination and genocide are used to provide the mandatory human rights education.

Fascinatingly complex issue when current-day politics get in the way of historical education, because the solution is certainly not as easy as forcing the topic down people's throats--that would only lead to more bitterness. Not to mention the fact that the problem exists in reverse as well (i.e. Jewish groups not wanting to hear about Palestinian suffering.) At the same time, caving to political pressure not to hear it is basically altering and obliterating history to suit one's own purposes. It's not too far removed from denial or from the "two schools under one roof" phenomenon that actually exists in current-day Bosnia-Herzegovina, I have learned, where Croats and Bosniaks are separated and taught different facts that align with their views of history and politics.

Hopefully this is actually a problem in Denmark; we only have one source's word to back it up so far. (NB: I've never tried journalism before, but already I am seeing that it makes you perversely celebrate the existence of societal problems.)



My new jacket. This one's for you, Davey.

7. On my first day here, my host mom showed me a path to the train station that involves one left turn and one right turn, a few meters of isolated woods, and then a tin-colored small strip mall with two groceries and a few kebab/pizza places. (Bizarrely, this culinary combination is all the rage in Denmark.) I have not deviated from this route for the past three weeks. But I was feeling so good when I got off the train with my Coke Zero just now (dismount occurred between points 5 and 6) that I decided to diverge from this trail and walk down a set of stairs near the station that I've been eyeing for some time. And I discovered a little pond with a fountain and benches, where I am sitting now.



Yes, we're Americans. In Sweden, but there's no mistaking us.

Highlight of my life

My friend and I were singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in the breakfast room of the train hostel...and some guy came over and gave us 10 Swedish crowns! I am officially a paid singer.

Wide open spaces...?

Evidence that you are in Europe for the summer:

1. You sleep in a sleeper-car train / converted hostel in Lund, Sweden for the weekend, where three people sleep in a room smaller than the closet-sized single you lived in alone all year.

2. You love it.

3. You buy a waist-length, faux-leather jacket that zips diagonally to the side of your neck. This is not viewed as any kind of fashion statement.

4. The major difference that has been pointed out to you between Denmark and Sweden is that, in Denmark, a prison break will get you one extra month in prison. In Sweden, you get no punishment at all.

The most distressing news of my summer is: Apparently, Denmark has revealed to me, I am a conservative. I believe in punishing criminals. I believe in a weaker central government than one that controls the rules of free speech (read: hate speech laws.) I think I lack trust in people at all levels--the government to rule without exploitation, and the people to carry out their rights fairly. Denmark's entire political spectrum is shifted to the left of America's, such that even conservatives in Denmark are as liberal as our liberals--they believe in a strong central government, abortion, gay marriage, the works.

We visited a Danish prison, where the Danes in the group focused on the horrors of solitary confinement and the Americans focused on the fact that prisoners are allowed to have kitchen knives. Yet another example of the radically different cultural expectations of how to treat people with dignity, and how much dignity all people deserve.

We also visited a refugee camp, which was such a sad experience for me. These are people in total uncertainty, unwanted in their home or their new country, just waiting to be shuttled to the place that dislikes them least. The Red Cross workers who worked at the camp seemed genuinely warm-hearted and giving, at the very least.

My thoughts on major issues, in a nutshell:

1. Freedom of speech should always be completely unrestricted, save for direct incitements to violence. Enacting laws against hate speech is both a violation of this right and a dangerous precedent that allows the majority to silence minorities in the name of protecting them.

2. The only way a government can fairly function is complete and total separation of church (that is all religions, denominations, concepts of G-D, religious codes) and state.

3. Just because someone freely chooses an action or lifestyle doesn't mean we have to condone their actions on a moral or legal level.

4. And most revelatory, to me, is my developing conviction that you cannot legislate morality. The push for fair, equal, and moral laws must come from the bottom-up rather than the top-down, such that laws reflect the will of the people they govern. This is the only way the laws will ever be perceived as fair and therefore followed. Certainly, legal cases have altered the course of history (Brown v. Board of Ed; Roe v. Wade; and on and on), but I believe those reflected a court that took up the shifting tides of public opinion rather than one that determined to change public opinion on its own. By this logic, grassroots organizations rather than politics are the true means to social change.

None of these are particularly strong convictions, because I'm struggling with how you can you be sure of anything when you can understand both sides of the issue. Ah, well...

