Tour to a Danish museum

Today, I had a fantastic day. It was full of excitement and new things. My last two days were kind of okay but today was a blast. DIS has a schedule for us, in which we have two day of classes and then a field study trip and then rest of the classes. So, going to a new place every Wednesday with the rest of the class is quite enjoyable. I am taking a European Culture and History course; my class went to a museum today, which is famous for Danish golden age art. Heinrich Hirschsprung (1836-1908) was the artist who gave all his collection of golden period to the Danish state and asked to build a separate museum for it. This museum holds paintings showing Danish era from 1800 to early 20^th century. The paintings included landscape, Danish lifestyle, beautiful houses and happy families, and the war period of Denmark. Some paintings were very close to reality but some were very romanticized. Some of the golden age famous Danish artists are Christoffer Eckersberg, Niels Hoyen, Johan Lundbye, and Julius Exner.

Most of my day was spent in the museum, after that I met a friend for a coffee and a piece of cake. We both LOVE Danish bakery cakes, they are ridiculously good. So, I always take time to go to a bakery to have a cinnamon role with a cup of coffee.

I also had a climate seminar to attend today which was offered by my Environmental Economics classes. I like that DIS gives us guest lecture every now and then, it is a good change and you get to listen to professionals talking about their experiences. Class participation is a very important factor in the Danish classrooms; you are very much expected to ask questions during lecture. In the seminar, we learned that 55% of Copenhageners ride their bicycles to work. (Which makes sense because in Copenhagen, you see bicycles every where, government is cutting on excessive use of private cars). If the state wants to cut back on something, they just start to increase the tax. There are very high taxes on everything, particularly cars. (You have to pay tax double the price of a car, no wonder Denmark did cut back almost 20% Carbon Dioxide emission and had a 33% increase in the GDP over the past couple of years). The environmental talk was followed by a sweet reception in which we had free bear, wine, cookies and cheese. (FYI, drinking age in Denmark is 16; these people smoke and drink a lot).

On my way back home, I saw a group of protesters who had blocked the streets, they were moving forward slowly with a lot of police protection. I could not figure out why they were protesting because all the banners were in Danish language. It was very interesting to see angry people in Copenhagen, because I always thought that they are never unhappy. (Just for the record, Danes are the second happiest people in the world).

Tomorrow, we are leaving for out short study tours with our class fellows and faculty. My trip is going to Northern Germany and Western Denmark. I am going to start packing now, because we leave very early in the morning. (As expected, nobody is happy about getting up early at 6 am; it’s going to be very dark because we don’t get daylight until 9am here). I think the trip is going to be adventurous and informative tour.