Christina Blackston • Denmark
Forgive me for my ignorance, but before coming to Denmark, I didn’t really think people still baked their own bread. Especially on a regular basis. I realized something was different when my Danish friend apologized for not making the bread that I was eating herself, and talked about how her relatives would have. Later, luckily, I did get to try some homemade bread from her aunt’s recipe, and it was much better than anything from the grocery store, and even from many bakeries.
So I decided to try the recipe myself.
One of my kitchenmates was encouraging:
“It’s difficult to mess up. It’s just bread. You can really just throw anything in it”
“But I am American…” I wanted to say.
Another kitchenmate had questions for me, since it wasn’t a loaf, but was flat bread cut into squares:
“What kind of bread is that supposed to be?”
“The rye kid of bread that you…put stuff on, you know. Like those small shrimps…”
“Oh, right, the kind you put stuff on.”
Seeing a bemused look, and thinking I had the upperhand because I was talking to a guy, I challenged him with “when was the last time you made bread, anyway?”
“Last week.”
“Oh.”
Little did I know everyone else in the kitchen was acutely aware of Tim’s bread-making prowess. The normal sarcastic-joking relationship I have with the Danes clearly didn’t work in a situation as serious as bread baking.
And the final outcome?
The taste was found to be somewhere between “not bad” and “good,” and I would like to throw in that it improved with time…especially after I peeled off the wax paper.
Though many others opted to undertake a whirlwind tour of Europe on our travel break, I decided to dedicate a whole week to Paris, visiting two close friends.
One of my first sights was the Sunday morning market, with every meat and fruit imaginable, as well as one lapin seller who wants to give you free lollipops. My friend and I were trying to buy rabbit thighs, but could only find a whole rabbit. The merchant was willing to cut it apart for us, and a couple came by a second later that was interested in the other half. He also kept giving us different flavors of lollipops, as I continued to tell him that I’d really prefer the orange or red ones to the green in my broken French.
Though if I were to live like a Parisian I forsee the small cups of coffee being a problem given my addiction, there are other parts I could get used to, like enjoying wine midday, at an outdoor café, simply because it’s nice. Or similarly cooking food, eating, and drinking with friends for 5 hours, because, really, what do you have to do that’s more important? Perhaps that’s easy enough for me to say because I was essentially on vacation, but even if that weren’t the case, I can’t think of what’s more important than other people.
I saw sights of Paris too – Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, Centre Pompedieu, Cheese and Mushroom Fondue, Arc de Triomphe, Invalides, Tour Eiffel – but the most important parts still remained my relaxed, contented mindset and the friends I was seeing them with. And the brisk early morning tour (walk home) after missing the last Metro didn’t hurt either.
After landing in Copenhagen airport on Friday, I met up my Danish friend who was flying out to Damascus, Syria in a few hours so that we could catch-up before she left. She told me about the important holiday “J-Day” that celebrated the release of Tuborg’s Julebrygge at 9pm that night. A few minutes later we got a phone call from her brother with good news – the Burger King in the airport was serving the Christmas beer early, so we wouldn’t have to wait. Drinking Christmas Beer at 3pm in airport? Kind of like still being in Paris. Or, better yet, exactly like being in Copenhagen.
Overall I’ve come away with the feeling that there exists a much higher quality of life in Europe, and it’s one that can be enjoyed in the United States too, if you strive to create it for yourself. Though technically when I come back I’m supposed to covert to overdrive, and be putting every part of my being into finding a job and stressing about my career, what I forsee for myself is much the opposite: an appreciation of the present, and an excited, rather than worried, looking ahead toward the future.
The name of my track at DIS is called “Sustainability in Europe,” a hugely broad and all encompassing ideal. It’s become a very trendy term – for social systems, for food, clothing, buildings, even for the Olympics. My long study tour brought me to Totnes in Devon as well as London to take a look at what a different part of Europe is doing.
In Devon we stayed in a large manor house (read: excellent for playing sardines in) and learned about one town’s efforts to become “sustainable” in the coming years. From printing their own money (is this legal?) to “the great reskilling,” which they define as teaching people how to do basic skills – fixing a bike, growing your own food – that have become lost to our generation, their aims seemed impossibly isolationist.
More than anything, I think that the world needs to come together in order to create a more sustainable mindset, and we need a bit more rationality when we campaign for certain ideas. If I know how to fix my own bike, that’s great. But if it takes me 20 hours and it takes someone in a shop 2 hours, it makes sense for me to outsource that while I do something else that I’m good at. Buying local is a great concept, and I agree that we need to reduce the distance food travels. But if ten families living in a sparsely populated place each drive ten miles back and forth to their “local” farm, than that’s no different from food that’s travelled 200 miles being picked up by families in the city walking to their supermarket, at least in terms of carbon emissions. The most sustainable way for us to live would probably be in big towers all crowded next to each other. But we have to find some realistic compromise between that and the way we live now.
While in Devon we needed up to three vehicles to transport everyone, in London we rode the tube and walked, giving London some points in the sustainability column. There might be room for criticism of London’s transport system, but I honestly think it’s pretty fantastic. They’ve even made it possible to ride public transportation from suburb from suburb without having to go into the congested city center, and since an increasing number of jobs are located in the suburbs, it just makes sense. Also, I just don’t know another transportation system where people take the time to see what animals they can make out of the transportation maps.
