Chinese New Year

HapPy ChInEsE NeW yEaR

Despite being in Denmark, I haven't forgotten my Chinese roots, I want to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year. It's very different this time round for my family back in S'pore. Traditionally, my extended family would have our reunion dinner at my house. This year, my granny and I are missing. So weird...I miss Sharks Fins and Hokkien Mee and Satay and Chili Crab and Chicken Rice and teochew porridge.

Introduction Week - Opera House and Carlsberg

Copenhagen Opera House...completed in 2005

A proof that I was at the Copenhagen Opera House...or at least near it...

Copenhagen Opera House by night...

Marble Church which stands directly across the Amalienborg Palace...

Amalienborg Palace...It is the Danish Royal Family's Winter palace...The premises are surrounded by 4 palaces...They are the Christian VII, Christian VIII, Frederick VIII and Christian IX palaces...In the middle of the courtyard stands the statue of Frederick V (below)...If the Queen is in the palace, the queen will have her flag raised, if another royalty is in the palace, then his/her personal flag will be hung...good idea to allow tourists n common ppl know who's at home...Very bad idea for security (easy picking for the terrorists)!!!

Frederick V in the center of the 4 palaces...

Marching guards...

Closeup of a young guard...He seems oblivious to the surrounding or is he irritated by pesty tourists?

The Church of Our Lady...It looks more grandeur than this picture, trust me!

Leather seats in the church...

The guys in front of The Church of Our Lady...

Hans Christian Andersen once lived in those colored houses in the background at Nyhavn...Nyhavn is pronounced New Haff...

Viking caricature...

Tuborg...a beer juggernaut in Denmark...Turborg Classic is the best!!! Do try it if you come across it...

Some famous soccer dudes' autographs on these priceless shirts...

Juxtaposition of the new and old brewery methods...

Checking for dirt particles or engaged in profound philosophical thoughts...
u decide...

Intro group members...For the sake of not forgetting who they are after a while, they are (from left), Gina(USA), Yours Truly, Piotr(Poland) and ??? (USA)...

2 million dollars smiles...

Pretending that I drank all of these...yeah rite!!!

On the whole, Introduction Week was relatively fun. Above are some pictures taken outside DTU during the Introduction Week. We visited Copenhagen City Centre and Carlsberg Brewery.

For me, the highlight was visiting the Copenhagen Opera House. It was as magnificent as it was breath-taking. Although we visited it in the day, the architecture was very captivating. Despite knowing zilch about opera and music in general, the Opera House has this unspeakable and inconceivable allure that draws me to want to have a piece of it (kidding). When darkness falls, the lights that illuminates the building comes on in a repertoire of colors and intensity that almost becomes a musical piece of its own.

It is worth noting that the Opera House was donated by the owner of the shipping line, Maesk, A.P. Mc-Kinney Møller. It was built at a price of USD500million. At 94, with a net worth of USD25.5billion, Mr Moller is the richest man in Denmark and he is a tad older than the Little Mermaid.

Standing in front of the Opera House, one can see the Amalienborg Palace which flanks the path leading straight to the Marble Church.

For now, lessons have started and there's this inertia that is stopping me from wanting to study. Maybe it's a student thing. The classes are somewhat boring...All due respect, the lecturers here are the best non-medically trained anesthesiologists! You have to fight against your party-battled, late-nite-bloggings and notes-reading body as well as the sleep-inducing monotonical voice of the professors.

Seeing is real

Blowing fog...

Hans Christian Andersen...

A violation of copyrights version of The Little Mermaid...

Meandering up the Round Tower...

Atop the Round Tower...

In the heart of Copenhagen or Kobenhavn...

Parliment House...

Tivoli garden at the background...it is a amusement park...opens only in middle of April...

LLamma...

Flamingos!

At CPH Zoo...

Langelinie is the place where Little Mermaid is located..."Den lille Havfrue" is Danish for Little Mermaid...

Little Mermaid...from a distance...

Little Mermaid from another angle...

Little Mermaid upclose...

With Little Mermaid...

It's been a week in Denmark. We have been shuttling between Lyngby, where DTU is located and Copenhagen city centre. Netto is the cheapest supermarket around. Despite it being the cheapest, it is still considerably more expensive than the stuff in Singapore. Transport is absolutely insane. You pay like $5-$6 for what would have been a $0.67 bus ride in SG.

It's been quite an experience interacting with the other exchange students. There are good representatives from the various European countries. Off hand, I can think of Poland, Italy, France, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Korea, USA, Austria, Hong Kong, China, Portugal, Germany, Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Belgium, Turkey and Japan, to name 20. Haha. It's a pity that there aren't too many Asian students. Learning to identify the nationalities from their accents. The Frenchs are very easy to pinpoint, Italians are pretty easy too whilst Polishs and Austrians are harder to distinguish.

The Europeans seem to know quite little about Asia and it is easy for them to confuse yellow-skinned people to be from China. Well, there are a few explanations which I can think of. That is, since the university is a technical school, most might be less interested in History, Geography and the fine arts. Thus, they might not have read up much on Asia. Secondly, the air tickets to Asia are expensive, making vacation plans to Asia improbable. Thirdly, traveling within Europe is very easy as they don't need passports and cheaper.

Weather seems to be the mantra of conversations followed closely by food. For a grand total of 30minutes, it SNOWED! yay...The temperature is pretty constant at 3-5deg, occasionally hovering at 0deg. The winds are very chilly and strong. It can literally blow a lean person away!

For now, my clique have made plans to travel to Sweden to see the Northern Lights and experiment with the snow mobile. In Easter, we are heading up to Italy. Loving Europe so much...

A bit on the pictures...
The LIttle Mermaid statue was made in 1913. Since then, it has been beheaded a few times due to various reasons, mainly political. The head is that of the sculptor's wife and the body of a ballerina. Hans Christian Andersen is probably the most famous Danish together with the owner of the shipping line, Maersk. In case you are wondering who H.C. Andersen is, he wrote the Little Mermaid, Ugly Duckling amongst many other famous stories.

Denmark Day 3

An ice-skating rig in the middle of town!!!

A weary pose during our ride back to Lyngby...

Look closely at the prices of the Indonesian food...it's exorbitant! SGD1 = DKK 3.5...

Do I need to say more?

A smiley toaster !

Xiaoli trying out her boots while we just nonchalantly occupied the seats meant for other shoppers...how inconsiderate!!!

Setting sun...beautiful river that meanders through Copenhagen(Kobenhavn)...

A gallant horseman statue in the middle of the road...

By a huge something...haha

A typical street...the walkway is not as nice as in SG...there's almost always a thin layer of water.

Typical buildings in Denmark...

A chinese shop in Kobenhavn...

Tiger, a shop which sells relatively cheap stuff...

Macdonalds...

This fellow is huge!!! The fur is super thick too...

Posing at the train station...Xiaoli, Me and Baolai

Lyngby station...where DTU is located

In the bus, there's a nice table. Buses are longer in Denmark than Singapore.

Bus/Train tickets. The country is divided into zones. The zones spread out in radial manner. For eg., if i am in zone 2 and i want to get to zone 7, I need to punch a "2 zoner" once and a "3 zoner" once. You can take bus or train to get to your destination and take as many rides as possible as long as you punch the corrrect no. of cards to make up the no. of zones you are traveling across.

Shall not explain much... The captions will do the talking. My posts are done as at Singapore timing to prevent confusion. In any case, Denmark is 7 hours behind Singapore...