Ride to Roskilde and Skipping to Sweden

My second morning in Denmark and I awoke still feeling exhausted. Maybe I need to be in the bed earlier than 1:00am Europe time instead of trying to stay up at the 7:00pm North Carolina time. Our group once again enjoyed breakfast in the downstairs of the hotel---this always consisted of yogurt with cereal, every kind of bread imaginable, and some type of meat. Even though I wanted to try something Danish I decided to stay away from the meat in the mornings.

This morning was designated to be spent at the Viking Museum. I experienced my first train ride in this city and it reminded me a lot of the subway system in New York City (except much easier to understand the stops). Once arriving to the train depot in Roskilde, I realized that this was also a busy town, but not as bustling as Copenhagen. Roskilde was actually the first capital of Denmark along with five viking ships being sunk off the coast between 1070-1090 A.D.

We walked down the cobblestone streets and enjoyed a scenic shortcut through paths and gardens along the way to the museum. The Viking Museum intrigued all o f us regarding the excavation of the ships since they were over a thousand years old. The archaeologist studied the ships carefully to restore them in the original form, and it took only 25 years---talk about patience.

The history buffs in our group were in awe over the artifacts, so we had to leave them behind to continue with our journey.

As with all window shopping, there becomes an item one can't live without and this became my longing for leggings. A fashion statement in Denmark (and Europe) was the trend of leggings, no matter the color, under dresses or even longer shirts. I was in need of these particular necessities because my legs were freezing since I brought mostly dresses and skirts. I went into a contemporary store called Dere's, which reminded me a lot of our Express. The leggings were luckily on sale and this became my first keepsake from Denmark. Thank goodness they will keep me warm throughout the rest of the trip.

In the middle of the afternoon, we maintained our energy and spontaneity to travel to Malmo, Sweden (Malmo actually has two dots of the "o" in this word). It became easier to manage the train schedule and we arrived to Sweden in 35 minutes. We crossed over the Oresund Bridge, which connects the two countries and is known as the world's largest bridge carrying both road and railway traffic.

Sweden was similar to Copenhagen with the beautiful buildings and cobblestone streets, but still not quite as busy. Sweden's prices were also much cheaper, so of course we took advantage of the souvenir gift shop before returning to the expensive Danish prices. While browsing through toy shops, we discovered the Swedish word for Cinderella was "ash pot." Doesn't sound as romantic...

Sweden still accepted the Danish Kroner for currency, even though their primary currency was the Swedish Kroner. To determine the American value of expenditures, in Denmark dividing by 5 was used, but in Sweden we divided by 9 (which explains why it was cheaper). As mentioned before, I was constantly doing mental math calculations to convert money, temperature, time, and measurement.

Malmo was hosting a worldwide youth soccer championship during our short visit to the city. There was an entire square reserved for this exciting event with music and radio stations scattered everywhere. The United States had lost the day before, so we did not see any fellow American athletes. This sport is not referred to as soccer as in the states, but as football. It remains to be a popular sport in Europe.

We found our way back to Copenhagen by train and walked miles trying to locate Hard Rock Cafe, and it turned out to be near our hotel in the opposite direction. I know this is the typical tourist American attraction, but at that time, we were craving just a regular cheeseburger. Additionally, it was important for me to take home the regular memento (Hard Rock Hurricane glass) from this world renown restaurant.

Tomorrow will begin our independent research day, and I will be traveling with Sonya and Bernard---aka the speedy walkers, so my tennis shoes are ready!

Lesson Learned:

Nothing taste better than an American Cheeseburger after spending hours in two European countries.