STARS and other travel thoughts

i am blogging to stay awake!
for yes, i have returned from the land of only technically illegal marijuana. amsterdam. and i'm quite tired. thoughts on amsterdam? well, it's quite low-key, but i suspect that had something to do with the odors wafting off of every person we walked by. in any event, it was the best weekend ever!! which had pretty little to do with amsterdam and a lot more to do with Stars.
for one thing, this was the first time i have ever completely planned my own traveling. my momma does most (read: all) of it for me, which i find wonderful because it stresses me out. but you know what? i planned this trip and it was a huge success, so i'm pretty happy to know i can do that. i even drew maps about how to walk from the bus station to the venue (a rather long 3 miles) in professional ball-point pen scribbly goodness on the back of a notebook. and we got there, and we saw stars!
a word about stars: they must not be as well-known as i thought they were, because the venue was TINY. which is AMAZING. as such, we were in THE EXACT FRONT ROW. as in, leaning on the stage. and as such as such, we (my new friend nate and i) had some very personal experiences with several of the band members.
these included: (a) we were ogling amy millan backstage before they came out, going, "is that really her?!" and she waved at us! and we waved back: nate sheepish, me beaming. amy can be seen here:
(b) after the concert, the guitar player (apparently new to the band) walked right up to me and just handed me his guitar pick! i am not even kidding! he then threw a couple others into the crowd. i think he singled me out because, well.. i was sort of the only one REALLY dancing. tom and kat can attest to how much i enjoy a good dance party, especially at concerts, and they also know how much i love stars. well, i wasn't going to let an immobile crowd of dutch people stop me. so i flailed about in all my "i'myournumberonefannnn!!" glory, and i think perhaps the guitar player appreciated this. it was a small room, i don't think you could have missed me, to be honest. and the guitar player didn't. he can be seen here:
(c) i got the set list!!! woot! (well, nate got it for me.) the setlist can be seen here..
(d) the drummer came right up to me and nate and we got a fist pound!!! the drummer can be seen here..
(e) torquil was DIRECTLY in front of nate (about a foot and a half to my 2:00) so we had some quite intimate eye-contact-while-singing moments. torquil can be seen here..

so yeah, all in all they are FANTASTIC live. very dramatic and intense. torquil (who may have been a bit.. well.. let's just say he seemed to really appreciate amsterdam) was not at all what i expected. but clearly their music means the world to them. here's torquil singing to amy:

so. what else. well, on the bus ride on the way there i made an awesome friend. he was dutch, but had been living in CPH for about a year. since he was also learning danish, we discussed at length the hilarity and absurdity of the language (no offense, danes. but come on...). he said a sentence to me in danish and i understood it! and he was a vegetarian and had been to america a bit and was just generally fun to talk to so we had a lot to talk about. to give you a picture, without actually having one, let me describe him: between 25 and 40 (i really have no idea), with no hair (shaved? bald?) except for 4-5 dreadlocks from the nape of his neck down to his waist, this guy is wearing a black trench coat over a tshirt with a scary skull on it. and he sleeps by leaning his forehead on the seat in front of him. we exchanged a hug when we parted ways. i think he's my new best friend. it's sort of my first extended experience with conversing with a european (as sad as that is. my main exchanges are with the man who sells me the vegan pastries almost every day. and the danish consists of him saying like two words to me and me saying "what" and him laughing because he knows by now that i don't speak danish). anyway, so richard (that's my friend) and i had great conversation and he was quite nice to me. that made the first bus ride a lot more bearable, i must say.

a word about why this was such a great weekend for me. i mean, concerts are some of the most fun i can have, to be honest, so that's no surprise. but i realized, also, this was the most time i've spent just enjoying the present. if you don't know me well, i do not appreciate the moment very much at all. i'm always looking forward to other things. and i have to admit, i spend a LOT of time here going, "oh this is cool, i can't wait to go home and email my friends about it." and not really appreciating the moment. i think the times i've appreciated so far have been (a) the last night of bornholm, dancing on a rock by the seaside by moonlight, (b) all times in the graveyard, i love love love the graveyard (pics to be taken soonish)... oh my gosh is that it? that might be it. you know, DIS gave us the advice, "don't stay in your room talking to your friends on Instant Messenger all the time." and everytime i get on the computer, i think "am i spending too much time doing this?" and the answer is a resounding "probably." but i can't help it, i miss my friends, and i like telling them about my experiences. but anyway, it does make it so that i'm always looking forward to telling them about what's happening right now, instead of enjoying what's happening right now.
the moral of this story is that this weekend has been just about enjoying the hell out of one of my favorite bands--going to ridiculous length and expense to see them, challenging me to plan and execute the weekend, and not letting anything get me down. so, yes i reeked of smoke, yes, i spent 26 of the last 40 hours on a bus, but the whole time, all i could think was, 'HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME.'
i think that's a big success for me.

