My Life in Kongens Lyngby

Hello!

Its been too long. How the heck are ya? (please email me and let me know, I'd love to hear from you :))

I'm currently on a train to Stockholm, Sweden to spend a weekend there with two of my aunts! This is my first time on a train like this (fast, long distance), and its really cool! We're in first class so I get free internet and everything, and all the coffee I can drink!

Anyways...for this post I thought I'd share some of the differences in my day-to-day life compared to back home. Some things that I've noticed, some things that I do differently because of the culture here, stuff like that.

Food

Overall the food here isn't too different from back in the states. It's more expensive for the most part, but my diet hasn't had to change too much. One of the biggest differences is the bread. Here, when I go to the grocery store, rye bread is pretty much all that is sold. There is some white bread and some wheat bread, but it's not as widespread as it is back in the states. I also haven't been able to find anything resembling the bread I'm used to (multigrain wheat bread). I thought eating rye bread might be a problem here, because I've never really liked it before. But, its grown on me and its actually pretty good. I even eat it with peanut butter (which, as one of my Danish kitchen mates stated, is "hard core").

Another big difference is how often I need to go grocery shopping. I have about 10 cubic feet of storage area between the fridge, cupboard, and freezer. Or about a fifth of the area I'm used to having (Note: there was no actual math that went into that calculation). Consequently, this means I have to go grocery shopping multiple times a week. I go every other day, at least. I do most of my shopping at a store called "Netto".

Its a pretty sweet place. It has a fairly wide array of food choices and is also relatively cheap (compared to other stores in Denmark).

This picture brings me to another thing I wanted to point out, and one of the few things I hate about Denmark. Stores aren't open that late, especially during the weekend. Shopping on Sundays is a pain because if the stores are open, it's for a very short period of time (this Netto is only open for 7 hours on Sunday). But a lot of them aren't open. Another example is the library at school. Its only open till 8 on weekdays, 5 on Saturdays (which I don't really care about), and its closed on Sunday. It's very annoying.

One thing I do really like about the food in Denmark is the bakeries. They're everywhere, and have a wide variety of pastries and the like. This is one near my residence:

I've been there a few times, and have gotten delicious food each time. Its hard not to go every time I walk or bike by it!

I've also learned how to make a mean cup of instant coffee, although I'm still not a huge fan of it. It's not as good as filtered coffee. At least its cheap. I got this latte at a coffee shop in Copenhagen and it cost about $9.

Made with love

It was delicious, but definitely NOT worth $9. I think it's weird that they put their lattes in glasses, but that might just be me.

School

I know I've brought this up in my previous blogs, but school, and the culture associated with it, are very different from what I'm used to in the states. People don't study late here (a huge contrast compared to Madison). I'm used to libraries being full till at least 11 pm. Here the campus is like a ghost town well before then. There are probably a couple of reasons for this. One, there aren't as many students, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I believe its also a cultural thing. Danish people value their "home" life a lot more than we do in America. I'm not saying we don't in the States, but its more of a priority here.

Now, a little bit about the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (i.e. DTU).

Its a huge research university, kind of like Madison. I remember somebody saying that DTU did $3 billion in research last year, which means it spent 3x more than Madison (the second biggest research university in the States). I find this a little hard to believe, and I may have heard the fact wrong, but you never know. Interesting none the less.

It's also ranked as one of the best engineering schools in Europe (which is one of the reasons I chose to come here). They have a wide range of majors within the science and engineering fields, and it seems like all my professors are either involved with external groups dealing with issues in Denmark and Europe, or performing really interesting research in their field. 

The campus is kind of boring (sorry if this offends anyone whose reading this :p). I'm going to say 90% of the buildings look very similar to this:

 

The Danes also weren't real original when naming their buildings on campus, although it is very logical. The campus is set up in a grid system, having four zones. Buildings numbering 1__ are in zone 1, etc. It's kind of boring, but very easy to find where you want to go. 

This is building 101, which is the main building on campus. It holds the cafeteria, the fitness center, and the library, among other administrative sections.

Building 101, as close to a Union as DTU has

The fitness center. It's small compared to Madison's, but gets the job done.

Taking pictures in the fitness center was kinda weird...

As for the library, as badly as I've spoken about it overall, its awesome. One of my favorite places on campus. At least when its full of people.

Some of the labs have really, really nice computers. There are close to 100 computer stations like this in the library.  Unfortunately most of the computer labs (called databars here) have older, crappy, slow computers that run on Unix. They aren't very fun to use.