Also of note: I have discovered my NEW FAVORITE FOOD EVER. Yoggi mini-meals, these pre-packaged vanilla yogurt + muesli (like granola) breakfast snacks they sell in the shops (Kort and Godt) near the train stations. The terms "yogurt" and "granola" do not do justice to the creamy, crunchy deliciousness that is my palettal sensation every morning. Also, the word "muesli" just sounds adorable. Say it a few times. It's a kitten of a word.

All right, I'll stop hunching in the middle of the three short bunk beds in my train car and go to sleep now. Ya elske Sweden. ("I like Sweden" in Danish.)

High-octane adjectives (and no pictures)

Finished with the first week of the very busy program, and I clearly haven't had much time to update! So far, it's been challenging, interesting, educational, thought-provoking, fun, and a whole host of other good adjectives! Though I still get lost in Copenhagen every three seconds, and cannot understand the irreconcilable gap between the way Danish words look and the way they are pronounced.

We started off with a weekend in a summer cottage / Boy Scout campground somewhere in Denmark. (Place names continue to elude me.) The purpose of this weekend was to get to know each other a bit, although we have since done so much more successfully purely by listening to the types of questions and comments everyone makes during our academic sessions.

The group itself consists of: 10 Americans; 10 Danes, all of whom are incredibly knowledgeable and well-spoken; 2 Swedes; and 3 Bosnians. Everyone has a fascinating story and perspective, and on top of it they are incredibly fun and giving people to be around. (And I'm not just saying this because a few of them know about this blog :).) Which is a good thing, because we are together all day every day, and then often again at night just to hang out.

Basically, the way the program works is that every day we have 3-4 lecture/conference-style sessions in various locations around the city, where notable guest speakers on human rights, Danish and European history, Holocaust education, Danish government, etc., give a presentation that culminates in group discussion.

[[TUNE OUT HERE IF A LOT OF QUASI-ACADEMIC STUFF WILL BORE YOU]]

My favorite sessions thus far have been:
1. A talk on the Danish political system by journalist Clement Kjærsgaard, who was totally brilliant and on the ball. Most interesting points: a) We've been focusing on the Middle East as the biggest threat to Western security throughout the first decade of the 21st century, but the reality is that China is fast becoming a world superpower that no one is really dealing with--largely, he claims, because Islam at least shares a Judeo-Christian tradition, whereas Chinese culture is entirely alien to the Western mind. b) The greatest difference between Europe and the U.S. in terms of approaching the Middle East is that in the U.S., the "war on terror" was never about Islam--it was always about national security and terrorism. In Europe, however, it's an issue of feared cultural change that accompanies the influx of Muslim immigrants into society. Many of our talks are about racism against Muslims (like the Mohammed cartoon issue), which seems to be the big racial problem in contemporary Europe.

2. Speaking in Parliament with representatives Kamal Qureshi (Danish Socialist People's Party) and Søren Krarup (Danish People's Party). These two are basically opposite sides of the Danish political spectrum, though there are so many parties on so many different sides that it's difficult to tell. Qureshi is the only political spokesman on human rights in the Parliament, a Muslim and a LGBT rights advocate; Krarup is apparently a household name, generally loathed, who actually makes and supports the statement that "human rights do not exist." He's not loathed enough not to be elected into Parliament, though. The building and the people were interesting, but I was fairly dissatisfied with the politician's rhetoric in both talks and with Qureshi's unnecessarily sentimentalized opinion on Israel-Palestine.

3. A discussion of "old racism" (based on physical characteristics like skin color) versus "new racism" (based on cultural essentialism), and the implications of the adoption of "new racism" into politically correct language and though processes. A somewhat helpful distinction I think, but also probably a false dichotomy. Culture and physical characteristics of race have always been at least partly wrapped up in each other, and I would say that remains true today.

4. Video on Danish Jews sent to the Theresianstadt work camp during World War II. Apparently, the Danish government's cooperation with the Germans led to only 500 Danish Jews ever being sent to work camps (the rest made it to neutral Sweden), and even there they were given special food packages and rations. Then, we discussed what I consider the most interesting topic: comparing attitudes of "otherness" and racial/religious "problem" groups between Jews in the 1940s and Muslims today. This is not at all to say that the actual conditions for Muslims are equivalent to those of Jews during the war, but I think there is something to the idea that the two groups have both been perceived as "others," but problems in the Middle East have often prevented them from recognizing that fundamental similarity that might otherwise allow them to band together. (Also important to note, as some of my very smart fellow students did, that there is a significant cultural difference between Muslims who live in the Middle East and those from European nations, and the failure to recognize that has led to a lot of unnecessary discrimination.)