so i think i'll end on that. there's more to say, but it can wait.

journeying onward...

analog post to last time!
for tonight, i am getting on a bus and i will wake up (read: roll over for the umpteenth time and wish i had slept) in amsterdam!
that's right, hayley b in amsterdam. to those who know me, this may seem like an oxymoron. but i've been told the jewelry is beautiful... so i plan on checking that out. ha.
the reason i am going, however, is for a CONCERT! to see STARS! play! which is very exciting!

moving on to the past: bornholm is a beautiful place. a little slice of adorable tranquil island life. on saturday i biked 60 kilometers! unfortunately, since i had been sick, i decided i should stay in on sunday and try to just relax and not push myself because i didn't want to get worse. (in case you're keeping track, this cold is STILL with me. it's nearly gone, really very close, but it's like hanging onto the cliff of my immune system with one, tiny, claw.) even though i didn't get to bike as much as i'd like to, the weekend was still quite nice. i had some quality alone time, wrote a song about bornholm (in keeping with my theme of writing a song when i go on trips [wrote one about Jylland] [does this mean i should write one about amsterdam?]), but also made some friends and had some good quality social interaction. which, admittedly, i haven't really been having very much of lately. so it was a good, balanced weekend.

wasn't so easy being vegan. the hostel food was not so goodly. but as always, i was resourceful and it was fine.

what else? oh yeah.

I would like to offer a Public Apology. (This Public Apology brought to you by the letter C and the number 4.)

I would like to apologize to Hayley's Sense of Direction. Hayley's Sense of Direction, you and I have not had such a goodly relationship. We've had our ups and downs, but let's face it: I used to make fun of you a lot. I used to tell people bad stories about you.
But, Hayley's Sense of Direction, I think you've been misunderstood all this time. I think you were never meant to be relied upon in a chunk of metal (read: car) hurtling at 60 mph down a highway. After all, your name isn't Hayley's Find Her Way Around Highways. I think your domain is slower, more grounded: on foot, or bike. Hayley's Sense of Direction, I feel I should tell you: you've been downright thriving in this domain.
Hayley's Sense of Direction, you have not let me down once since coming to this new city, as new to you as me. In fact, you have gotten me out of some sticky situations. Was it not you who found several routes to the Health Food Store, when another way was blocked? Was it not you, Hayley's Sense of Direction, who navigated throngs of people along the windy confusing pedestrian streets to avoid the traffic of the more straight-forward roads? And was it not you who, when I was silly enough to miss all the bridges over the canals near my apartment, immediately located us on a map in Østerbro, found a Fair Trade Shop, and got us home, almost sans map? Hayley's Sense of Direction, you are the most under-appreciated Sense in the land of Hayley. I offer apologies for so long dissing you behind your metaphorical back. I had never even given you a chance.
And now, Hayley's Sense of Direction, I rely on you regularly. And you, nonjudgmental, never holding a grudge, ever mature... you never let me down. For this I thank you, Hayley's Sense of Direction.

and with that...

across the bridge and across the mountains, threw a nickel in the fountain

so i am leaving in 3 hours to meet buses full of 97 other people, and all together we will take an overnight ferry to the island of bornholm (sleeping on the floor of a ferry...) so that we can bike around all weekend.
so that'll happen. i'd be significantly more excited (read: at all) if i wasn't deathly ill. okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but i've been fighting a stupid cold/cough/other weird complications for a week and i just.. could use some tea and bed. but i figure, at least this is an excuse to not do any homework all weekend.. which is actually terrible because i feel behind in classes. although i've heard that other people never even read the homework for classes anyway. can't help it, i read the syllabus ahead of time and try to do all my homework. apparently this is a unique phenomenon. whatever.
an interesting difference between danes and americans arises here. in denmark, your education is free, and you even receive a stipend once you're in college to help cover living expenses. obviously, as most of you readers know (since i'm pretty sure the readership here consists of my mom, kat, maybe tom(s), and sometimes sam), that we pay an exorbitant* amount of money to go to college. i believe the current tuition at lehigh is around 45,000 USD a year. well, my Sustainable By Design (henceforth referred to as SbD) prof said something about, "normally, we assign reading and assume you do it. but since teaching american students, we have discovered that sometimes you just don't.. we don't know why. so i will discuss the reading in class to make sure you have been doing it." i realized, i think this is because of the attitude towards education developed because of money. in denmark, since you're being paid to go to school, it's like, of COURSE you'll do the reading! your education is a privilege and you are awfully lucky to live in a country that will have people assign you reading for FREE. in america, we think, "i'm paying so much for this! i DEMAND to be smarter, preferably nowish! after all, i'm paying this money, i shouldn't have to do much more work than that... "
so that's my opinion anyway. and of course it's a huge generalization, as i hope to be an example of, since i try to do all my reading. but i have noticed that most dis students laugh in the face of homework reading. curious.

