WELCOME BACK! ALL CAPS! Because I’m really excited about this post! 🙂
If you’ve been following along (would be wild, so thank you), you heard about the first half of Core Course Week in my last post. Today I’m going to break down my Short Study Tour!
This is a 3-day trip every Core Course goes on with their classmates and professor to a new Danish city (or maybe even Swedish! or German! etc.) during Core Course Week.
Depending on which class you’re in, you could start the week with this (Monday—Wednesday) or finish off with your Short Study Tour (Thursday—Saturday). Obviously (if you read my last post HA), we did ours at the end. Here we go!
Day 3 | Thursday — All Aboard to Aalborg
We left early. I’m talking up at 5:00 AM at my homestay, out the door, København H train station at 7:00. Tough stuff. But we had a nice train ride through Denmark. As you can see on the map below, the train goes through the second and third biggest cities in Denmark — Aarhus and Odense — on the way up North to Aalborg. It was definitely a nice train ride, but with the amount of relatively flat farmland, it mostly gave Midwest. Which I love obviously, it was just pretty familiar.
We got to Aalborg and went out to find some lunch. I packed my own (responsible), but I treated myself to an absolutely insane carrot cake. At about 2:00 PM, we started our tour of Aalborg’s street art.
Turns out Aalborg is internationally known for its mural game. There have been 80+ murals created by a whole array of global artists since 2013, and they are truly stunning. We spent a ton of time gawking at the sheer scale matched with the incredible detail and symbolism.
What’s almost as impressive (at least to urban studies classes like our own) is the cycle the city helped create to revitalize itself. It was a bit tough to get the first artist to do a mural there, but once he did, more and more started coming. More art meant more visitors, and more visitors meant more money for the city. More money for the city meant improvements to benefits visitors which meant… more visitors. Pretty nice huh?
We finished up that amazing tour, but before dinner we checked out the old castle and monastery. The monastery was built in the 1400s. Pretty old for sure. The castle was built after that, and they included a dungeon for witches. Apparently they could fit 15 witches in the dungeon at once, but we could only fit about 5 DIS students…
We wrapped up the night by walking over to the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art for dinner. When I tell you that dinner was incredible. Jaw-dropping. SHOW-STOPPING. Jokes aside, it changed my life. The art there was nice, but I honestly think the most beautiful thing about the museum was the veal entree. We treated ourselves to a long and restful meal, explored the museum a little bit, then went back to the hotel. We were absolutely wiped.
Day 4 | Friday — Walking and Talking Aalborg
HEY! Before you read about this day, I wanted to let you know that there’s another way to experience it! I did an Instagram story takeover for the DIS Copenhagen account, and you can find it here: ”Ben’s Day”. Check it out!
Slow start to the day with some good breakfast at the hotel. At 10 AM, we joined Peder Baltzer Nielsen — the former lead architect of Aalborg — who gave us a tour of the city! His insights were absolutely fascinating. As we walked around the city, we heard about the design decisions, the political machinations that helped build it, the intent (and results) of different plans. It was seriously one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had, and in a lot of ways it cemented that I want to keep studying urban studies.
We ended up in Aalborg Øst, a suburb of the city near Aalborg University and the hospital. Peder had helped transform the suburb to maintain a less-urban aesthetic, but he had also managed to drastically increase density, a sense of urban livability, and walkability. We had lunch there as well, some tasty and cheap dürüm kebab.
We wrapped up lunch pretty quick and went back into the city center, where we did some more walking and talking along the waterfront. Regitze told us about some different developments in the Aalborg harbour — highlights included the different iterations of bridges, a revitalized spirits factory, and a cute marina (that reminded me of my West Michigan home). That was a nice walk, and in between stopping to talk it was great to keep getting to know Core Course classmates.
At the end of that walk, we wound up at Aalborg Streetfood Køkkenfabrikken (literally Aalborg Streetfood Kitchen Factory). It was such a cute market with all kinds of food. Even better, we were eating on DIS’ dime. Each of us got a gift card and we enjoyed an absolutely beautiful sunset outside before sitting inside at a table together and chatting for a while among ourselves and with Regitze.
I took the bus back to the hotel with a friend after dinner and slept for a little bit. I was so tired, yet again, from a really long day. After going down for a quick nap, I joined some more friends from my Core Course and we went to check out what the city center was like at night! It was really fun to meet some local Danes attending Aalborg University and get their impressions of the city, but eventually we had to call it a night.
Day 4 | Friday — There’s More?!
Regitze blessed us with a very late start today, so I got a ton of sleep. We left the hotel around 11 AM, and did a short walk around some of the city center we hadn’t seen yet. There was an adorable street with 1-story homes from nearly four centuries ago, and there was a stunning public library that was clearly also a hub for young people in Aalborg.
We checked out the lobby of the aforementioned Musikkens Hus, a culture center in an old industrial building, and ended our walk at the Utzon Architectural Center, where there was an exhibition on Danish Summer Homes. I felt so nerdy this trip, but I totally adored the exhibit. It was really well-curated, and it gave us all some insight into a slice of Danish culture we wouldn’t have been able to experience otherwise (summer homes are super popular here, but they mostly go unused in these fall months).
Our class grabbed lunch at Penny Lane Cafe, where we were treated to some seriously incredible salad and a stunning slice of carrot cake. In reflecting on this incredible week, one thing I’ve really come to appreciate is the amount of time we were given for meals. I never felt rushed to eat. Instead, we usually had 2+ hours for the meals we did as a class. That made them amazing places to get to know each other better and get into some amazing conversations!
After lunch, we had a little free time before our train left. A couple friends and I wanted to hang out by the harbor one more time, so we walked down there and enjoyed some people watching on a busy Aalborg Saturday. We didn’t have too much time there, because at 4 PM our train left from Aalborg. The train ride back was a fun way to bookend the trip. We played a card game version of monopoly (I had never played before and got absolutely rocked). We got back to Copenhagen around 9 PM, said some sad goodbyes, and went our separate ways.
That was a pretty hefty post. Props to you if you made it all the way through. I just have two more reflections on the importance of Core Course week.
- I absolutely love urban studies. This week helped me realize that this topic is something I’m genuinely passionate about.
- DIS has it figured out. Putting Core Course week at this point in the semester is perfect. Our class got so close, and now all of us are so excited about our trip to Germany together in November. This week is the perfect chance to click as a group.
And that’s that! So concludes Core Course week! Thanks for following along, and I can’t wait to tell you about what I’ve been up to since!