There are some really cool buildings on campus. Here are some examples:

A power plant in the middle of campus. Not a very good picture of it though. If I can I'm going to take a better one and put it in a future post

One of the more random and colorful buildings on campus

P.O. Pedersen Kollegiet

This is where I live.

It's pretty cool. Its a place where any student can live. For example, I have kitchen mates who study at a music school in Copenhagen and a small business school north of Copenhagen (I think, if either of you are reading this please correct me!). 

This is my room.

picture

It's much bigger than your average two person dorm room in the States (at least from my experiences), and I even have my own bathroom!

picture

This is the view from my room:

Sunrise in Lyngby

I share a kitchen with 11 other people (who I've been referring to as my kitchen mates). The kitchen is really nice, and has not only a kitchen component, but also a living room.

picture

There is also a bar in the basement, which is sweet. I've only been there once, and its kind of small, but still very cool. Next weekend there is an event going on called "Marathonbar", where it is open from noon on Thursday to noon on Sunday. It sounds like a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to it!

Oh yeah! Quick aside...next Friday the big spring concert at DTU is going on, as well as the Carnival for international students. The Vengaboys are playing at the concert! Haha I'm really, really excited to go see them, its going to be awesome.

I'm sure I'll talk about both of these events in future posts...

Transportation

I've talked about the bike situation in Denmark before (seemingly everyone does it, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more bikes than people in Copenhagen), but people also get around by cars and public transportation.

Here are some cars typical of Denmark:

picture

I don't recall seeing any SUVs or pick-up trucks so far, either in Copenhagen or Lyngby. This may be because I haven't noticed them, but I feel like I would have. If they are around, they are very, very uncommon. 

As mentioned public transportation is very popular here. At the moment, I take the bus to school everyday. Unfortunately, unlike Madison, we don't get free bus passes through the school, so I had to purchase an unlimited month pass to avoid paying an arm and a leg for transportation.

Cute picture huh? This pass cost me about $60. The ridiculous thing about it was that I needed to get a passport picture ticket taken for it. I couldn't go anywhere to get one passport picture taken, so I ended up having to get a set of 6 taken for $20, what a waste. (On that note, if you want a copy of this picture let me know, I'll send one to you :p)

To get to school I need to take two buses. One to get to Lyngby Station, then one to get to DTU. Overall it takes me about half an hour to get from my door to class, which isn't too bad.

Lyngby Station. Both buses and trains stop here, making it really easy to get wherever I need to go in the area

A typical bus in Denmark

The trains are also a very convenient way to get around the area. To get to Copenhagen takes about 15 minutes by train (the train station is a 20 minute walk or 5 minute bus ride away from where I live). There are also trains connecting many areas of Denmark (I'm planning on taking one of these trains to Hjørring, which is 1) where my ancestors are from and my mom's maiden name comes from, and 2) about as far away from where I live as you can go in Denmark). 

Random Things that I Think are Cool

Time to show my nerdy engineering side....

I've noticed and learned two things about Denmark that I think are really cool.

First, the staircases here are very interesting. I don't really know why, but within the first couple of weeks here I started to notice that Danish design seems to emphasize staircases. And I've seen a lot of cool ones. One prime example is POP (where I live). Almost the entire building looks the exact same. Metallic sides with windows for the rooms. There's only one part that stands out and is different from the rest (I'll let you figure out on your own which part it is).

The only nonmetallic part on the building

Here are a few examples of other cool stair cases I've stumbled upon in my adventures:

At DTU

Lots and lots of spiral staircases, but I'm stating to think it's a common theme in Europe, not just Denmark

The second thing is that they heat and cool their houses and buildings here differently than in the States. Here they use radiators in all the rooms to provide heat. Even in big buildings, its wall, floor, or ceiling heating and cooling systems (using hot or cold water running through pipes). I'm taking a class called Sustainable heating and cooling of buildings, and I've learned a lot about these systems so far (its this class that originally made me interested in the subject). At first I thought that it might be because the buildings here are typically older (because in the States it seems you only find radiators in older bulidings), and that they were out of date and behind the times. However its apparently quite the opposite. Using these systems is supposably much more efficient that the air heating and cooling systems so common in the States. 