anywho, i hope the shape of my goneness isn't flairing up anew**, friends at home.
have a great weekend. i'll get back to you on how mine went, what with the biking and the sick and the hostel and the whether-or-not-they-can-handle-a-vegan.

h.


*oh my gosh, i think i made up another word. it's like how i knew the word "engulf" but i also made up a word "enfulge" when i was very little that was similar but not quite the same, and i grew up thinking it was a word. i knew the word "exorbitant" but i made up a similar word "absorbitant" that is apparently not a word.. i need to stop doing that. but it's not my fault, my theory is that i read so much as a kid and i was reading pretty hard stuff, so no one was using those types of words around me when i was that little, so i had to make up a lot of pronunciations and whatnot on my own. (hence: archives pronounced "ar-CH-ive", etc. can you blame me? that's what it looks like!) however, this doesn't exactly explain creating spinoff words and then convincing myself they exist...

**if you get that reference, you get Hayley Hero points. but only if you identify it to me, and don't google it. although googling isn't that helpful anyway with this.

oh my god oh my god! i commented on EnviroWoman's blog post entitled "the RULES" and she commented back! and she said i made a wonderful post! this is so exciting! go look! (under links, click her blog, then click to see the comments.)
i feel touched by a famous person or something. i'll never wash my keyboard again!

guilt

let's look at the toll on the environment taken by my being in Denmark.

First we have the things I bought exclusively for this trip. This includes cliff bars (plastic wrappers = won't biodegrade for a long long time), little travel bags (who knows what they're made of), a passport and case (plastic in there), a pack (although I wanted one of these anyway), a water bladder (a ton of freakin plastic, and no real alternative), umbrella (plastic handle), raincoat ( i love it so much though, and it was quite necessary, and people keep trying to give me plastic bag ponchos so at least i can avoid those), a computer case, a nightgown (non fair trade. well, nothing so far was i don't think :( ), a sleeping bag (although that was also something i wanted for backpacking anyway), hostel sheets (yeah cloth packaging!), a travel book, new portable speakers bc mine were blown (fucking all plastic), a bajillion art supplies that they required us to bring (SO MUCH PLASTIC. SO MUCH.), i bought a bike before coming here from a summer student (at least it's second hand), a pair of shoes (luckily mostly recycled rubber, all vegan, etc, so that's good but still, they had to be made), american apparel scarf and socks (fair trade! woot! but had to be shipped from CA)...

now let's look at what i've bought here that would have been different had i been in the US- nuts in bags for snacks while traveling since i knew (and was right) that they wouldn't really know what to do with a vegan (I CAN'T FIND BULK FOODS HERE. THAT IS NOT DONE IN DENMARK APPARENTLY. HOW DOES ONE GET NUTS?!), rice and lentils in bags because i just needed some backup stuff like that (bought right when i got here before i learned food names--i had to get what i recognized), bread in bags (i can't find the ingredients to make it myself :( nor do i really have the room in the kitchen to do it), some earrings, 2 of the 3 of which were fair trade (woot!), envelopes wrapped in plastic to send letters to the US, stamps (goddess knows what's in there), various other food items in plastic (although i really try, i do the best i can), plastic ties to fix the basket on my bike, postcards (all separate, no wrappers -woot!), detergent (omg i love this brand, cardboard box and even the scoop is cardboard! it's called ecover), dish soap (plastic bottle ughh!), yarn (unfortunately not animal free. but at least it's norweigan, not australian--australia is known for the bad animal treatment. hopefully norway's better), lots of chocolate (i'm learning and memorizing which brands have stupid sneaky plastic wrappers on the inside), VEGAN NUTELLA IN A GLASS JAR (but with a plastic lid, but still, how amazing is that), almost every day i buy soya milk in tiny cartons, but they have plastic straws (plus, it might be aspetic packaging carton--might have a layer of plastic)...
ALL OF THESE WOULD BE DIFFERENT IN THE U.S. BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE TO FIND THE THINGS THAT DON'T COME IN PLASTIC. I'D BUY BULK FOODS AT WEGS, IN MY CLOTH NAPKINS, AND I'D HAVE A SINK WHERE I COULD JUST USE BRONNERS TO WASH EVERYTHING. VEGAN NUTELLA WOULD NOT EVEN BE AN OPTION. et cetera.

