Matt and Janelle in Europe

We arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the late morning. As soon as we left the train and entered the train station, we realized that the currency was apparently different in Denmark; when we saw that a hotdog at 7-11 (for some reason, they seem to have a lot of 7-11s) cost 20 currency-units (which we later learned were DKK, or Danish kroner), we knew something was off. Although we weren't sure how much money we would need to withdraw, we were able to find an ATM to get some of that funny Danish money. We dropped off our bags in the train station lockers and set out to explore the city.

As we often do when we first arrive at an unfamiliar city, we went to the tourism office that was near the train station. We found a free map that had a suggested walking tour, so we set out walking. We walked around the city for a while exploring the various points along the walking tour. We saw lots of nice looking buildings, but, like Amsterdam, didn't feel that anything stood out as the main Copenhagen attraction. On top of that, we felt that the walking tour was partially an advertisement as it included a number of restaurants and a souvenir shop.

Eventually, as we were walking near the water, we encountered a strange Japanese festival in the park. There was live Japanese music, Japanese food, and, perhaps most prominently, Danish people dressed up in what they apparently thought Japanese people were like (mostly anime costumes). We walked through the crowds briefly, entertained by the costumes people were wearing.

We continued along the water, eventually arriving at Copenhagen's famed Little Mermaid statue, apparently significant because Copenhagen was home to Hans Christian Anderson, author of the original Little Mermaid story. Though the statue is one of Copenhagen's biggest tourist attractions, we found it very underwhelming; of course, not being Danish, we likely just didn't have the same cultural pride that the Danish might have for it.

After seeing the statue, we walked onto a star-shaped island that was used as a military fortress in the past (and still houses military buildings today). The fortress has elevated edges which are now used as walking and running trails, so we strolled around them. After this, we continued our walking tour, eventually reaching a large park with a castle in the middle.

After a while, we stopped for a late lunch at a gourmet burger place; it had some great food, but was fairly expensive (Copenhagen as a whole seemed to easily be the most expensive city we've seen yet). Once we finished eating, we completed our walking tour and stopped at a cafe with internet access because we wanted to confirm that our plans to meet Matt's friend, Jack, that evening remained unchanged.

We had planned before to meet up and stay with Jack, who is a UC Santa Cruz student studying abroad in Lund, Sweden. We took the train from Copenhagen to Lund, meeting Jack at the train station. He took us back to his dorm, where he shared a common room, kitchen, and bathrooms with other international students. After getting settled in, Jack shared with us some delicious homemade bread that he'd made, and we talked about our and his recent travels before going to sleep.