Hej!
"You don't know what you got 'til it’s gone"--cheesy quote but so true.
I went on a study trip with my program from Thursday (2/14/08) until Saturday (2/16/08) to western Denmark (Arhus and Randers) and when we got back, I finally felt like Copenhagen was home. And I was so ready to be home. On the Wednesday prior to the tour, we had a field study at A.P. Moller- Maersk, a huge conglomerate sea, train, truck, etc. worldwide transportation company. They do more than transport stuff...but I don't think I need to go into everything they do...But if you have ever seen the huge metal containers lined up along the jersey shore or on trains with 'Maersk' on them, that’s the company I visited. The headquarters is in Copenhagen but they have offices in over 130 countries. They're huge. Danes have a fear of large companies and large countries (threats) because of the history of Denmark's loss in territories during the world wars. Now, they fear Denmark is getting smaller than it really is and their unique, individual culture is becoming less 'Danish' and more western. But because Mr. Maersk donates a lot of money to the arts and builds a lot of buildings for the arts, most Danes do not bother worrying about the size of the company.
On the other end of the spectrum...on Thursday we went to visit Hummel, a small very specialized sportswear, fashion wear, and footwear company. They sponsor local football teams and handball teams. They are very popular all over Europe but only available in certain European stores or magazines in the states (i.e. Eurosport). They don't try to hold the largest market share in every sport or have a large presence at every sporting event because they like to focus in on a couple of sports, just the ones they're good at. They think Handball will become as popular in Europe as Basketball is in the states, so they are going to try to be very present in the game and gain an entire share of a market that Nike and Adidas do not see high potential in. Also, Hummel sponsors the Danish national football team, so whenever the team does well, Hummel does well. Hummel is hoping to use Denmark's recent 1st place in the European handball tournament to help boost their sales and to promote Handball as an exciting, profitable sport. In fall 2008, they will release some of the coolest shoes I have ever seen. Made for handball (flat sneakers with good grip) they are supposed to appeal to both your good side (they call it your 'at home with your girlfriend side') and your bad side (on the court, competitive side), one shoe is black and the other is white, they mirror each other in detail but have different personalities. Too bad they only make them for boys. Everything they make is very detail oriented. Simple, yet full of character. Even my new hummel jacket has character! They also have fashion wear for girls and boys and they don't use paid endorsements as advertising, they just find pictures of Hollywood celebrities wearing their clothes from paparazzi pictures or from magazine spreads. They have a very small marketing budget so they have to be more creative and innovative than Nike and Adidas. One specific campaign they had was a fake personal ad that led curious consumers to their myspace page. It was two different ads, one by a girl searching for a boy and vice versa. Because the hummel logo is a bumble bee, the tag lines and myspace address were, "bumblebeelookingfortheflower" and "flowerlookingforthebumblebee." They also use volunteer athletes to come in and test their products at their headquarters...so they save money on market research, too. Pretty clever stuff. After hummel, we went on a walking tour of Arhus with one of the most excited and bubbly tour guides I have ever met. Arhus used to have a rampart around it and merchants would come into the city to sell goods in the small backyards courtyards closest to the sea. We went through a lot of beautiful, pastel colored backyards and saw almost the entire city in less than an hour. After the tour we went to our hostel in the woods and then left to go to dinner at about 5pm with all 25 of us, not to mention another 20-some DIS group of students ate there as well, but we were kicked out by 630 to let some locals get one of our half a dozen tables. The nightlife on Thursday in Arhus was very dull, especially at 630 in the evening...on Valentine's Day. For about an hour or two all 40 or so of the students went to a bar to get a beer paid for by our school. Then I went with a smaller group of people to go explore the city a little bit more. We ended up going to an Australian Bar that was having a trivia night on Pop Culture...mostly including the Grammy's and Hollywood drama. We sat through the first round shouting out answers...because we knew them but got there too late to play in the game...but by the second round, the team who was leading left...so we got their answer sheet. That's when it all went downhill. The questions got harder as the rounds went on and more specific questions about Grammy winners and older generation, international questions appeared. We were stumped through the last few rounds and ended up placing last...but we were first when we started!