Learning this helped me realize something I've been wondering about for a while, what the heck these huge pipes are for:

I realized the other day though that its for ventilation for the buildings. Its a very cool practice, and apparently its becoming more popular back home. These systems are able to be designed, along with the house as a whole, to be much more efficient and less energy intensive than using ventilation systems. It'll be interesting to me to see if it actually does become popular in America. 

 
One final thing about these systems is that Denmark was designed to support them. A lot of houses here get the hot water needed to heat up the rooms from "district heating". This means that the city creates the hot water necessary to warm multiple houses in a given area, and then sends out the hot water to the houses through pipes. This is another very cool concept, but one that I feel would be too inefficient at this point to implement in the United States. 

Whew! That was a lot. I hope you enjoyed it! As always, please email me with any questions or topics you'd like me write about. I'd be thrilled to hear from you!

One final note about being on this train I mentioned at the beginning of this post. We should have been in Stockholm 20 minutes ago (its almost midnight now), but because there was a fallen wire on the tracks we sat at some random stop in Sweden for almost two and a half hours. We're not supposed to get to Stockholm till 2 AM now. I just hope our hotel lets us check in...

Well, that's all for now folks! I'll leave you with this super pretty lake I walked by the other day

A cool sculpture I stumbled upon in Lyngby

Farvel og tage sig!

-Matt

PS: I don't actually know Danish yet, but I am starting a course next week to learn it!

More cool sights, more cool people...and school

Hello hello!

My deepest apologies for taking so long to write again, I'm hoping that I'll be update a tad more frequently in the future (although I doubt that will happen, I'm not very good at staying on top of this kind of stuff).

When I last left off I had finished up my first week of school and was slowly getting adjusted to my new life across the pond. Well...not too much has changed, but I have explored more of Copenhagen, gotten more into my school work (and finalized my schedule), and become more adjusted to being in this crazy place.

I suppose I'll start with Copenhagen. The city continues to amaze me. I've wandered around the same neighborhood 3 times now (there are about 15 different neighborhoods in the city, and so far each one has had a very distinct "feel" to it. I can't describe it, but I can definitely tell that there is a lot of diversity within the city, which is really cool) and I continue to be in amazement at what I stumble upon. For example, I walked down some random alley and found this sculpture in front of a church (if I remember correctly)

There are countless statues like this around the city, and I find it fascinating each time I manage to find a new one.

The architecture and building layout here is also amazing, and unlike anything I've seen anywhere else.

A church in the middle of a row of buildings, seemed like an odd placement to me

This tower surprised me for the sole fact that I haven't seen ANYTHING like it in Copenhagen. It looks really different from the majority of buildings in the city.

I love the multi-colored connected buildings. It seems to liven up the city, at least to me.

A quick side note about the church I showed above. I've been told that Danish people tend to be atheists, but there are churches everywhere. I haven't been able to figure out the reason for this. My guess would be that they were built in the past when the country may have been more religious, but I don't know.

Another thing  I really like about the city (although I'm sure the residents don't) is the graffiti present throughout the city. Its interesting because I guess it's new to Denmark within the past decade. So a lot of the murals are fresh and vibrant and look really cool.

This is a mural outside of Christiania. I really wish I could take pictures and share some of the art from inside of the town, but people aren't allowed to take pictures there. I'm hoping I can be sneaky at some point and get some pictures, because the town is beautiful.

This was outside a skate shop, the other one was painted the same way. The amount of detail on something so small amazed me.

Popeye!

These are, in my opinion, works of art. Although not the best place for the artists to express themselves, I'm glad they do. (Note: don't get me wrong, I think graffiti in general is bad, and there is a lot of graffiti around the city that's pointless and not artistic, but I like these kinds of paintings)

Another cool thing about this city (and country in general) is the public's use of bicycles and public transportation to get around. For such a small city (roughly 1 million people in the city) there are A LOT of bikes. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more bikes than people. Also, the diversity of people who use bikes here is another aspect that amazes me. Everyone rides bikes. Men and women, young and old, business people and students. Its awesome. I'm not used to seeing 50-70 year old men and women ride around on bikes, but it's not too uncommon here.

This is my bike! Isn't it pretty? Haha I'm actually going to try and sell it and get my money back. Its a pain to ride and kind of crappy in general. 