[[TUNE BACK IN HERE IF YOU GOT BORED]]

So these thought sessions constitute the first phase of the program. Then, starting in two weeks, we will start the "doing" rather than the "learning," where we will write and research an article on some issue we've discussed, hopefully for publication in some sort of English-language Danish paper. Humanity in Action also has a huge network of Senior Fellows (what I will be after I finish the program), as well as some amazing internship/fellowship opportunities following the program. These include work in D.C. government, European parliaments, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and more. I hadn't realized what a far-reaching group I was joining!

My home stay family is open and generous, but I feel kind of bad that I am out so often, then spend most of my time at home pursuing the enthralling acts of napping, sleeping, or eating. Thankfully, they don't seem to mind much. I'm living with parents who are both involved in social work (the mother in an unemployment agency, the father with kindergarten kids), and three daughters aged 12, 16, and 18. The Danes only start learning English in school around age 10--impressive, considering that most people I've met in Copenhagen speak almost fluently.

Some observations:

1. It rains constantly in Copenhagen. Constantly. At least as bad as London. Did I bring rainboots? Noooo...

2. The language is absurd. It sounds kind of marbly/mumbly, and I have yet to understand how train stops with names as seemingly diverse as "Ny Ellebjerg," "Amarken," and "Friheden" can possibly sound exactly alike to an American ear when the recorded voice calls them out.

3. Danes serve their ice cream with unsweetened cream and jam. It is adorable.

4. I cannot do this whole "light social beer drinking" thing that Danes (and Europeans at large, I think) engage in. I just don't like alcohol enough to enjoy it for its own sake.

5. I need to charge my camera, if only to make these posts look more interesting.

6. I should learn about soccer. It is like a world language. Here is what I know: England and the U.S. tied yesterday. The World Cup is in South Africa. And...that's about it.

7. Speaking of world languages: the Disney Channel is another vital one for me. It is the sole reason that I first befriended the sweet and wonderful kids of the host family I stayed with in Guatemala, and is proving useful again here. Who would have guessed how important it would be to know Hannah Montana?

Opening events

I have now met my group and begun the program in earnest, and I believe that my erstwhile days (day) of McDonalds wifi are no more.

We took off to a summer cottage in the Danish countryside on Saturday morning. The cottage was actually a boy scout camping ground near a lake and was very adorable. First we did some getting-to-know-you activities, and I was struck now as I have been in the past by how much more worldly European 20-somethings are than Americans. They tend to take time off to travel after high school, so they have been around the world and often by themselves, developing not only cultural knowledge but a whole new degree of independence and courage that I don't think I could ever muster.



The group is extremely international: about half American and half Danish, with a few Swedes and Bosnians. Everyone has fascinating stories about their travel experiences or heritage. My most interesting and affecting conversation thus far, I think, was with Bosnians who remember the war and the genocide in 1994. I was stunned to hear them talk about the genocide in particular, because I consider myself interested in that subject based on my study of the Holocaust. But in my interactions with survivors who have lost family members, those survivors are always 75+ years old. To hear someone my own age discuss the same topic was something completely new and incredibly affecting.

It seems that the program is going to be about three meetings and discussion groups per day on various facets of human rights, focusing on Denmark but with the obvious potential for comparison to the U.S. and abroad. The U.S.-Denmark comparison is especially interesting, since Denmark is a welfare state--a fact that is discernible everywhere from the lack of gates into the metro to the ubiquitous friendliness that I am too bitter to possibly match. Two pieces of craziness/awesomeness: 1. Denmark provides free in vitro fertilization to infertile couples. 2. Denmark offers not only free university education, but a monthly living stipend on top of the waived tuition.

This all sounds pretty good, and in theory I am all for the welfare state. But my deep-rooted Americanness is as yet unshakeable, as demonstrated by the following exchange:
Me: So do you have honors classes and regular classes in high school?
Danes: No, those kinds of divisions don't exist.
And my internal reaction was: What do the smart kids DO!?
Softening that kind of response into a question of how the teachers can accommodate such different levels and speeds of learning within a single classroom, thereby boring the kids who are ahead and failing to adequately help those who are behind, I was told that Danish education is holistic and aims to teach about the world at large, which includes people of all different skill sets. Furthermore, everyone has something to contribute, even if it's not classroom intellect. But my immediate response was to separate or "reward" certain people more than others, which is not at all a social-welfare-state thing to think. We'll see how this develops.

