Tour of Copenhagen

Sorry this is a day late, but here's what happened yesterday!

Wednesday:

Highlight of the day: I was mistaken for a Dane!!! Walking on the path to the train station in the morning, a man passed me and said "hej *insert unknown Danish word here*" Look out, Denmark, I'm starting to blend! 
After my commute, I had my last day of orientation. We did an activity to learn the city more, and we were given a (very unhelpful) map of Copenhagen and some locations to visit. My group went the wrong way off the metro, but we finally found our first stop. Here are some pictures of the buildings I saw along the way. I don't know what they are, but I thought they were too gorgeous not to take photographs of!

This is nicknamed a witch tree because Hans Christian Andersen always used this trees for the place where witches lived in his books. They're all over Copenhagen!

 Our first stop was the Parliament building (^that one right above). It has a proper name, but I can't remember it now. It was built in 1903 and was the castle for a while until the royal family moved to Rosenberg Castle at a nicer location. 

Our guide told us that this building's tower (right above) has three dragons with their tails intertwined that represent Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

After this stop, my group took the bus to the next place, the library. It was the right bus, but the opposite direction that we needed to be. We got kicked off the bus at the last stop, the opera house (see below). We thought it might be the library, so we tried to go in but it was deserted and locked. I bet the bus driver got a laugh that day seeing five Americans on the wrong bus and trying to break into the opera house because we thought it was the library! 

We finally got on the right bus (half an hour later) and found our way to the library. It's called The Black Diamond and was built in 1999. It looks out of place with all of the old fashioned buildings on Copenhagen, but the inside is pretty nice.

This is a mural inside the library.

Here are some pictures on our walk to our next location:

Our next stop (and last since we were running really late) was the Church of our Savior, which was gorgeous! It was built during the reign of Christian IV, and a lot of elements inside the church were to remind everyone that he was the absolute monarch. A symbol that the monarchs like to use are elephants since they're grand, strong, reliable, etc. At the center of the church (it was in the shape of the Greek cross since it's perfectly symmetrical and they believed that all things geometric were a sign of perfection) a chandelier hangs, and a little elephant hangs at the bottom to remind people that the monarch is the center of everything. Two elephants are "holding up" the massive organ pipes, as well. Here are some pictures:

Beautiful front of the church!

Prettiest organ pipes I've ever seen!

The fanciest pulpit I've ever seen!

The front of the church was under construction, but I got a picture of the spire. And yes, you can climb up to the top! It's only open during warmer temperatures, but I will definitely be climbing to the top!

My group finally made our way back about 20 minutes late, but at least we didn't get lost! Afterwards, I met up with Liz and James, and I introduced them to St. Peter's Bakery. Here's the delicious pastries we got! (the names are in Danish, so I have no clue what they're called)

We hung out for a while in a lounge until we had the activities fair. There are a ton of clubs and sports that we can do with college aged Danes, which sounds really awesome! I signed up for ultimate frisbee (I checked, and thankfully they play indoor until April!) and University Post, the University of Copenhagen's newspaper. I got lost finding my way to the metro afterwards (getting lost is second nature to me, apparently), but I finally found my way there. Classes start today, so I'll be posting another blog about them later!