London Calling

This past week was spent in the wonderful city of London. Every core course class at DIS has a mandatory week long study tour to another country (awful right?). And it just so happened that my class had the fortune to go to London, England with our sweet and quirky British professor. It was by far my favorite city I've been to on this study abroad adventure. The city was ginormous and, though it didn't have quite the same culture as Rome, it felt very alive. There were also lots of very distinct neighborhoods. While Copenhagen has distinct neighborhoods, they are, over all, very similar and do not vary as much as they do in London. The whole trip lasted from Sunday to Friday night/Saturday morning and I did not want to leave.

Sunday

My entire class (23 students, 1 professor, and 1 intern) met at the airport and left Copenhagen at noon. Getting off the plane, getting our bags, waiting for the bus, and getting to the hotel ended up being quite a process that took at least two hours.  We then had half an hour to regroup before we had to meet up again for a two hour walking tour of the area....in the freezing cold rain. It was a wonderful welcome to London. The tour probably would have been more interesting if it hadn't been raining. Our tour guide, however, insisted that it wasn't actually rain and that it was really liquid sunshine (clearly he knew we were positive psychology students) but none of us bought it. We were all perfectly happy to wallow in our miserable coldness as we passed museum after museum but didn't go inside a single one. Over all I'd say the tour was interesting but I didn't get much out of it. Even though the tour itself wasn't the best our tour guide was awesome. He had this stereotypical dry, British humor which I loved. It was certainly a nice change from the Danes who only think they're being dry and sarcastic but haven't quite got the measure of it the same way the British do. It was a welcome change (as was the fact that everyone spoke English and not some language I couldn't understand). 

 

Random rode in London

After the tour we had a class dinner at an Indian restaurant. DIS had pre-ordered everything for us so I'm not entirely sure what we ate...but it was delicious. The dessert was the best part though. It was similar to a carrot cake but it was really more of a carrot crumble. 

Monday

We had our first academic visit on Monday. We went to a community college to have a talk with a group called the Tavinstock Institute. Basically they deal with group psychology in the workplace and help to mediate between different institutions and businesses. They help a lot of more technological companies communicate with people emotionally. For example, England is building a high speed train from London to the north and the company building the tracks has to disrupt and displace many homes and communities. So, the Tavinstock Institute was hired to help this construction/technological company communicate on an emotional level with the community. It was really interesting to learn about. 

After that, the class went to a Peruvian restaurant for lunch and then went to another group visit called Moving Pieces. This group was founded by a woman who is a registered psychotherapist and combines psychotherapy and physical theater to help people with trauma or high levels of emotional distress. It was...interesting. We basically did a workshop with a lot of physical theater. While I definitely see the benefits of physical theater and think it can be really helpful in therapy, this group seemed to be much more focused on theater and performance than they were on the psychology aspect of it all. The patients they see are required to be seeking help from other sources. 

Once the workshop was over, we had the rest of the evening off so I went with a friend from my class to London's Chinatown. It was pretty much like every other Chinatown but I really enjoyed it. Then I met up with a few of my Grinnell friends who are studying in London. Teddy, Joe, Lauren, Kate (who was just visiting) and I went out to a pub for dinner. We sat in the pub for about three hours and it was absolutely wonderful to see everyone and catch up with everything. I definitely needed that small does of Grinnell. 

 

Chinatown!

Tuesday

Tuesday morning was spent entirely on our own. No lectures or visits. It was nice to have a solid four to five hours to see the city. I met up with Kate to see Westminster Abby and Buckingham Palace.  We had to pay to get into Westminster Abby but once we were in we were given a free audio tour so it kind of evened itself out. Westminster Abby was beautiful but there were so many sculptures and memorials in there that it was kind of overwhelming. Then we went into the gift shop and they had tons merchandise with pictures from the royal wedding. All I could think about whenever I saw any of it was my aunt Cindy who absolutely loves the royal family. I couldn't help but smile every time I saw a mug or biscuit tin dedicated to the wedding. 

 

Big Ben!

 

The London Eye!

 

Me in front of parliament

 

 

Another view of parliament

 

Hallway in the courtyard of Westminster

 

Westminster

Once we finished there (which took a couple of hours), Kate and I walked over to Buckingham Palace. Honestly, it looked more like a parliament building than a palace (the parliament building looked more like a palace) but it was still cool. When we were about to leave, we noticed a crowd forming around the gates to the palace.  Curious, Kate and I lined up with everyone and after a few minutes, saw extremely fancy horse-drawn carriages heading towards the gate. The woman to my right informed me that the people in the carriages were foreign ambassadors. No idea what country they were from though. So, no royal family but pretty close I'd say. 