It's late and I need to shower. (I am at my host family's house now; it is cute and they seem nice, but I only met them for a few hours tonight so far.) We'll be going to Parliament tomorrow.

Some observations:

1. The sun is out constantly in Denmark--it's not fully dark until around 11:30 at night! This extra daylight makes me feel oddly wholesome. (Debauchery can't happen in a city when it's light out, can it?)

2. Come to think of it...I have not seen a single Starbucks in Copenhagen. A quick Google search tells me there are none outside the airport. I don't know if I can remember ever being in a major city without a Starbucks before.

3. This symbol that looks like the JE lion is everywhere. I must find out what it is, but in the meantime it makes me Yale-sick.



4. My host family has a cat!! She is sitting on a chair in my room right now. I am thrilled.

I'm Back! (Two years later)

Welcome to my blog about my summer 2010 adventures abroad!! This is where I'll document my time in Copenhagen for four and a half weeks (June 3-July 4) as a Humanity in Action fellow, and you can probably expect a China blog after that (Crimson Summer Exchange fellowship, July 10-Aug 17).

When I studied abroad in London during the spring semester of my sophomore year, I liked keeping an occasional blog on the things that struck me about British culture. Granted, this largely ended up as, "Thank G-D they tell me which way to look when I cross the streets" and "Look! I cooked something!", so you can expect no better here.

But as I sit in a McDonalds that didn't open until 10 AM and made me PAY for ketchup (I'm not over it either), waiting for my hostel to find me a room, I figured that now is as good a time as any to start anew.

SO. I am here on a fellowship with Humanity in Action, which seeks to understand the ways in which World War II and the Holocaust have primed and continue to influence modern-day minority policy in Europe. The fellowship seemed built for me, aligning exactly with my academic and personal interest in the Holocaust and my attempts to understand exactly why Holocaust study remains important today. I hope the fellowship will also address my major problem with reactions to the Holocaust, in that I think many (by no means all, and perhaps mostly of an older generation) Jews have taken it as a sign that they must protect the Jewish people--which I agree with entirely. But the reaction becomes problematic when that protection is limited to the Jewish people, without extending to groups about whom prejudicial views continue to exist (I am particularly thinking of Muslims.) It seems to me that the lesson of the Holocaust should be exactly the opposite: that we must all look out not only for our own ethnicity/religion/race, but for our neighbors'. I hope the fellowship will address this disparity. More on that here.

Okay, enough of that. I arrived in Copenhagen a few hours ago with too much luggage (naturally), and had to drag my ass plus my overstuffed backpack plus a purse plus one HUGE suitcase plus one slightly smaller but equally overstuffed suitcase onto the Copenhagen metro and bus systems, both of which operate in Danish, which features long words and strings of consonants not punctuated by vowels. But most people also spoke English, and I found the Danhostel in time to hear that my room won't be ready until 2 pm (It's noon here now, 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.)

So I ventured around a bit. I have never seen so many people on bicycles in my life. There are huge bike lanes on every street I have seen thus far, completely blocked off from traffic, and people take great advantage of them. They also tote their adorable Danish babies in the backseat. The safety factor here is probably the only way to get people using bikes in the enormous numbers they do here, which environmental groups in the U.S. already know.


Unfortunately, I am jetlagged and wearing Old Navy flipflops, so my walking tour today was truncated. I am sitting in a McDonalds, where, as previously mentioned, I had to PAY for ketchup and still didn't get enough. I am so affronted by this that I would have left, but this is the only place around with free wifi, so I am typing while staring down the offending ketchup packet. I also ventured online, where I looked up the exchange rate for the Denmark krone, which I had stupidly failed to investigate in my ignorant belief that Denmark used the Euro. Though I have now found that the krone is fixed to the euro, and that it is 6 krones to a dollar. This makes my ketchup significantly cheaper than I imagined. I feel better now.

Other things Wikipedia tells me: Denmark has the highest level of income equality and the best business climate in the world, and is ranked "the happiest place on earth." ABC News has a kind of awesome article on it, which says that 50%-70% taxes for tons of government programs (including subsidized social clubs akin to Yale funding for a Simpsons club) actually allow people to choose careers without regard to social status. Idyllic. I'll try and assess the happiness level of the Danes I meet.

I think that's the extent of the wikipedic knowledge I can get in this fine eating establishment. Apologies to Jen for copying much of the email I sent her this morning directly into this post.