Arhus and Kalundborg

This Thursday through Saturday I had my short study tour for my core business class. On Wednesday we also had a field study that was related to it to Genzyme, a pharmaceutical company that produces medicines for rare disease. If you want a company to invest in its a smart one to choose, because they are the only ones who produce any medicines for many of these diseases. We also watched one of their surgeries, since they produce a mesh that grows replacement cartilage cells for people that have torn their patella. We toured the plant where they grow the cells. The people were kind of at a loss once they found out we weren't biology majors.

On Thursday we had to leave really early to travel to Kalundborg in the freezing slush. Our bus was late and I ended up standing there for a really long time. When I opened up my suitcase at the hostel all my clothes from the bottom of the suitcase were still wet. We visited several companies that were involved with Industrial Symbiosis, a group of company that uses each other's waste to conserve energy and be more efficient. We saw how the make insulin where we got to dress in these giant michelin man suits with hoods and booties. Everyone looked rediculous. Unfortunately, we also had to tour the waste water cleansing plant. As you can guess, it was full of some interesting smells.

After our semi-boring business stuff, we went into the town of Kalundborg where we met with students at the local Gymnasium. Gymnasium is a mix between high school and college, so the students ranged in age between 18 and 26. It was really cool, they gave us apple cake and coffee and took us on a little walking tour of Kalundborg. We also had a performance by their drama group that was performing Rent. They sang us a couple of the songs from Rent for us in Danish, which was something I never thought I would hear. After eating dinner at our hostel, the students took us out to one of the two bars in Kalundborg. This was one of my favorite nights so far, it was nice to hang out with a lot of Danes. I even learned some Danish drinking games, which are pretty similar to American ones. The only bad part was how addicted to smoking they all were, after about half an hour they would need to smoke! All of the Americans were not happy with how smoky all our clothes were the next day.

On Friday we took the ferry to Arhus and had a sweet lunch buffet on the ferry. My most terrifying moment of the trip was when our bus driver had to back onto the ferry. He seriously got within two inches of the wall. In Arhus we visited Pressilit, a toilet seat manufactuer. I know this sounds crazy, but they were by far the best company we visited! They manufacture higher end toilet seats, and even design some super fancy ones. They even made a disco ball one for Madonna. They had a great sense of humor, which I guess you have to have to be in the toilet industry. They also gave us a couple hard cover books, one with the history of the company and another with their designs. I think I have my new book to put next to the toilet for some reading material!

That night we dropped our stuff in the hostel, (six girls in a tiny room that basically only had 3 sets of bunk beds was super-fun) and then went off to downtown Arhus. We went ice skating on the town hall square where I showed off my sweet ice skating skills. My backwards skating was a big hit, thanks Homestead ice skating instructor. After skating our leaders bought us a drink and then we went out to dinner. I got Danish style pizza at Mackies, which basically meant slices of ham and crumbly bacon on cheese pizza. It was delicious. We then wandered and found a tiny bar that had an Irish singer playing. He was really good and played a huge range of songs, from Coldplay to Steve Miller Band to AC/DC.

Saturday was my favorite day of the trip, since we finally got to do some cultural stuff. We had a tour of ARoS, their amazing art museum. I'm going to post some of the pictures in my next post, but I wish I could have spent the whole day there. Our tour guide was really cute and nervous because it was her first tour in English. She did an excellent job. After ARoS we had a great lunch of chicken curry soup and delicious chicken pasta. We then had a scavenger hunt of Arhus, where we had to find pictures of things, like a Dane biking or a Danish pram and ask Danes their opinions about things. It was fun to go around and find all the stuff, but I think I would have rather just done a tour or spent more time in ARoS.