 

Me in front of Buckingham Palace!

 

Kate in front of Buckingham Palace

 

Foreign ambassadors

 

Telephone booth and Big Ben

Later on the street Kate and saw someone famous. We were walking towards Westminster Abby and passed two men in suits. Then we saw the couple in front of us stop and say "was that so-and-so?!". The couple then doubled excitedly and tried to introduce themselves to these men while the men hurried away. They were very clearly trying to keep a low profile and not draw any attention. So, Kate and I have know idea who we saw but we definitely saw someone famous.

In the afternoon my class met up for a lecture on positive psychology. Unfortunately, it was very boring because it covered everything my class had already studied and discussed. But after than we had an hour to wander around the British Museum. They had prints by Goya and Hiroshige so that was amazing to be able to see. I was really excited about them. 

 

Goya's  The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

 

Hiroshige!

After the museum, my class went to a pub for a wonderful dinner of fish and chips. That was the first time I had eaten fish and chips and it was probably one of my favorite meals I had in London. 

As if the day wasn't long enough, after dinner most of the class went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour. I was expecting this to be awful and terrifying but, thank goodness, it was more of a historical walking tour through the city with an emphasis on the Jack the Ripper story. It's amazing to me that they still don't know who he was. 

 

Cozy pub with all my classemates!

 

Fish and chips dinner

Wednesday

Wednesday was the second best day I spent in London. We started with a tour of the Tate Modern. Our tour guide placed an emphasis on the psychology involved in modern art so I naturally found that fascinating. 

Later in the day we went to Shakespeare's Globe and had both a tour around the theater as well as a workshop. Not being particularly fond of acting, I was extremely nervous for this workshop. I've always admired actors but never quite felt comfortable doing it myself. But this workshop was so much fun. It was a lot about the physicality of acting and how that can influence your mindset and help you to further understand the characters in a play. We did a lot of exercises in which we analyzed the characters in Hamlet. Though as much as I enjoyed it, I still don't see acting in my future career path. 

 

Shakespeare's Globe

Next, we went to high tea. Basically, we sat at a restaurant for two hours and drank tea and ate finger sandwiches and sweets. It was wonderful. I could happily go to high tea everyday. 

 

High Tea

 

Millennium Bridge

 

After high tea we went to a lecture on how personal development should be implemented as a school subject. And I must say, after all that I've learned about positive psychology and education here, I  completely agree. It seems to me to be an important aspect of life and development that most people don't spend enough time on. 

The lecture didn't finish until eight and since we hadn't technically eaten dinner, a bunch of my classmates and I went to Chinatown to eat. We ended up walking around there for quite a while and then found a giant four story M&M store that we played in for a while. We also bought a ton of M&Ms that we ate as we walked around the city. 

Thursday

Thursday was the best day in London by far.  My class met up with another DIS psychology class that was also in London for a Gangnam Style flash mob. I was stoked about this. We modified the dance to that everyone could do it and then performed it in the middle of London. And, for some unknown reason, I decided that I was going to be in the front row. But it was awesome. The people watching us really enjoyed it too. Some started dancing along but most of them just took lots of pictures and videos. Our intern took a video of it but she has yet to put it up anywhere. I promise post the link as soon as it's up.

After that we broke off into small groups to perform random acts of kindness. My group walked into a cafe and, as a woman was about to pay for her sandwich, walked up to the cashier, handed her a ten pound note and told the woman "this one's on us". She was shocked and kept asking us why and tried to pay us back. We just told her that we wanted her to have a good day and then refused to take her money. It was amazing how good it made everyone feel. I felt so happy and this woman was clearly extremely happy about it as well (though still a bit baffled). And to my surprise, it also made the cashier happy even though she didn't benefit from the interaction, she even said, "that was the nicest thing I have ever seen". 

Next we had three hours on our own so I went with two other classmates to see the Peter Pan statue and then we went to King's Cross Station. Two lifelong goals were crossed off of my list that day. It was so exciting. After both of those, we went to Camden Markets which was so overwhelming that I didn't even know where to begin looking. There were just so many shops and food stands.

