A few days ago I received letter from the University of Copenhagen asking me to prepare for reading computer science. It's not like I expected anything else, but now it's official. During the summer, I've been to Copenhagen a few times in the belief that it might prepare me somewhat for the city. I don't really think it has, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem, since I've already lived in a much bigger city with a much more radically different population from my home region.

 

I guess if I compare Copenhagen to Taipei, it's a much more quiet city. You can easily find places with no other people around for a few minutes. In Taipei that's only really possible if you go to someplace where it's not really possible for pedestrians to get to.

 

Especially at night there's not a whole lot of people to be seen. Compared to Slagelse, a small town of roughly 35 thousand inhabitants, of course the nightly activity in Copenhagen is much more pronounced, but the city lacks the night markets and general lifestyle that keeps people up all night as much as in Taipei. Hopefully the student environment that I am eager to explore will have a few ways to work around this.

 

Now I have been living for one whole year in this tiny town as I've had to complete Gymnasium (~senior high) so I have no doubt Copenhagen is going to be a great venture. And it does have a lot of the qualities that Taipei has despite being a much less heavily populated metropol. The infrastructure is one of them. Copenhagen might possibly be one of the most non-car person friendly town. It's particularly easy to get around the city by bike.

 

On of the things I went to see on my recent solo trip to Copenhagen was the elephants put up around the inner city in an art project called Elephant Parade. Not a big attraction. Rather a quirky little extra thing, but they are great in pictures and fun to scout for while moving between locations especially if you're the kind of person that doesn't plan where you're actually going. And they look great in pictures. They are still there. Going to be there until August 25th.

 

Copenhagen also has a lot of interesting architecture - and more importantly to me - some degree of city expansion. There's also a lot of interesting things going on in the city. Public art projects, music stuff, such things. Some months ago I know there had been a music festival like thing going on called Distortion. A five-day mobile party that most of the people I know in Copenhagen had participated in. (Okay, most of the people I know there so far are probably more colourful than the majority, but still.)

 

The more I go on at this, the more preconceptual this article is going to be, and the longer it's going to be before I get the whole russ celebration stuff with hats and trucks covered. I should have plenty of time to get to know the city much better and get to give a bit more of a picture of it in the future.
So long.

During the last two months I've been super busy with the sprint finish of gymnasium (~senior high) that is final assesment marks and exams. I between I have of course done other things than school and taken a few nice pictures too, but I've been either too busy or too lazy to do something about them. After returning home to Denmark I've started bothering to do post processing on the photos I take before I put them up, and of course this means illustrating a blog takes a bit longer.

 

Here's one photo I took of a house in Freetown Christiania. Christiania is a small region in Copenhagen claiming to be autonomous. It's an interesting and beautiful place where people think differently. And some of the architecture there is fabulous. If you ever visit Copenhagen, be sure to see this place. But be aware that in the more populous area of the region, there's a place called pusher street where people openly sell cannabis. This is illegal in Denmark, and while the place is usually peaceful, be sure to pack your cameras away if you go there as the pushers there do not like getting pictures taken of them.

Inbetween exams I went to Copenhagen by myself and slept at a couple of friends houses, eating vegetarian food, squatting (kind of), going to expensive cafés (Copenhagen cafés are very pricy), shopping asian snack food, drinking beer with nerdy university students and visiting this place once again. I actually had 5 exams in 5 days and then a gap of almost a month between those and my last exam, so I had plenty of free time. Used that up pretty quickly, though.

 

Obviously there has been a lot of school-related activities too. Things such as graduation, parties, hats and of course the driving around the city ontop of a big truck making lots of noise and getting drunk. Just like I wrote about one year ago.

 

Yes, there is a guy dressed like Super Mario at this party. (It's not me. I was wearing a leather jacket and a bandana.)

Now I'm going to have some free time to cover some of all this stuff that I have been taking pictures of lately. Right now I am just waiting for a response from the University I have sent an application to, so might as well get back to picking up decent photos.

