A Really Long and Slightly Morbid Post

  I am currently getting ready for a week-long trip to France (which would probably count as the coolest field trip ever if it weren't for the field trips I'm taking later in the semester) so I am going to avoid packing by telling you about some of the stuff I've been up to in the past few weeks.
   First of all, I keep finding reasons to want to stay in Copenhagen, which is a little worrying. The main reason is one that I've been meaning to mention, but haven't had the opportunity to until now. Observe:

 This store is right across the street from the apartment, and this picture only shows half of it. This half has an endless supply of fantasy-related board games, as well as enough extremely realistic-looking fake weapons to stock an armory. They also have cloaks and shields and armor and those those contact lenses that you can use if you want bright purple eyes or decide to pretend you're a cat. In short, I am tempted, every time I go in there, to just get all of my money out of an ATM and buy everything in the store. Of course, I can't do that.  Where would I keep all of the massive fake war hammers? I would like to at least buy one of the daggers, which are quite cheap, but the thought of taking a dagger- even a fake one- through airport security makes me a little nervous.
  The other half of the store is devoted entirely to comic books and manga and comic book- and manga-related figurines. It's awesome. Not quite as awesome as the weapons, but pretty darn close.
   As if this weren't enough, just the other day I found another fantasy store so big that it was on both sides of the street. This one provided something that had been conspicuously missing from the store across the street from the apartment, which was novels. I spent at least an hour basking in the awesomeness of being in the presence of huge numbers of fantasy, science fiction and RPG books (some of which were not available in the US) before I finally had to leave. I will be back, though. I'm considering taking a sleeping bag with me and moving in.
    Why does Copenhagen have so many awesome fantasy stores? Do we have these in the United States, and have I just missed them? Is it merely a symptom of Europe being more awesome than the US? I must figure this out...

   What else? Let me see...
  Remember that street with all the colored houses that I showed you way back in January? Well, here it is when it isn´t foggy and raining.   

It´s gotten quite a bit sunnier in general than it was when I first arrived, but it's also gotten colder. Still no snow, though.










   I have done a few interesting (and slightly disturbing) things with my Marine Biology class recently, and I'm not one to pass up the opportunity to creep people out, so I'm going to tell you about them.
   First, we took a field trip to a place right out of a horror movie: the Copenhagen Zoological Museum. Scary, huh?
         Here's where we spent most of our time:

The creepy dead animals are watching you... wooo...

A rare species from Candyland which, in case you didn't know, is located in Denmark.










The reason why we had class in a huge room full of dead animals and things suspended in jars was because among the collection are quite a few marine mammals. Well... ex-marine mammals, anyway.

The zombie seal at rest.

Some skeletal Delphinidae (dolphins and porpoises).

This is a beluga, my favorite species of whale. I don't think I've ever been this close to one before. It would have been nice if it were less dead.

All male narwhals have two tusks, but normally only one of them actually grows out. This is a rare two-tusked narwal.

Ever wanted to know what the inside of a narwhal tusk looks like?

They also had a whole room full of larger whale skeletons. This is my teacher, kindly providing a sense of scale, standing in front of a bowhead whale skull and hold a piece of its baleen.

They had a blue whale skull. A real live (well... you know what I mean) blue whale skull. Unfortunately I couldn't get someone standing it front of it, but trust me, it's huge.

And finally, a dead baby polar bear. Awww.

I think this picture pretty much sums up the experience.










    After the day at the Zoological Museum I was feeling like I had hung out with enough dead animals to last a lifetime, but apparently my Marine Biology teacher didn't agree, because last weekend she took us on a field trip out to the Fisheries and Maritime Museum in Jylland to chop open some baby seals.

  


A baby seal.

Rather more of a baby seal than I wanted to see.












    Many seals and porpoises end up tangled in fishing nets or are found lying sick on beaches, and their bodies usually end up being brought to the lab at the Fisheries and Maritime Museum, where they dissect them to check for parasites and generally determine the health of the local seal and porpoise populations. It's important work, and it was cool that we got to actually dissect some seals ourselves, but it was rather nauseating. I had never dissected anything that big before, and anyway sticking a knife into a seal is unpleasant no matter how you look at it. But I feel like I did pretty well, considering. I actually ended up doing a lot of the cutting. But it wasn't what you would call a fun. I now know that if I do end up becoming a marine biologist, I am going to try to find research projects that involve more live animals and fewer guts. ...Not that there's anything wrong with guts.
     After poking around inside some dead seals for an hour or so, we went and saw the museum's resident population of live seals, which seemed only slightly twisted and creepy.

Nyer nyer. I know what you look like underneath.

It was a long and slightly nauseating day, but I learned a lot and it was a very... interesting experience so, all in all, it was good.

 And finally, on a much lighter note, I went to two early Fastelavn parties this week- one hosted by the study abroad program, and one host by the Danish kids that live in the apartment with me.
   What is Fastelavn, you ask?
    I'm glad you asked. Fastelavn tends to be described as the Danish version of Halloween. It is a day on which people dress up in costumes, get candy, hit things with sticks and generally have a good time. The actual date of Fastelavn is March 6, but we had the parties early because everyone in the study abroad program is going to be on their long field trips on March 6.

The main Fastelavn game is "Hit the Cat Out of the Barrel". This involves hitting a hanging barrel with a wooden bat. The barrel has candy inside. The person who knocks the bottom out of the barrel is crowned the "Cat Queen" and the person who knocks down the last piece of wood is the "Cat King".
Once upon a time the barrel had an actual cat in it, and doing this was supposed to keep evil spirits away.

This is another game called "Bite the Bun". The first person to finish eating their bun wins. It's a very intense game. If your bun falls off the string you have to eat it off the floor. Good, clean Danish fun at its finest.

The traditional tasty Fastelavn treat is called a Fastelavnboller, which is usually translated as "Fastelavn bun". It's a bun with... usually, but not always, cream inside. These ones have jam in them. They were really good.

Me and someone else from the apartment in our lame last-minute costumes.










Well, tomorrow I leave for France and I won't be back until next Sunday. We are taking a bus. It is a twelve-hour drive, and we are making the trip at night, so I may end up managing the tricky feat of getting jet-lagged from a bus ride. Whatever happens, I'll be sure to let you know all about it.

Hej hej og toute a l'heure (two languages in one sentence- that's skill, that is)!