Togbus to Viking Country

I meant to write this yesterday since I got cut off earlier, but nevertheless here I am . Returning in all my glory.

I guess I’ll start off with a little mini-adventure. Well once upon time my relatively peaceful yesterday turned into all out chaos within a matter of 15 minutes.

What happened?

Well after my riveting Nordic Mythology class where we recounted how ancient Viking priestesses worshipped and used horse ding dongs (you know what I mean) to prophesize... need I say more? Didn’t think so…continuing on…

I left class to walk back to Norreport station to catch my train back home. It’s an easy 10 minute walk from DIS to the station but I was grateful to arrive out of the wind once I had reached the train. Thirsty, I reached back to grab my much beloved CamelBak water bottle to find that it wasn’t there. This may not seem like a big deal, but water bottles are a rare commodity around Copenhagen for some odd reason. So losing mine was not an option. If I did, I would be reduced to having to use some plastic, BPA contaminated water bottle over and over again. Oh the horror!  So I booked it back through the wind to DIS in hopes that my precious water bottle was not lost.  After almost tripping over these hooligans..

Real characters.

I burst through the door to see my water bottle safely under my seat. Yay!! I was so happy that I didn’t lose it and now I could…..

BAM.

Let me back track and say that DIS is basically fortress. The doors resemble and are as heavy as bank vault doors.  You have to press a button to unlock each door and then heave your way through each one. Why it is like this…who knows. Unsolved mystery.

BAM. As I was staring at my water bottle, the door literally slammed on me squishing me in between the door frame and the door. It would have been comical if the door hadn’t been as heavy as Al Roker (pre-gastric bypass, of course.) 

Grateful that nobody was there to witness that embarrassing episode, I hastily ran and got my water bottle and re-opened the door and walked through……except not really.

As I was leaving that door, the door handle caught a strap of my backpack and literally body slammed me back into the door frame. WHAT IS THIS?!  I did sign up for a WWF tournament today.

Gathering myself once again, I went back to the station to literally come upon the whole entire population of Copenhagen waiting to get on the A train to Farum. Really…..this place was deserted 10 minutes ago. 

The transportation here is either really great or really bad. You have days where you have the whole train to yourself and then you have days like yesterday where even the old woman will probably drop kick  you so she can get on first.  Danes are very lovely people but when it comes to getting on a full train/bus do not tempt to get in their way. Well this is where my alter-ego La Randolph comes in. So instead of being a southern lady and letting people get on before me, I do what everyone else does and go absolutely SPARTA on them.

“Excuse me,…excuse me….pardon…please……MOVE IT SMALL FRY.”

This is the usually what comes out of my mouth when this occurs. Only the strong survive. Or as my brother would say… “pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Touching.

Always a good time with the togbus.

Well, that was small tale for today.

Now onto another Danish adventure…

This past weekend I got to do what everyone dreams of doing……going on a Viking expedition to unlock the ancient, mystical secrets of the Viking/Nordic lifestyle. Absolutely riveting.

I could not wait to wake up at the crack of dawn for this adventure (slight sarcasm) but I am glad I did! It was AWESOME.  Even though I had gone out the night before with my Danish friends….

The Danes know how to party!

I was still fresh as a daisy!

Early in the morning, I met with my Elon friends Pat and Evan and we got these great seats on the double decker bus. Second floor, first row….best way to go on a bus tour. Our first stop for my Nordic Mythology field trip was Roskilde. Despite being know for it’s Woodstock-like music festival, Roskilde is also the home to Denmark’s Viking ships. Who knew.

We got to see some excavated ships from the fjord and then we headed off to a Stone Age burial mound.

What amazes me is that these things are plentiful as bunnies. Like…o hey…we just have a 1000 year old burial mound in our backyard. No big deal.

My friend Pat was so excited that he skipped across the field towards it, slightly looking like an idiot but I let it slide.

Then all 20 of us crammed into a burial mound by entering the symbolic “birth canal.” Such a poetic time…the Stone Age.

Earth's birth canal....I kid you not.

After learning some knick knacks about the area, we headed off again to Beowulf’s Heorot hall. I remember reading this strange story my Senior year and certainly recalled that this hall was supposed to be the greatest thing since slice bread. Well, technically since sliced bread didn’t exist at the time this saying is actually irrevelant. Moving on…

Well, we got to a pasture.

Me: Where is it?

Teacher: Right here.

*Silence…except for cows munching beside me*

Me: Okay, well unless the Vikings were smurfs, I really don’t see this great hall.

My Viking-esque teacher (seriously this guy is a Viking, he is 7ft tall) points to a raised part of the ground and raises his hands and says, “Welcome to the Heorot Hall.”

Well, that is an anti-climax if I have ever experienced one.

Luckily, we got to go to re-created Viking hall somewhere else where our teachers gave us mead and we toasted to the Nordic gods. How epic!

Overall, a very interesting day. Onto Germany this weekend for another field trip!

Until then….FARVEL!