 

Me posing like the Peter Pan statue

 

Me flying like Peter Pan

 

Look! I made it though platform 9 3/4 ....kind of

In the afternoon we went to laughter yoga. That sounds really great right? But it's nothing like it sounds. It doesn't involve any actual yoga. The woman leading it came in high heals and a mini-dress (definitely not yoga material). She then proceeded to lead my class outside to this dingy area that was half under a bridge where we had our laughter yoga session. All we did was find different was to fake a laugh. So we walked around an mingled while angrily laughing at each other (I'm still not sure how you even do that) and another exercise we did involved walking around like zombies and mimicking their laughter because yes, zombies do in fact have a very specific kind of laugh. You learn something new everyday. It was all very strange. We haha-ed and hehe-ed and hoho-ed a lot. (The last one made me feel like Santa.) Even though it was bizarre, and my face hurt at the end, I found great amusement out of the whole event. That's a lot more than I can say for most of my classmates. 

We then had a class dinner in which we celebrated my professors birthday. We're all kind of in love with her. She just so nice and funny. Afterwords I went out to a pub with a bunch of classmates and chilled there for the evening. 

 

My professor opening her birthday card

 

Friday

Our last day in London was much more low-key. We had a lecture in the morning that was about positive psychology and relationships. Then we went to Harrods and basically spent the afternoon wandering around the city. 

By five we were back at the airport and, naturally, our plane was delayed so we spent three hours sitting at the airport before we even found out what gate we were at. During that time I occupied myself by buying and looking through three cookbooks, two of which are all for desserts. Now all I want to do is bake. This is going to be a problem especially because Izabel can't eat most of the things in the cookbooks. Though I plan on using baking as a method to keep me sane in these coming two weeks. Hopefully that will get me through all the tests and projects and papers I have. We'll see.

When in Rome

Rome

Day One

We left Athens early on Wednesday morning and arrived in Rome at about 11 in the morning. Instead of taking the metro to our hostel, we decided to take a shuttle bus that would take us directly to our hostel. The metro probably would have been faster. The traffic in Rome is absolutely horrible. It's so backed up and people just weave in and out of each other and cut each other off as if it's no big deal -the motorcycles are particularly bad about this. Also, lanes don't seem to exist in Rome. At least half of the roads had no lane markers so people pretty much did whatever they wanted and didn't care when everyone else honked and yelled at them. It was actually kind of frightening.
Our hostel in Rome was extremely nice. It was only for women and there were a surprising number of rules- There was only one key to our room so when the last person left for the day, they had to give it to the woman at the front desk and there was a curfew (and they actually called it a curfew).  It made me feel a little bit as if I was in a convent or nunnery. However, it was exceptionally clean and, even better, there were no old men walking around in speedo underwear.

 

Our hostel room!

We still had quite a bit of time that day so Annika and I went out to explore the city. We came across a sort of market area. There were TONS of people here selling their paintings of Rome. Most all of the artists were really good but all of their paintings looked alike. You really couldn't tell one artist from the other- it was a bit of a disappointment. Then we ventured to the Pantheon. This was amazing and far more intact than any of the monuments we saw in Athens. Also, the monuments in Athens were much more separated from the rest of the city. Even though they kind of looked the same, they were much more spatially separated. In Rome however, the city was build around the monuments more so they were right next to roads and cars and the modern city. Both ways had their appeal- I can't say I liked one way better than the other.

 

View of canal

 

Typical small street in Rome

 

 

Cool fountain

 

Me in front of another cool fountain

 

Pantheon!

 

Inside the Pantheon

 

Ceiling of the Pantheon (a truly remarkable piece of architecture)

 

Stray cat chilling by some ruins (there were TONS of stray dogs and cats all over Athens and Rome. It took all my self restraint to not run up and pet them)

 

Castel

 

View from top of castel

We also had a simple dinner that first night there. We ended up back in the market area so we ate at a more touristy restaurant. The food was fine but not as good as what I had been expecting.

Day Two
We devoted our entire first day in Rome to seeing The Vatican City. This was probably one of my favorite things in Rome (even though it's technically another country). Originally, we thought about trying to get a guided tour of the museum and Sistine Chapel but that was too complicated so we just played it by ear and hoped that the lines wouldn't be that long if we got there first thing in the morning. Well we really lucked out because we only had to wait in line for about half an hour. And then we were able to get student discounts into the museum and the audio tour ended up being really inexpensive. So we really lucked out. The museum itself was interesting. There was a lot there and it was kind of overwhelming- tons of hallways with maps and tapestries and paintings. Pretty much the entire museum was covered in murals. We saw a few rooms where the Pope lived once upon a time. They were beautiful rooms covered entirely in murals. My favorite mural was The School of Athens by Raphael. Though I'm impressed anyone could live in these rooms. As beautiful as the murals were, they would have driven me crazy if I had to live with them. That's way too much visual clutter. I wouldn't be able to deal.

