Core Course Week and Western Denmark Short Tour
- Lilly
- Sep 15, 2019
- 7 min read
Hello Everyone! Its been awhile, I know.
To say ‘i’m exhausted’ is an understatement. Last week was a chaotic, adventure filled seven days, that, despite the rain, wind and the cold, i’d do again in a heartbeat.
Core Course week is a week DIS does where we spend half the week with our core course, and the other half of the week traveling with other people in our department (AD - Architecture and Design). Monday and Tuesday were spent exclusively with my core course: eight favorite people, and the I finished up the week traveling around Western Denmark.
I guess I’ll just go ahead and tell you everything, considering there isn’t anything I would want share about this incredible week. Cozy yourself up and prepare for a long distance hygge.
Monday, my studio class and I traveled to Frederiksberg where we walked around the gardens, sketched different buildings and wallowed in sadness because the elephants in the zoo weren’t out that day. Next, we made our way to the Copenhagen Business School Campus where we again, peaked around at some buildings, did some more sketching, ate lunch, and activity tried to avoid the bees who were in love with Liz’s sandwich. We visited the student center which reminded all of us of a really fancy hotel lobby. We spent a good amount of time in there people watching and trying to capture the organic shapes/lines of the interior in our sketch book. I have concluded that my sketches couldn’t do the space justice.
(click on photos for captions)
After we finished up at CBS, we made our way to Ørestad where we took a break and had some hot chocolate and cookies in an Espresso House located in the Field’s mall, curtesy of our fabulous professor, Søren. I have never seen a mall that big and grand before (I returned later to buy myself some warm boots). Now, its a good thing that I spent the summer strengthening my tolerance of dairy, because Espresso House has some damn good hot chocolate.
But Monday’s adventured didn’t end there. We had a scheduled tour of this really nice dorm called Tietgenkollegiet, that was so fancy and elite, that you have to apply to get into it. Admissions would get hundreds of applications a year, and could only accept two or three. Søren was very adamant that we get there on time so that we didn’t keep our guide waiting, but in the true spirit of our class, we were almost late.
“We’ll walk there.” Søren said.
“We’ll get there on time.” He said.
FALSE.
We passed multiple buildings that everyone of us just had to go and look at. So we ended up having to take a train one block so we wouldn’t be late.
Now the dorm building? I can’t really put into words yet about how cool it was. To sum it up, if I wasn’t going live in Sluseholmen (read early posts for information) I’d want to live at Tietgenkollegiet. We all wanted to live there.
After Tietgenkollegiet, we walked back through another university campus where I had an existential crisis due to a fantastic sculpture I found. It was there that for the next three hours I contemplated whether I really wanted to be an architect, or if I wanted to run away and make public art for the rest of my life.
As I turned out, this campus wasn’t too far away from home, so we decided to walk back to DIS. There were only two days this week where I didn’t hit my step goal of 10,000 steps. Monday was 21k, Tuesday was 20K, Thursday was 15K, and Friday was 16K. Wednesday I was wiped and stayed in bed all day, and Saturday was a travel day.
Can you believe that was only Monday? I sure couldn’t. If we were walking and traveling and exploring that much over the rest of the week, I wasn’t so sure I (specifically my knees, ankles and feet) could handle it. But, as it turned out, Monday was the easy day.
Tuesday, it rained, and it rained hard.
My class and I had planned to spend the day in the Louisiana Museum, a really famous Danish Museum, looking at art and avoiding the rain, with a pitstop at a special cemetery on the way. But of course we still had to get there, and we couldn’t avoid the rain through all of it. Luckily, we made it to Ryvangen Memorial Park before the rain. This park, in Hellerup, commemorates the Danish freedom fighters who were executed there, in the camps or anywhere during World War II. We viewed a beautiful memorial piece by Per Arnoldi called “The Black Seas” commemorates the freedom fighters lost at sea, and placed orange-red roses by the poles of the execution site. As we left the park, the rain began to pick up, large slugs crawled their way onto the foot path, but we all left a little changed.
We were all dressed for the rainy weather, but nothing could have prepared us for the monsoon that would drench us to the bone on our fifteen minute walk (run) from the train station to the Louisiana. We were soaked.
