Get paid to go to school

As if free tuition was not enough, Danish citizens receive a salary while attending university. Each month, students get about 4000 Kr (800$). This in intended to cover housing (2000 Kr), food (1500 Kr) and fun (500 Kr). As well, they receive money each semester to cover the cost of textbooks. And free printing at all university databars.
Of course, they'll pay 60% tax for the rest of their lives...

"Do you dream of spending the summer in Canada?"

A big poster has been put up in one of my classrooms, advertising the exciting possibility of working in Canada this summer. Successful applicants could help develop new course materials and laboratory exercises for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Fastelavn (i.e. Danish Carnival)

The Danish are really confused when it comes to holidays! Halloween doesn't involve costumes or candy. Christmas decorations are set up by the beginning of November.
And their take on "Carnival" or "Mardi Gras" is just plain weird: a mix of European, Mexican and Viking traditions. Like many other European countries, they dress up in costumes and have a big party. And, similarly to Mexico, there is a pinata, but it's a little different: it is a wooden barrel with a black cat outline painted on the outside. They take turns beating the barrel until it breaks open. There is no candy inside the pinata, but the person to break open the barrel is declared to be the winner and gets some prize (often beer, or candy for kids).
The winner is said to have "killed the cat." This is because this tradition is a tribute to their Viking past, when they used to put a live cat inside the barrel. The "winner" was the person who broke the barrel and revealed the dead cat inside. This was supposed to somehow ward off evil. The weirdest part is that Danes don't see anything wrong with this...
Stay tuned for their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

Reading Week 2006 – Day 0

It wasn’t technically Reading Week, but I’ve never really had a perfect attendance record anyway. Besides, from a Canadian perspective, the Olympics were so close to Denmark.

I apologize now for this overly lengthy description of our trip. To summarize: we went to the Olympics, as well as Florence, Venice and Milan. It was fun. If you want more details, please keep reading.

Our trip got off to a bit of a shaky start. As we were about to board the plane, Marieke noticed that she had lost her jacket somewhere in the airport. Luckily, the Copenhagen is pretty small. Then, our discount flight to “Paris” really landed in Beauvais, which is an hour’s bus ride from the outskirts of Paris. Some might question why we would fly to Paris to start our Italian vacation, but the flight was really cheap and everywhere in Europe is really so close together. The next morning, it was only a four hour train ride to Torino…

Reading Week 2006 – Day 1

Having only planned this trip two months ago, we had found that all reasonably priced accommodation in Torino was completely booked. Several people chose to stay in Milan (an hour and a half away by train) and commute daily, but we found a cheaper option.

We found a small campground in the mountains that was open year-round. When we first emailed them, they pointed out that they were primarily open to RVs and that it would be much too cold to camp. But we figured, how cold could Italy really be? Besides, we’re Canadians and we’ve camped in real winters before.

So, when we arrived in the mountains and found that the temperature was 10°C, we were feeling pretty smug. How could they possibly be holding Winter Olympics in weather like this? We weren’t feeling quite so confident though, when we found out that this warm weather meant that our campsite was flooded. We managed to find a couple of slightly elevated spots that weren’t soaked and set up our tents.

We had to hurry, since we had tickets to see the Canada vs. Germany men’s hockey game that night. The Palasport Olympico is quite a small arena, so we had a great view from our seats in the “nose bleeds” behind the net. The seats were far from full, but it was great to see that the Canadian fans vastly outnumbered the Germans. A large majority of the fans appeared to be Italians, but they still happily cheered and waved Canadian flags every time Canada scored (final score: Canada 5 – Germany 1).

Reading Week 2006 – Day 2

Back at our campsite, we had only a few hours to sleep, before we had to catch another train: we were going hiking along the Italian coast, about two hours south of Torino. We slept some more on the train, and when we awoke and looked outside, we were shocked to see palm trees and orange trees in full bloom. We even saw a few people playing tennis in shorts! We quickly realized that our long underwear and extra sweaters, which had seemed like such a good idea at 6am, would spend most of the day in our backpack.