 

 

The School of Athens

 

Stairs in the Museum

The last stop on the tour was the Sistine Chapel. It was gorgeous (though smaller than what I was expecting). I wish I could have taken pictures in there but sadly, that wasn't allowed. Though I suppose that's something that wouldn't translate very well to a photo. There really aren't any words to describe what it was like to stand in there and see all these beautiful murals, especially the last judgement.
After lunch, Annika and I went to St. Peter's Basilica. This was also beautiful (and a lot more spacious so the murals and statues were much more bearable). Though it was really hard to take pitures because it was so dark in there. We did get to see Michelangelo's Pietà. This was beautiful. It's amazing how soft the marble looked. It really did seem like fabric.

 

Me outside St. Peter's Basilica 

 

Michelangelo's Pietà

Once we were done inside St. Peter's we got in line to walk the 500 sum stairs to the top of the dome. It was an excruciating hour long wait but entirely worth it. The view from the top was absolutely beautiful and I felt as if I could see forever. 

 

 Inside of the dome

 

Walking up the dome was really fun because the walls tilted so much! They got much worse than this at times. 

 

View of city from the outside of the dome  

Day Three
On our third day in Rome, Annika and I went to the Colosseum. Another amazing monument. It's so grand and almost intimidating. Although the inside of it is also impressive, I think most of its grandeur comes from it's outward appearance. However, this could be because there are more ruins on the inside so it's hard to fully understand where the spectators used to sit and just how scary it would have been to be in the center. The whole thing seems to be build entirely from arches which is truly amazing.

 

Colosseum!

 

Inside the Colosseum

 

Another view inside the Colosseum

We also explored the Roman Forum later that day and saw the Arch of Constantine. Both were incredible. Though the area around the Roman Forum was so large and we were so tired that it was hard to explore it all. It felt a little bit like we were walking through a park with ancient columns casually strewn about the ground next to the path. It definitely made you forget about the rest of the busy city.

 

Me in front of the Arch of Constantine 

 

Part of the Roman Forum

 

 

  

That night, I had some of the best food I've had in a long time. We went to a little restaurant not too far from our hostel and we were probably the only tourists there which was a nice change. The restaurant also sat most everyone outside so it was wonderful to eat delicious Italian food in Rome while being serenaded by all the street musicians. There were quite a few musicians wandering the streets and they would camp outside of restaurants and play music with the hope that the people eating would give them money. It was wonderful- so great in fact that we went back there on our last night in Rome.

 

Best dinner ever!!! Parmesan chicken. :)

Day Four
Annika and I really couldn't decide what else we wanted to see. We had already covered all the important things on our "to see" list and then some. So we spent most of the day walking around the city and shopping.  First however, we went to the Trevi fountain. Another amazing piece of work but, unfortunately, it was partially covered- probably because of reconstruction. We also went to a small church a little bit out of the main tourist areas to see The Ecstasy of St. Teressa. Again, it was too dark to take any good photos but it's probably another one of those things that doesn't really translate as well to a photo. Like the Pietà the fabric almost looked real. And the use of light and dark on the statue was incredible!

 

Me in front of the Trevi Fountain 

 

Trevi Fountain

 

Me in front of the Spanish Steps

 

 

We saw a photo shoot for a wedding while we were sitting in front of a fountain. They had the best cars ever!

 

The guy's car had a bowtie!

 

 

And the woman's car had giant lips and a veil

Most of the rest of the day was spend wandering around and buying small souvenirs. Annika had a long list of people she wanted to buy things for.
For dinner, we went back to the same restaurant we were at the night before. The main waiter or owner (we couldn't tell what he was exactly) recognized us and thought it was great that we like the food so much to come back a second time. As with one of our waiters in Athens, he was extremely nice and gave us discounts because we were young, American tourists. And probably because we were female...Being female definitely has it's perks.

As much as I liked Athens, Rome was, by far, my favorite of the two. The city just seemed to have much more character and charm. The city almost felt like it was alive. It was also nice because the Italians weren't quite as annoying in their attempts to get people to come to their shops and restaurants.
Also, my bed in the hostel in Rome smelled like freshly baked bread. Even though they changed the sheets every day. It was the best thing ever and it has now become one of my favorite smells.

Now it's time to shift back to Copenhagen mode. It's really starting to get cold here. I can already see my breath in the morning- it's kind of frightening.