The Museum itself was a free for all. We were instructed to sketch some of the interiors, get lunch on our own, and meet back in the lobby in three hours. I proceeded to spend the next TWO HOURS WALKING IN LOOPS IN THE LOUISIANA TRYING TO WARM UP. My leggings were drenched, so it was like walking around in with a wet blanket on in a cold museum. Luckily, the cafe was warm, the hot chocolate was good, and the strawberry cake gave me the sugar kick I needed in the moment. After that, I spent the last hour with Sean and Isaiah, traveling from room to room, and sketching as much as possible.
To sum up the museum quickly so I can move on to short tour, I’ll list some highlights below.
The cafe: hot chocolate and strawberry cake.
The room with glowing lights made of glass that pulsed to the beat of the music.
The room with the lights and mirrored walls and ceilings. It mimicked outer space and suddenly it was like I was ten years old again, marveling at the stars in our galaxy. But, a true high light of that small four meter by four meter room was Isaiah bumping his head on multiple lights, and Sean almost falling into the floor that was covered in water to create a mirror effect (we had no idea and we all freaked).
All the rooms cast in low glow lighting with videos playing on the walls, and the bed room (multiple beds you could lay on and watching videos projected on the ceiling).
Unfortunately, it was still raining when we left, bu the train was dry and all of us took a short nap on the way home. We gathered outside the metro stop once we had gotten home, and whether Søren was planning on having us see one more building before he called it a day, we’ll never know. But what I do know is that Søren took one look at me (read: blue lips, full body shaking, soaked clothing) and decided that everyone should just go home and warm up. And I did just that, didn’t get out of bed until eleven the next morning.
Okay, let’s move onto the short tour.
My short tour visited four different cities in Western Denmark from Thursday to Saturday: Ribe, Blavand, Billund and Kolding.
We’ll start with RIBE:
Three hour bus ride to get there.
Tour of Ribe Cathedral, Sankt Catherine Church, and KannikegardenVisitng Vadehavescentret Museum (Wadden Sea Center) where we did lots of sketches of the exterior.
We stayed in a really cute Hostel/Camp area where we stayed in small, two-story cabins. I am saddened to admit that the showers there were nicer/better than the ones I currently live with back in Copenhagen. (roomies were Margie, Margaret and Isabel)
We ate dinner that in a restaurant around the corner from the Ribe Cathedral. I ate with Mark, Fiona and Mika and were by far the loudest table there. The food was good despite me being robbed of my meat and potatoes because I’m slightly lactose intolerant. Did I cry? Yes, yes I did.
Moving on to BLAVAND:
The only thing that got me through the day was our 9AM morning beach trip to a beautiful coastal village. The waves were huge, the sky clear, the wind howling, and I couldn’t have been happier. I had been freezing the day before, and the weather was certainly breezier the next day, but because I went to the beach, I was perfect.
Visited the Tripitz Museum which is also known as the bunker museum. The museum is centered around an unfinished German bunker from World War II. We had to drive through a military training field to get there, our driver claiming that the only reason we could go this way was because “The army isn’t shooting out here today.” We were all a little startled that it was a throughway in general.
Next, BILLUND:
Your girl went to LEGO house, a dream come true. LEGOs were what got me started on my dream of being an architect. It was full circle. I left with two LEGO keychains: one of Han Solo, and one of a Shark (The Shark one is a present, can you guess who its for?).
We had almost two hours of play time in LEGO house…. :)
Finally, KOLDING:
We stayed at a cute hotel in Kolding that evening.We had dinner at cute French bistro styled restaurant where they played the song “Les Champs-Élysées” by Joe Dassin, and Fiona and I sang loudly because we knew the lyrics (French class circa middle school/high school??). Wine was served with our burgers, and to no one’s surprise, I tried it, and didn’t like it. One day, but that day was not the day.
The next day we visited Trapholt Museum, famous for its large, white wall, and toured the Arnes Jacobsen’s Sommerhus.
We had lunch at a little place in Kolding that had traditional Danish smorgasbord (little sandwiches with, like, everything).
Our last stop was Koldinghus, a large castle in Kolding where I got lost a couple times, ran into a wedding, and made some drawings on the exterior.
I got home last night around 5:30 in the evening, showered, and crawled into bed. I was asleep by ten that night. Probably of the best nights sleep I’ve had here.
I plan on relaxing today, before jumping into my week of work to come.
There you have it, my last seven days summed up for you. I am happy, healthy and enjoying European life. If you have any questions or want more details on anything, shoot me an email or message me via Facebook.
All the love,
Lilly
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