Aarhus

I woke up reasonably late this morning – around 10 a.m. which is not too bad at all. I probably would have slept longer had it not been for the shrieks of children right outside my window. Apparently there was some kind of festival going on this weekend organized and sponsored by the college – the kollegiet – to which I now belong.

I was about to try to go back to sleep hen I got a call from Alexander asking if I would be interested in going to the beach with him and the Chinese participant. I would have loved to, I told him, but I was more anxious to get some grocery shopping done. So, instead, I called up Ankeeta and Alyssa and went with them a little later to buy some foodstuffs.

So I decided to get up, shower, get dressed, and go outside to wait for them. When I got to the outside of my dorm, the craziness was worse than I expected. People were already drunk and it wasn't even noon. But far more entertaining, was the amazing feat of precarious climbing that I saw right outside my dorm door.

Some guys had started to pile up beer crates -- and some hapless American girl had started climbing on these.

The hitch was that a large, bearded, long-haired Dane -- he honestly looked like a Viking -- was throwing more beer crates up to her. She would catch these and then add them to the top of the beer crate pile -- towers, actually -- and then take another step up.

It looked very wobbly and just a bit dangerous even with the harness securing her. In the end, of course, she fell an both towers of crates crashed to the floor. The drunken masses cheered and laughed.

I then met Alyssa and Ankeeta shortly after this and we took a bus from right outside the kollegiet -- bus number 15 -- which took us to some unknown destination where we got off to exchange money first.

This place, they explained, charged no commissions which sounded great to me. The place was a hole in the wall run by two Middle Eastern men who spoke very little English. I exchanged some money – although they rejected one of my $20 bills since it had a slight red mark along one of the edges, probably some kind of dye used to see if it is counterfeit or not. They apologized and explained that if they, as Middle Easterners, tried to go to a Danish bank to exchange it, they would get refused. But that I would probably have a better luck at trying to exchange it for Danish krone.

After changing money, we went grocery shopping. I’ll tell you about that another time. Suffice it to say, today, that I went home with a lot of vegetables, some fish, and cheese. That should tide me over for a few days. We took the same bus 15 back to the kollegiet.



In the afternoon, I fell asleep despite the live rock concert right outside my window. It sounded like fun but I was too dead from the trip and the previous week to really care. When I finally “woke up” again, around 9 p.m., I called Alexander to see what he was doing. Apparently, the plan was to go out to the college bar tonight. Good. I was looking foreward this. A few drinks can go a long way when you are exhausted and jet-lagged.