Reading Week 2006 – Day 7

We then returned to Copenhagen, by a particularly long route. First, we took a train to Milan, where we had a few hours to quickly see the Duomo, which was largely invisible behind scaffolding as they attempt to restore it. A much longer train ride returned us to Paris. We had hoped to spend the rest of the night before our morning flight in the comfort of the airport. However, we found that the Beauvais airport is only accessible by bus, and that these only run about three hours before flights depart. So, we had about six hours to kill, until 6am. We walked around a bit, and saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up. But, we had had about enough walking, so we spent most of the time sitting, trying to stay warm, wondering how homeless people do it every night.

When we finally got to the airport, it wasn’t much better. It is still under construction, so we had to sit for a couple hours in a very drafty tent on the runway. After we got home, we spent the rest of the day trying to heat up again.

We’ll post pictures soon...

Green-land vs. Canada-land

Unrelated to the cartoons controversy, Queen's Golden Words published this article about our Canadian "War on Denmark" over Hans Island (click to enlarge).

Time for a Vacation

If there's anyone out there who regularly checks this site, you may have noticed that there haven't been many posts recently. This is not because we are in hiding until the uproar over Danish cartoons dies down. We've just been busy.
The Danish have a different school year than Canada, divided into four semesters: Fall (Sept - Dec), Winter (Jan), Spring (Feb - May) and Summer (June). The Fall and Spring semesters are similar to those in Canada, with about 5 courses lasting 13 weeks and then exams. In January and June, students can take an "accelerated" course. The courses are only three weeks long, and usually involve lots of labs and project work.
In Canada, we were used to a Reading Week in February, but classes are just starting here. There will be a week's holiday for Easter, but that wasn't soon enough for us. So, we've decided to ignore school for a week and vacation in Italy.
Plus, there's a few sporting events we wanted to see there. If you happen to be watching CBC, keep an eye on the Canadian fans at the Canada vs. Germany hockey game on Thursday and the women's Freestyle Aerials on Sunday. We'll post more when we get back.

And Suddenly No One Asks, "Where's Denmark?"

So...You must all be wondering what it's actually like to live in a country which is now under the scrutiny (well, maybe that's an understatement) of the Islamic world, not to mention a lot of other countries around the world. Anyway, this whole cartoon deal only really became known to most people within the past few weeks. Apparently when they were published in September, some Islamic clerics wanted apologies from the paper (Jyllands-Posten, a name which I'm sure has become a household name around the world by now) and from the Danish government. After not getting an apology from either group, these clerics sought out support from Islamic states around the world. I'm kind of confused about why it took 4-5 months for the the Islamic states to respond...But anyway....The rest is history...Everyone has heard of riots in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon as well as the boycotts of Danish goods that are happening in many of the Islamic states.

So...What's the attitute in Denmark, you ask? Well it depends who you ask I guess...Some would applaud the editor of the paper (Flemming Rose) for trying to express freedom of speech and for attempting to break down taboos, while others think it's completely unacceptable and many people who have opinions somewhere in between. A lot of the Muslims in Denmark are trying to not rock the boat at all when it comes to the sensitive politics, others are taking to the streets. In fact when I was at a group meeting today, I saw a protest rally going on down one of the major streets in Copenhagen. I'm not sure if the rally was peaceful or not. I guess I'll find out in the news soon enough....

Winter in Denmark....ooh, aahh

Well, as turns out we were right to assume that we didn't need to bring winter jackets to Denmark. I think the coldest that it's gotten here is -5, whereby everyone thinks it's FREEZING and we just laugh and think of how cold it used to be in Kingston. Yesterday I went for a walk with some friends in the deer park near the sea. Somehow it came up that everyone was wearing two pairs of pants. Everyone was shocked to find out that at ~0 degrees Celcius I was only wearing one pair of jeans! Hilarity!