If you take a look at sustainable design in Copenhagen, it’s basically integrated into their planning code. Every time the street gets upgraded, the bikeways and pedestrian paths get a makeover too. And with the sidewalks four inches higher than the bike paths, which are in turn four inches higher than the road, ensuring that everyone feels safe, regardless of mode used. And there’s the kicker of getting to go through the green light first if you’re on a bike, “like saying a little fuck you to the car,” in the words of my instructor.
If I had to sum up what I’ve learned about sustainability so far, there’s one thing that sticks out in my mind: people are rational, so if you want them to behave in a certain way, make it the easiest choice. It’s become especially apparent to me here that government has a huge role to play in influencing people’s behavior. Copenhageners end up biking more because this city has great bicycle infrastructure and it’s cheaper and easier than other forms of transportation – not because they’re necessarily intensely committed to saving the environment. Conversely, if you prioritize the needs of cars, we’re all going to continue to drive them, not because we’re soulless and ignorant, but because that’s what’s being presented as the best option.
…I think this means I need to take economics.
When you think of Sweden, what comes to mind? For me, fish and meatballs. And that’s what we set out to find when a group of four of us went to the Swedish city on Wednesday.
Since the construction of the Øresund Bridge it’s become very easy to travel between Copenhagen and Malmö, Sweden, with some people even choosing to live in Sweden and commute to work in Denmark. (And commuting to Copenhagen to party.)
Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden, with almost 300,000 people, behind Stockholm and Gothenburg. Among other important landmarks like the Turning Torso building, (the Cog Museum was closed), we saw the only chocolate manufacturer in Sweden, giving us new insight into why Sweden is not known for their chocolates. The “tour of the factory” came down to us being able to watch two people make pralines from afar, while sampling small bits of chocolate.
Fortunately, the day the picked up with the discovery of Swedish fish in the grocery store. Sadly, they didn’t except our Danish grocery card, but I have no regrets about paying for a large bag of candy.
As dinnertime rolled around we were craving meatballs, and inquired about them first at the local casino, and then at a hotel. No staff member knew off the bat where to find meatballs, but they were willing to help. After a quick search on Google, we had some cold, hard results.
“It looks like there is a place called IK-E-A that has them?”
Oh yes, I’ve heard of that one.
As we were leaving for the train station, we started to see lots of police cars congregating, police officers on horses, and large crowds forming. We asked what the event was, and we learned that the Malmö football team was playing that night against another team from a few miles over. It still strikes me as impressive that football crowds get so large and intense that it looks like a state of emergency has been declared.
On our way back, we caved to the temptation of Swedish meatballs and got off at the station in southern Malmö. For all those Ikea lovers out there, you should know, when you visit Ikea in Sweden, everything starts to make more sense. The signs for Smaland and the brightly colored children’s toys seem less crazy. And the meatballs are just as cheap.
About ten days before landing in Denmark, I found out where my kollegium was located. I was ecstatic to see it was on an island named Amager, and that, like Northwestern, the beach is close. I’m right near the central city.
When I got to Øresundskollegiet it became immediately clear that they purchased the building at Ikea. I’m still not sure how they got it home and assembled it. Despite searching for Swedish meatballs the first night, only cheap beer was to be found. Øresunds is the biggest kollegium in Scandinavia, home to about 1,000 students. On my hall there are 13 rooms and a shared kitchen, and two DIS students.
Until a week into DIS I was very proud of my island, especially after I had learned to pronounce its name correctly. But then the cold hard truth came out. “You know what they call Amager, right? It’s the shit island.” The land on Amager has been cultivated since the 1500s, but until the 1970s it was also a dumping ground for litter. It’s an old industrial area, and if you run too much in the wrong direction you’ll reach lots of factories, trucks and windmills.
But its reputation is changing, and the beach, Amager Strandpark is a popular destination in the summer, and it’s home to Amager Bio, a concert venue that seen bands like MGMT play. The introduction of the Metro system, the first part of which opened in 2002, has helped spur growth on the island as well.
I live along the M2 metro line, yet the M1 line might win out for the more interesting sights. In my European Urban Design Theories class we paid a visit to the new development cropping up on the southeast side. Each and every one of the buildings there is its own futuristic looking development, ranging from those with colored, modern looking windows, to a building with triangular balconies, to a round kollegium done in wood paneling. But despite these design innovations, there is no cohesion in the area; it jumps from stand out building to stand out building with no infill in-between. All of the buildings scream, “I’m the most interesting! Look over here!” but without balance and accessibility, the area is a bit deserted and cold.
After the class portion was over, we hit the mall. Field’s is the second largest mall in Scandinavia, and not something I would expect to see so close to trendy Copenhagen. After nearly two weeks of feeling underdressed in the central city, I learned that the suburban population looks the same pretty much everywhere. There’s even a store called Bilka Onestop, reminiscent of Walmart, where you can buy your pastry and your rainboots and your bike all at once. That’s right, delicious pastries. Perhaps American stores could learn a bit about European marketing strategies.
Copenhagen is one of the world’s most bike friendly cities; I’m one of the world’s least bike friendly people.
When I tell people that I’m majoring in Urban Studies, the reaction is usually, “We have that at Northwestern?” (We do, I promise.)
One of my favorite things is the vitality radiated by cities. So many people living next to each other at such high densities, and, in the best cities, those high densities mean that residents are presented with so much diversity of choice, and so many opportunities to have a unique experience every day.
While I’ll recite you all the stops in order from Howard to 95th on the Red Line in Chicago, or tell you how excited I am to see the Silver Line finally built on DC’s Metro, I can’t say I know any European cities very well at all. But ask me again in four months.
