Someone told me that the pastries were really good, and they were totally correct!!

This is the Danish Parliament building. They also allow a small number of people to go up to the top of that tower for free!! We did have to wait for about 20 minutes though, but I think that was a not so well known destination.

Everybody says that Nyhavn is a must-see destination. It’s definitely gorgeous, but everything around here is super pricey!!

Amalienborg is the home of the Danish royal family. Sometimes people see the Crown Prince of Denmark going in an out of the palace dressed like a normal person. The building with the dome at the back is the Marble Church.

These palace guards walked right by me!! Can’t imagine wearing the full uniform on a blazing hot day…

Next up, was a chill bike ride around the city going at a slow 10 km/h. The weather really cooperated with us! It was a weird change going from wearing a full bicycle kit while riding my roadbike to wearing street clothes and riding this commuter with a basket on top…

Randomly stumbled upon this really cool looking fountain, known as Gefionspringvandet.

We rode through this old school star-shaped fortress that has been turned into a nice greenspace!

North of there was the Little Mermaid statue that everybody talks about. Everybody says it’s a must-see attraction, but the most underwhelming. They make it look so big in the pictures but in reality it’s tiny.

We rode past a military installation and saw this interesting sign… They’re really up to date with this drone stuff.

I was in Copenhagen around the same time as Chester Bennington from Linkin Park passed away. He even left a mark on the people in Copenhagen.

There’s a reason why people say Copenhagen is the bike capital of the world.

The white buildings in the distance is Paper Island – a hipster place to hang out and eat food.

It’s so busy here…

To my surprise, I found an ostrich burger… It definitely had a light taste. I’ve heard it tastes a lot like beef, but I didn’t get that impression.

Next, we went to Freetown Christiania – an area that the people there self proclaim as autonomous. The area was formed by squatters on land used by the military. Today it is a kind of like area where the police in Copenhagen don’t really enforce their jurisdiction (although they can), and it is governed by the people who belong to that community who have created their own rules. All the houses have graffiti on them, the paint on the walls is slowly flaking off, and every house has tons of advertisement posters painted on them. The people in the community are either hobos or hippies and sometimes it’s hard to tell which – and they’re probably all high as a kite. If you’re looking for a wild party, you’ll probably find it here. It’s a shame that I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside.

Inside the city hall, there is an astronomical clock. The fastest gear completes a revolution every ten seconds and the slowest every 25,753 years. I have no idea what kind of information it shows, but I can appreciate the mechanisms as someone who studied mechanical engineering!

This was probably the best meal on the entire trip. A sampler of the most Danish food ever at Skindbuksen. When we went in, we were the only people inside who looked like tourists and everybody else looked local, which was a good sign, but we stood out. The owner of the restaurant came by with a giant plate of delicious food and loudly said to us, “this is what we eat in Denmark, you should try this!”. For a brief moment, our interaction with him gathered the attention of the entire restaurant, while it felt like all the locals were just judging us tourists… It was a tad awkward. BUT the food was absolutely delicious. There was pickled herring, deep fried fish filet, smoked salmon, roasted pork, and pork filet! The other tables were looking at our food with jealousy.

At the bar in our hostel, we met someone who was working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer who happened to be working and travelling. She told me she graduated at UC Berkeley and so I asked her if she had seen the Amazon store there (this). She told me how awesome it was to have something like that there and to her surprise, I revealed that I am actually one of the engineers who worked on it!

That’s it for Copenhagen!

Photo album: Copenhagen

It seems that since I got back I never wrote an entry about the end of my time in Germany.  When I realized I’d be going home soon a few weeks before, I felt a rush of excitement.  At the same time I felt sort of sad when since that also meant I’d leave all the friends I’ve made when I returned to my old life in Canada.  It was kind of reminiscent of when I left the first time – the idea of leaving everything behind for a little while.  However, unlike Canada, a place that I knew I would return to, the thought of never seeing all those people I met over there ever again made going home a scary thought. 

I never aimed to be good friends with people there.  Being good friends with certain people just happens.  It could’ve been part of my psychology where I unknowingly looked for companionship in the form of friends in a foreign place.  Now I wonder, if I will lose contact with them now that I’ve returned to my old friends again.  It seems like a real possibility to me now.  It will be weird not to see them.  It’ll be weird waking up in the morning and not take the 98 bus to work.  It’ll be weird not taking the U6 to Schlossplatz for our weekly hangouts. 

I suppose it was good that I was not the only one eager to go home.  It mitigated the scariness of it when I knew everyone else looked forward to it too.  A friend of mine who still had four months to go at Bosch was jealous of the fact that I got to go back.  Another friend from Germany was also excited to go back to his hometown.  As I coped with the reality of me leaving I got more and more excited about it.  For a few days before I left, I was so excited about leaving that whenever my mind wandered, I’d be thinking about going home. 

When I landed in Vancouver, I could hardly believe that I was actually back.  The moment I stepped out of the plane, I immediately recognized that I was in Vancouver International, but there was something about it that was strange.  I kept questioning whether I was actually back yet.  After awhile, I stopped getting that feeling and have now adjusted back to life in Vancouver again.

I definitely learned a lot of things in Germany and I think in many ways this experience has affected who I am in some ways (I probably wouldn’t even notice some of them).  For example, I now kind of have a better idea as to what career path to pursue (or not to pursue).  I learned a lot of things about MEMS, but I can’t see myself become a MEMS researcher in the future.  I also learned a bit of German and it’s always good to know an extra language.  The other day, I heard some people speaking German in a store and I could pick up a few words in what they were saying.  German’s even useful for showing off too.  I even have a better familiarity with foods in different European cultures.  I feel that I am now more aware of a lot more of the cultures that exist in this world.

In these eight months, I saw a large chunk of Europe, but I’ve only scratched the surface.  There are so many more places to go that it would take multiple trips to see it all.  There are places like Venice, Copenhagen, Oslo, Dublin, Glasgow, Budapest, and Belgrade, just to name a few.  In total, I travelled to 11 different countries on about 20 different trips.  It resulted in me taking over 5000 photos (I’m glad I was using a digital camera and not film).  Even though I’m already back in Vancouver, I still feel like travelling.  Maybe when I’m done school and have money for it I will start doing that, but for now, I think I’ll be staying in Vancouver.

To my surprise, my reassimiliation back in to life in Vancouver was rather immediate.  Apart from unpacking, I still remembered exactly what I used to do at home.  A lot of it was just little things like where I’d put on my contact lenses or where I put my toothbrush.  I remembered these little differences, and I guess that can be attributed to the fact that I have such an intimate familiarity with the house I lived in that I shouldn’t forget it.  When I first started driving again, it felt so natural, despite what I initially thought.  In a way, that was like riding a bike.  I also notice that now I am no longer as compelled to take photographs as I was before.  I can’t really put a finger on why, but it might be due to the fact that to me being back in Vancouver is just “ordinary”, while being abroad, everything seemed to be to be “extraordinary” and people do like to take pictures of extraordinary things.  I guess my life has returned to normal again.