That's not even getting into the snow part...So far it's snowed 3 times this winter. The first time it snowed here, we were in Holland so we didn't actually get to experience it. The last two times were in the past two weeks and each time couldn't have yielded more than 10-20cm of snow. Well as it turns out, snow is a HUGE deal here - the trains stopped running, the airport closed and people were urged not leave their homes to go to work. And there we were thinking that we'd only use the trains to go to DTU in bad weather. Apparently our backup plan is a failure...I think we'll just take our bikes.

Marks

The Danish have a very strange marking system. Rather than percentages, letter grades or GPAs, they have a 13-point system:

00 – no work submitted
03 – work completely unacceptable
5 – failure
6 – barely sufficient
7 – below average
8 – average performance
9 – slightly above average
10 – excellent, but not particularly original
11 – excellent
13 – exceptionally excellent

Part of the logic seems to be that there is no way for anyone to change their grade to improve it (for instance, you can’t put a 1 in front of 03 to make 13). As well, markers base all of their marks on the “average” 8. There is no bell curve to raise marks, even for particularly hard tests. Everyone could fail if the professor feels it is justified. To receive a 13 is a real accomplishment, professors will only hand them out every few years… Of course, in Denmark, you don’t necessarily want that much prestige (everyone is equal).

And, if you want to know your mark, you can always check the professor’s office door, where they post everyone’s mark (complete with your name and student number).

Visiting the Netherlands

We spent the Christmas holiday in the Netherlands (i.e. Holland) visiting Marieke’s mum’s family. It was very relaxing, especially since I could understand very little of what was being said (my limited knowledge of Danish provided me no help with Dutch)… It was even a White Christmas. On Christmas Day 2 (Dutch Boxing Day), there was a bit of snow. By the next day, there was so much snow (3 inches) that they closed the airport and stopped the trains (some people slept on the trains until they started again, to avoid paying for a taxi home).

We visited Amsterdam, which is still a very interesting place, but has unfortunately transformed into more of an American frat boy’s hang out. The city centre is filled with “erotic museums” and small shops selling drug paraphernalia and posters of the pope doing unmentionable things. We visited the Anne Frank House, the world's thinnest house (2m wide) and generally wandered the canals (pictures). Before leaving, we walked through the Red Light District, which Marieke had not seen on her previous visits with her family. It’s a short stretch on either side of a canal, with women in bikinis standing around in red-lit windows, looking bored and talking on cell phones. Quite sad really.

We also greatly enjoyed the larger variety of available foods. Marieke finally found tofu in the regular grocery stores, as well as peanut butter. And, they have some amazing Dutch specialties, like:

• “Syrup Waffles”
• French fries with fritesaus (tasty mayonnaise)
• French fries with curry sauce
• Chocolate sprinkles (for your morning toast)
• Vla (like Jello pudding, but sold in milk cartons)
• Pannekoeks (a.k.a. pancakes)
• Poffertjes (small pancakes)
• Olliebollen (literally “Oil Balls,” covered with powdered sugar, a treat for New Year’s Day)

With all these delicious foods, I have no idea how the Dutch have all managed to avoid becoming obese.

Joining Spin Class at DTU

So...After a month of unsuccessfully trying to make it to a DTU spin class I finally went. Most of the time the classes conflicted with Danish or school. The one time I was able to make it, I spent about 20 minutes trying to find the place and then when I finally did the door was locked. After knocking a few times I decided to give up rather than relentlessly knock and make a fool of myself in front of a bunch of Danish strangers.

Last Friday I finally was able to make it to class. It was a beginners class, which I figured was a good idea even though I'd done a winter's worth of spinning in Canada. Well...I turns out that going to a beginner's class didn't really make much difference considering that all instructions were in Danish. To boot, the instructor was an Italian guy who knew Danish but no English (so clarification was kind of out of the question). After struggling to figure out all the bells and whistles on the spin bikes with the help of the lady beside me (which were way too complicated for what they were), I proceeded to follow an our long class in Danish.

One thing that surprised me was the demographics in the classes. At Queen's, a sports team or clubs mostly have undergrads, and a handful of masters/PhDs/law/medicines join them. Here it's common for professors and university staff to join clubs, so basically I was the youngest person in the classes!