The public transportation here is also very good (also very, very confusing). Its easy enough for me to get to and from school, and also to and from Copenhagen by using a combination of buses, trains (kind of like the light rail in MSP, but faster), and the metro (a subway system). They are very efficient and the lines run fairly frequently. In fact, the bus company is so confident in their abilities to move people, that if your waiting at a bus stop for longer than 20 minutes when buses are running they'll pay for a taxi ride for you. I haven't had to do so yet, but I think its cool.

I've only had two negative experiences with the public transportation here (ironically enough they happened on back-to-back nights).

The first happened on the train. I was taking a train home around 4 (I think, it was really late) and when I got to my stop the door wouldn't open. So I figured I would just go to the next stop, get off, wait 15 minutes and head back to my original destination.

Nope, the exact same thing happened at the next stop, and I was stuck on the train for another 10 minutes.

So after spending a good half hour on the train and 15 minutes waiting at the station, I finally got back to the right station and got home okay.

That was the better of the two. The next night I was taking a bus home (it was late again), and fell asleep. Low and behold I wake up (not sure how long after falling asleep) only to find that not only had I missed my stop, I had stayed on the bus half an hour longer than I needed to. So after getting slightly scolded by the bus driver (I don't think she actually cared), she told me to stay on the bus and she would get me back to where I needed to go. It did, and I made it home okay. but that hour-plus detour was just annoying, especially when I just wanted to go to bed.

Okay, two more things I want to say about Copenhagen. One, I went to the top of the Rundetårn (Round Tower) this past weekend, and my oh my it was quite a sight from up there. Here are some of the pictures I took from the top:

The outside of the Round Tower. It was originally built as a stargazing platform (and apparently continues to be one of the best in Europe). I haven't been there in the night, but I plan to go sometime during my stay here.

This is the result of me playing with my camera and discovering it had a panoramic picture feature!

There were many amazing sights to behold from atop the tower.

Second, I found a new favorite area in Copenhagen, the neighborhood of Nyhavn. Its located on the water, and has a canal running through it. It has many beautiful boats harbored in the canal, as well as many very attractive buildings lining the canal.

My pictures don't do it justice. I'm really excited for summer time when it will be warm and hopefully I can spend a lot of time down in this area.

So while I wish I could spend all my time in downtown Copenhagen exploring every nook and cranny, I am here for a reason. That being school. In my last post I mentioned I would hopefully be dropping my Dynamics class. I did (thankfully, I heard it got even worse the following week) and picked up a class called "Differential Geometry". This class should hopefully count towards getting my math certificate I hope to receive by the time I graduate. It also feels good to be doing pure mathematics again. Is it sad to say that I missed it? (I'm gonna say no, slightly disgusting, but not sad)

The work load has also ramped up in the past week. I'm actually feeling pressured to get stuff done again, which is weird. I haven't had this pressure since back in Madison (where I felt it almost constantly). It took me way too long to get back into the swing of school, but I think I'm getting there and hopefully I'll be able to get back on top of it in the following days. I have my first assignment due on Wednesday, so we'll see how that goes.

I discussed some differences in the schooling systems in my last post, but another one was brought front and center to my attention today. I'm taking classes with students who are working on their master degrees right now. That fact was a little weird to me, but its been explained that their master level work here is similar to senior level work back in the states, so I'm not very far behind my peers here. In fact I've found that so far I haven't had much trouble keeping up with my fellow students when it comes to working in groups, figuring out problems and the such; which has been a huge relief to me.

Okay, I think that's all I have right now. Well...actually its not, I think I could write for another hour if i wanted to, but its late and I want to go to bed :-p

Here are the links to my facebook albums:

My First Experiences in Denmark

Exploring Denmark

If you can't see them for some reason, and you want to see them let me know. I have another website I can use to show you!

Goodnight world :)

Matty Schwartz

_____________________________________________________________

Edit 1: As always, if you want to know anything else or just want to chat, send me an email or facebook message, I'm more than happy and excited to talk to you!

Also, this is something I wanted to do to keep everyone up to date on what I'm rocking out to over here. Currently its "Words I Never Said" by Lupe Fiasco. I've been obsessed with Lupe, and particularly this song (and another one of his, "The Show Goes On"), for the past week plus. This is a great song where Lupe shares his views on issues in America. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit its impressive that a hip hop artist is able and willing to produce raps based on real world issues. Its a nice change of pace from the money, cars, women, and drugs that most other rappers are talking about.

I'd recommend taking  a listen, even if you're not a fan of the genre. There is some swearing in it, but overall its a pretty clean song.

Words I Never Said - Lupe Fiasco