Throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. -Mark Twain
Semesters abroad, internships, master’s degrees. I’ve done a lot of studying abroad in my day – mostly in Germany, but sometimes in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands too.
You’ll probably notice I haven’t blogged in a while, and as bad as I feel about not sharing fun travel stories and photos with you, it was for a very good reason, which was…
I was writing my master thesis!
Continue reading “Master of the Universe, or saying goodbye to student life forever”
As the weather in Hamburg slowly shifts and is now firmly entrenched in fall, so, too, is my life changing, and instead of a supermarket warehouse worker, I’m starting to feel like a student again.
I quit my job at the supermarket, which had been bringing me down and taking up a lot of time for a while now, and now have three new jobs – the most exciting of which is definitely teaching German to refugee children.
On the other side of the globe, while my friends from uni were preparing for their undergrad graduation ceremony, I was taking part in a European “tradition” that up until that week I’d never heard of: Eurovision.
Eurovision Song Contest is a euro-centric singing competition in which each participating country sends their best contender(s) to perform a piece of pop music for a huge international audience. It’s a bit like the Olympics, except instead of totally ripped athletes you have an assortment of sexy pop stars, performers in crazy costumes, and even a drag queen, and instead of competing in intense sporting events to win gold medals, they sing a song of their choice, from the serious to the silly, the completely bizarre to the downright tacky, for the honor of having their country host the competition next year. And instead of a panel of judges deciding who’s the best, the audience gets to vote, American Idol-style. The catch? You’re not allowed to vote for your own country.
Continue reading “Eurovision 2015: Some more weird European culture”
We ain’t got no place to go
So let’s go to the punk rock show!
Darlin’ take me by the hand
We’re gonna see a punk rock band
There’s no use in TV shows
Radios or rodeos
I wanna get into the crowd
I wanna hear it play real loud!
-MXPX, “Punk Rawk Show”
Of all the artists and all the concert venues in the world, the American punk rock band Against Me! performed at Fonden Voxhall in Aarhus last week. As part of their European tour, this band, which is huge among rockers and punkers in the U.S., stopped by li’l ole Aarhus to play for a crowd of less than 100 people on a weekday night.
Continue reading “Punk rock shows, guerilla gardening, and musings on various types of extremism”
Move over, Friday bars and freshman initiation rituals. You can have your Christmas dinners (julefrokost) and licorice-flavored ice cream. Without a doubt, the most insane Danish tradition I’ve come across yet is Kapsejlads, the annual Aarhus university boat race at the university park.
In its most basic definition, Kapsejlads is a regatta, a boat race in which the different academic faculties compete against each other. In reality, it’s an excuse to drink. All. Day. Long.
Continue reading “Kapsejlads: The craziest Danish tradition I’ve seen yet”
Following the Wanderlust 