On Friday we went to the largest dairy co-op in Europe, Arla Foods. We had a business presentation at their Yogurt factory and got to hear how all 9,000 farmers are included in decision making for the co-op. It was all very confusing but they let us taste all of their yogurt products and see the huge metal tubes that ferment milk for yogurt. We also saw a huge tower of sugar! And they have life-size yogurt cartons throughout the facility...and yes, they sell their yogurt in half-gallon cartons, just like milk...I learned that the hard way. After Arla, we went to the ARoS museum. It's about 8 floors of modern and traditional art. The design of the museum itself is very modern, with a huge spiral ramp/staircase in the middle of the building. On the top floor, they had traditional paintings and sculptures, and each floor below is a more recent time period. One floor had a huge painting with shiny things- plastic flamingo, a doll of Marilyn Monroe, sparkly gold high heels, and other plastic objects. The painting had no center to it and it was supposed to make the viewer dizzy from all of the material things. In the room next to that one, there were jars of different parts of a horse preserved. Above the display case, a video showed the horse being sacrificed and the artists removing its different body parts. It was supposed to be a way to show protest for the Vietnam War...horse=power and government. But when it was actually done, many Danes were very confused and offended by the 'art'...as were most of the students in my group. It was a very strange exhibit and I found it very repulsive, especially because the artists tried to protest death with death...On another floor below, a huge black sculpture was installed. It had six beams and one beam in the middle. It was made out of metal and oil. The black oil made the middle beam and filled the rectangular space within the other six beams. It was supposed to resemble a temple or church and I think the black beam in the middle (which was separate from the other beams and the ceiling of the structure) was supposed to represent 'wisdom'...as unattainable. On the same floor, a huge sculpture attempted to be a collage like timeline of art through the centuries. It had roman and greek sculptures, paintings, and even televisions with art on the screen. Also, there was a Japanese artist's huge photographs with multiple, identical Japanese women in window cases (in one photo) and then on a conveyor belt passing by the window displays they were just in (which contain flowers and plants in the second photo). It is supposed to comment on Japanese society and women's lack of a role in society. On the ground floor, a huge boy sculpture sits alone by the window. It is of a boy in shorts squatting and resting his head on his crossed arms as he looks to his left. The details on this glass sculpture are amazing because they are so life like. The artist even made the boy's toes scrunch to show him gripping the floor. I will try to post some pictures on here soon. The rest of the day was spent shopping in Arhus (at the only Hummel store in Denmark) and then traveling to our next destination, Randers.
We stayed in Randers for Friday evening. It has the freshest beer in the World! They have a micro-brewery on the edge of town that actually has pipes running to local bar taps. The local call them the golden pipes. They put the pipes in when they decided to re-lay the streets...so this is a bit of a recent phenomena. There are only 62,000 people living in Randers and I think at least half of them were out on Friday night with us. There were a lot of bars and restaurants in one central area of the city, which made it very easy to try a couple different ones. We found a place with 15 kroner ($3) thors (the local brew beer)...which is very cheap for Denmark. Everyone in my program went to a few bars in the same area and then we all ended the night singing with our chaperones at a karaoke bar. Also, a local Drunkard followed our group around asking us to fight him while he held a fencing helmet. By the end of the night, one of the boys in our group got the man, George, to give him the helmet. We also found a really good pizza place open really late...something that is so hard to find in Copenhagen!
On Saturday, we all got up early and drove back towards Arhus to visit another museum. This museum was a bit different...its main attraction was a well-preserved bog man. I learned a lot about peat bogs and how they preserve bodies with sugars and other stuff...and they had old Viking attire and pictures of Arhus during the days of the rampart. We had lunch at a small village like cafe on the museum grounds and then we headed home to Copenhagen.
I think the trip was really interesting and I am thankful that I got to see another part of Denmark even if it was just full of farmland and windmills, it was beautiful and I probably would not have gone to Arhus or Randers on my own.
I am traveling to London this weekend (Friday to Sunday), so I will update you all when I get back! Love and miss all of you!
Peace,
Emily
P.S. thanks for reading :) And quick update on current events in Copenhagen: the Muhammad cartoon crisis that occurred in 2006 is kind of happening again. The police arrested a few men who were plotting to kill one of the cartoonists who created the drawings. As a result, the newspaper re-printed one of the cartoons and now a lot of Muslim youth have been rioting and small fires have broken out in a certain area of town. The riots also have to do with a new policy that allows all Police in Norrebro (the rioting area) to search and arrest anyone who looks like they may have narcotics or weapons on their person...which is a continuation of their effort to break-up the gangs who sell drugs in Christiania (a very different part of town…with experimental living situations). My visiting family told me they think the riots are happening in protest of the Police policy...and the 2nd cartoon crisis seems to have happened in the same time, by chance...but the riots could be for both reasons. I will try to keep you updated on that, and please do not worry, I am safe and not too close to where the riots are primarily occurring.