 

That is also a building in Copenhagen. Fisketorvet.

 

And this photo was taken this year - not many weeks ago - as I got my chance at the truck riding celebrations.

Exam times have been hard and introspective and has brought lots of change and lots of new interests up for me. So now I have a lots of new exciting things to write about. Probably most of it will still center around special places and events in Denmark, though. And culture stuff. I am looking forward to a bit more of that.

 

This Saturday I went with some friends to Langelinie in Copenhagen. Not far from the the little mermaid statue, a number of sakura trees, (sakura is Japanese for cherry trees,) were planted there in 2006 after having been donated by Danish Honorary Consul in Hiroshima, Mr Seiichi Takaki on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of H.C. Andersen.

 

Amongst all those little cherry trees, a number of people had gathered to enjoy the occasion. A few tents were set up too, with people selling Japanese foods, sweets, snacks, drinks, and tools such as knifery, bowls, chopsticks and so on.
There was also a scene where people performed with Japanese dance and things such as kendo, karate and drumming. Many of these shows were arranged by local clubs who also used this as an opportunity to advertise a little for themselves.

 

As can be expected at any japan-related arrangement in possibly most western countries, it also attracted some cosplayers. Amongst other, we met Afro Samurai, which I think was totally awesome. I have been thinking of becoming an Afro Samurai myself but I doubt it would work very well because I am as white as one can be.

 

At one point, I was borrowing a zoom lens from my friend who also has a Canon. (And I used some of his photos for this blog post actually.)
I was trying it out, taking pictures of people on the stage, and this girl in the foreground thought that I was taking pictures of her. I didn't even see her before my friend found out. Then we took some pictures of her, too, after asking for permission of course. (Hey, it looks like she put a lot of effort into that outfit, too, don't you think?)

 

We found some Oolong Tea too, at one of the tents. My friend Rasmus also had a can of it, but I don't think he enjoyed it that much, (it was sugar free,) but I missed the taste of cold oolong tea a lot, so I was quite happy to have found it, as you can see.

 

Here is a picture of Rasmus, who is also the one who took some of the photos I've used for this post. We are having a makeshift sumo wrestling match using some funny clothes to add extra weight.

 

We also ran into these girls. They are not cosplayers, however. Apparently, their style of attire is a subculture fashion originating from Japan called Lolita Fashion. I guess some of these girls might even consider some of this clothing for daily wear. I'm quite surprised to run into and find out about such a phenomenon in Denmark. But they again, this event did take place in Copenhagen. That city is a lot more colourful than the rest of the country.

 

Nearing the closure, the arrangers of the festival would let everyone participate in some kind of dance. People would walk around in a circle, dancing. In the middle there was a man drumming to the beat of a number of different Japanese songs. We didn't participate, but the music was nice.

 

As you can see, many people dressed up in kimonos for the event. If I had had one, I would have donned it too. I imagine that's the most typical way for Japanese to dress up at events like this.

 

Some of you might have noticed that the Sakura trees in Langelinie had already dropped all their flowers. That was a little sad, but of course it didn't ruin the day. Of course it would have been totally awesome if there had been flowers. Then the occasion could've been more like Hanami, the original Japanese way of celebrating the blossoming of their cherry trees, but I guess this event really wasn't that far from it still.

Just to put you in the mood, here's a picture I took about 2 weeks ago of a cherry tree back where I live. It was still bright pink when I got back from Copenhagen, but now, 2 days later, the tree has dropped most of its flowers.

Well. It is still spring. And today is really hot. It's awesome. I love spring.

 

Today I decided to go looking through some of my old photos from Taiwan to find some of the more peculiar things I have stumbled upon while being in the far east. Obviously, Taiwan is a place with lots of interesting things. Many of which will seem somewhat bizarre to foreigners despite the locals being totally used to them.