We hiked along a small trail from Monterosso to Riomaggiore, through a beautiful area know as Cinque Terre. The trail was originally used by local farmers to travel between five (cinque) coastal towns and to access their orchards in between. The scenery alternates between spectacular views of the Mediterranean, lush vegetation and the small towns (all of the buildings are painted pink, yellow or orange). The trail is apparently a popular tourist destination during the summer, but was pretty much deserted for us.

That evening, we returned to Torino, where we met up with Ieva (Marieke’s classmate from Latvia), Tyler (Steve’s brother, now a British banker) and Vladi (Tyler’s friend, a Latvian-Californian). They were also camping with us, although Vladi was slightly under-prepared…

Reading Week 2006 – Day 3

When we awoke, after a slightly chilled sleep, we found that Vladi had been awake pretty much all night. He had not brought a camping mat, and his sleeping bag was “three-seasons.” He had spent several hours in the heated washroom, and then in the campground restaurant when it opened. So, our first order of business was to find him some better equipment. Luckily, in our small mountain town, we found a sports store, which still had a wide selection of swimming equipment (including a cheap inflatable mattress).

We had tickets for an afternoon hockey game, so we had a chance to slowly walk around Torino, which was not particularly interesting. There were a few statues and historical buildings, like anywhere in Europe, but without the Olympics, I don’t think there would be much reason to visit. The highlight of the tour was lunch: we found a small cafeteria, with amazing pasta at very cheap prices.

Since we were traveling with two Latvians, we had chosen to go see Latvia play Sweden. Our seats were even further up into the nose bleeds (back row!). The Latvian fans were much louder than the Canadians had been. There were strict rules preventing people from bringing food or noise makers, which the Canadians had followed but which were apparently not enforced. Some Latvian fans even managed to bring in drums. One group also had a Latvian flag that was so large it covered about fifty people. By comparison, the Swedes were quieter, but more heavily drunk (notable especially considering this was an afternoon game).

The game was lots of fun in the first period (several times, Latvian players seemingly tripped on the blue line and fell down). The mood became subdued by the second period, when the score quickly climbed to 5-0 for Sweden. After the game, we found yet another amazing (cheap) restaurant.

Reading Week 2006 – Day 4

Marieke’s Birthday! And we finally got some snow in the mountains! Everyone slept comfortably, but we all felt in the mood to sit around indoors for a while. In the campground restaurant, we watched some cross-country skiing on the big screen, and drank innumerable cappuccinos (each only about 1$, compared to about 7$ in Copenhagen). We had planned to do a bit of hiking, but ended up just sitting around enjoying more Italian food.

That evening, we caught a shuttle bus up to our next Olympic event: Freestyle Aerials. As the bus climbed up the mountain, it began to snow. By the time we reached the event, it was really snowing. The big screen read “Competion Posponed until 20:00” (especially funny when read with an Italian accent). Unfortunately, at 20:00, it was still snowing as hard, so the event was further postponed, until Tuesday, after we’d left. Still, the two hour wait was really fun, talking with fans from all over the world and jumping around trying to stay warm.

By the time they told us to go home, it had snowed so much that the road back down the mountain was impassable. So, rather than wait in a line for them to clear the road, we walked to a nearby restaurant and had some dinner. By the time we came out, the last few people were just boarding buses (looking much colder than us).

We descended the hill, and decided to have some dessert and drinks in another restaurant (to celebrate Marieke’s birthday). The mixture of snow, mild temperatures outdoors, and warm restaurants meant that we were soaked. We decided to head back to the campground, and put our clothes into the dryer, and continue the party in the laundry room.

Unfortunately, we found that we couldn’t work the dryer without special tokens. We were unwilling to sleep outdoors in wet clothes, so we moved all of our sleeping bags into the laundry room, and slept indoors…