August 14

We awoke from the best sleep we have had probably on the entire trip. Brian, Hanne, Jonas, and Jakob had each gone to school and work for the day so Ben and I had the house to ourselves for the day. We took our time getting ready, then headed out to explore the city. The most amazing thing about Copenhagen has got to be all the bikes. On each major street intersection, there has to be at least a couple hundred bikes parked at one time. Everywhere you go there is bicycles running through the streets, even more so than automobiles. As Brain told us the night before, though, they treat bicycles as transportation vehicles instead of recreational toys like Americans. They also had a system called City Bikes which allowed you to insert a 20.00 Kroner coin into the bike racks that were set up all around the city. After inserting the coin, you could take the bike for as long as you wanted and then just take it back to any of the racks to get your coin back. Ben and I were excited to try this out, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find a rack that still had a bike on it. However, the city wasn’t too big and we were able to see most of it on foot. One of the interesting attractions was the statue of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen’s harbor. There is a fairy tale that is linked to this statue; a tale that was the basis for Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid. This is probably the most famous icon in Copenhagen, yet we didn’t hear about it until the night before while talking with Brian and Hanne.

We made it home before either of the boys had returned from school, so we just relaxed and watched some daytime television for a short time. As was the familiar experience of daytime television, there wasn’t much to watch. It wasn’t long before Jakob and Jonas were home, and they brought a few of their friends over as well. We enjoyed watching them play American video games until dinner. For dinner we had roasted veal, steamed vegetables, potatoes, and a deliciously unique type of gravy. After dinner, we ended up riding with Brian and Hanne out to the wooded area that we had gone to the night before. They went to see Endy again while we were headed to the big party that Jonas and Jakob had invited us to. After Brain and Hanne escorted us to the party and found Jonas for us, they left us and we joined in some of the fun. The party was the second craziest party I’ve ever been to, right behind the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. There were a few thousand high schoolers spanning across this open area in the woods. When we got there, immediately two drunk girls riding a bike together down a hill sped by us out of control. Only a few feet passed us, they began to lose control and wiped out in the dirt. Although the spill looked painful, they both got up and I’m sure the drunkenness help with the pain. Then we noticed that there were many kids who had marker writing all over their faces and bodies. Apparently, as the tradition goes, all the kids from the incoming class were hazed in this way. The party is a tradition in itself taking place on the first Friday after school starts each year. Since drinking is legal at the age of sixteen, everyone in their school is legal to drink. I must say, though, that it felt weird hanging out with drunk sixteen year olds while not breaking any laws. I had to keep convincing myself that I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong or illegal. Once it got near dark, most of the people started to leave to go to their separate parties or clubs for the remainder of the night. After Ben got sprayed in the back twice by beer cans getting thrown down the hill, we decided to head back to the house for the night. It was about 10:00 pm when we left, but we didn’t get to the house until 11:15 pm even though it was only a ten minute drive. We had to wait for over a half hour just to get our two trains that we needed to take to get back.

Back at the house, Hanne had already had our beds set up for us and it didn’t take long for us to conk out for the night. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay awake to talk to my family at the Zimmer family reunion. They didn’t have Skype set up until 7:00 pm their time which would have been 1:00 am our time. I could barely keep my eyes open at 11:00 pm, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it until 1:00 am. Hopefully I can find a stable internet source in Oslo to catch up with everybody.