To start out with, here's a picture that will seem more strange than it actually is. Frog eggs are what the Taiwanese like to call the chewy, black things that go in drinks such as pearl milk tea. Pearl milk tea looks like this:

 

The frog eggs are actually made from some kind of seed from a plant I don't know. They only resemble frog eggs on the looks and their soft, sticky texture. If real frog eggs are anything like fish eggs, then these things are nothing like that at all. They're more dense and chewy in the core and very soft on the outside. Pearl Milk Tea is really just milk with tea and a little sugar and then these "frog eggs". You usually drink it with a big straw. It's quite an experience, and tastes good. But don't get addicted, you'll just end up becoming fat.

 

Take a close look at this picture. Can't find the button for 4th floor? Guess what? There is no 4th floor!

Many Taiwanese are superstitious to some degree. Since many of their words sound similar, they often connotate certain things to other just because of their sounding. Four sounds a little similar to "death" in Chinese, so superstitiout people don't like this number.
Despite this, you'll probably find lots of 4th floors still, just not in the house of my second host family.

Similarly, the Chinese word for "book" sounds a lot similar to "loose", so don't give books as a present to people who enjoys gambling.

 

Since Taiwan is an Asian country, there'll be lots of Engrish too. Actually the Taiwanese are in general much better than most Asians at English, so you'll probably find more of this in China and Japan, but it's still possible to find a few rather hilarious translations.

But Engrish is not the only thing. Some places you might just find really weird names for products or stores, such as Love Milk, or this peculiar Hair Salon in Tainan.

 

Then of course, there's art. Taiwanese museums don't seem to be very picky. Actually they often exhibit some rather experimenting things, such as these cars with a lightshow that makes one think of explosions.

 

One thing is cars hanging from the ceiling. Another thing is this weird manlady thing with disproportionate head and body. What does it mean? It was at an exhibition with undertones of sexuality and perversion, but also just generally estranging installations such as anthromorph superheroes/villains and a digital man picking apart his own limbs amongst other things. I think some of it was made by a japanese artist, but it's still the kind of things you can bump into in Taiwan.

 

Now for the edibles. Stuff that you can eat is probably what is going to surprise you the most. This is just one of many strange things Taiwanese like to eat: Chicken feet. There's not really any meat on this. It is just skin and bones, but Taiwanese women love to eat it because they believe it will benefit their own skin.

 

An even more unlikely chicken product is this: Essence of Chicken.

Yeah, that's probably not a gramatically correct name. A more correct name would be Chicken Extract or something the like. It tastes horrible if I am to rate it. It's just really concentrated chicken, perhaps mixed with herbs or some medicine, who knows? I wrote more about it in this article: Essence of Chicken.

 

And then there's this: A whole, fried chicken.

Yeah. Taiwanese love chicken. I do too. But there's another animal they love just as much, and it's pig. And they'll eat all of it's organs too. Skin, ears, intestines, everything. Read The Four Gods Soup to find out just to what extend they eat pigs innards.

 

I've already done a fair share of food blogging, and I will need to do more, but I won't be able to condense all of their weird foods down to one post.

This here is a small mouse in a glass jar. It's a prize at a night market game stall. You win by throwing a tabletennis ball into the jar. I guess Taiwan has it's less romantic sides too. Treat animals more nicely, please.

 

Oh yeah, and Taiwan has aboriginees. Whole cities are dedicated to them, so if you suddenly see drawings of people with spears on rocks and other strange things - don't worry. This is just another side of Taiwan.

 

I could go on forever. One year in Taiwan brings in lots of memories. I'd like to end this post with this photo of a kind of robot you can sometimes see around the big shopping streets in Taiwan. It's a big, walking balloon actually, and you'll be seeing chicken, robots, anthromorphic food and all sorts of stuff walking about if you're lucky. These are usually herded by an employee from the company that set it on the street who will hand out flyers asking people to come eat at their restaurant or visit their shop.

Well.. Maybe I'll make a sequel some time.