not to mention of course: the car ride from my home to baltimore, the plane ride from baltimore to iceland, the plane ride from iceland to copenhagen, the bus from the airport to the orientation, the taxi from orientation to home (NONE OF WHICH ARE EVEN HYBRIDS OR ELECTRIC ANYTHING. JUST PLAIN BAD), the ferry ride this past weekend, the buses every single time we take a field trip..
and now that you think about that, let's consider a world in which people didn't travel at the drop of a hat like they do now. such things as DIS (my program) wouldn't exist. that means no 24-hour computer labs sucking electricity. no enormous amounts of time spent with buses idling, waiting for students. maybe -gasp- no airplanes! no airports! no airport shit food!

now think about all those things i named. every single one was produced, somewhere, (usually not around here). it was in a factory, a factory which emitted all kinds of shit into the atmosphere, and still does, continuously. it may have been made by child slaves or people barely being paid (although hopefully not, i didn't buy almost any clothes, just one nightgown and one shirt). then it was probably packaged in some way, and transported to wherever i got it from. that means trucks and ships and airplanes just FULL of this stuff, burning oil, getting it to me.

now. is it worth it? that's the question. giving my at least small understanding of this toll on the environment, why did i choose to do it? well, i understand that sometimes we make sacrifices for our education (although it's not really ME making the sacrifice, is it? besides the guilt, it's the world that is suffering, not me.) and i am trying to learn a lot that will help me get into grad school and get a job where i can HELP the environment. (landscape architecture.) so it's like, if i do things like this that help me look like a better student, i can get a better job and have more power to make decisions about the environment.
speaking of which, do you know, reader, what my goal is now? i want to specialize in environmental consulting. that means, i actually get to go the woods you want to build in and say, "no. you can only build this five feet over here, but don't touch these woods. they're too important." i think that if i could get that job, i could do a LOT of good.
so that's why i'm doing this. that's why i bought ALL that freakin plastic even though i know it will all end up in a landfill and take thousands of years to biodegrade. because i think i can do more to counteract that later in life if i do this now.
take it or leave it. am i just making excuses? maybe.
that's all.

edit: at least denmark has a lot of windmills. on that subject, there's this.

mah nutrientz

so, i have mostly given up on nutrition for the time being.
see, i can read ingredients (mostly... [cringes remembering the cheese-including focaccia incident]..) but they do not have a little food guide pyramid or 2000 calorie diet explanations..
there is some sort of nutrition.. panel.. list. but i can't figure it out.
other, related things:
1.i need to figure out what the danish is for "refrigerate after opening." i feel this to be important.
2. also, a lot of things, especially at specialty stores, have lots of other languages on them, sometimes danish is not even included. there's a lot of german. occasionally english. so even if i were to learn the nutritional stuff in danish, it doesn't always help. also, i don't even know what is and is not danish sometimes. there's a D above German and a GB above english (that one makes sense, great britain). (but i guess german in german starts with a D?)
3. fuckin metric system. i don't know grams as serving sizes. i was never even clear in the US as to how many pints to a gallon or whatever. (this should probably be filed under "holy crap where have you been in the world," next to finding out that "p.o." stood for "post office" a few years back. and recently learning of what is known as "hard water.")

speaking of hard water.
HA. i am not insane.
i had been complaining about my hair feeling sticky and weird, and of course mason and my mom both blamed bronners soap for being inappropriate for hair. FALSE. i bought stupid expensive shampoo and conditioner (in plastic of course :( ) to make my hair unsticky, but it was still sticky and weird-feeling! and i hated it! and i asked around and at first got some weird looks but then on tuesday i had about three people finally agree with me--"oh my god yeah my host dad has been bringing me special shampoo but it's not working!"--and i found out that the water here is known as "hard."
apparently the rest of the world is familiar with the term. i was not. hard water apparently has more calcium? due to more limestone in the ground? and is lower pH because of this? in any event, it IS different and DOES do weird things to hair.

so, i chopped mine off. i figured, the less hair there is on me, the less stickiness i will feel. also, it's very annoying having hair when you bike everywhere, it's windy, rainy, gets messed up, bla bla.

so i went into the bathroom two nights ago and went to town. it's actually shorter than that time i chopped it all off, last .. februaryish.
but i've received compliments about my hair-cutting abilities! i don't really care, i didn't expect it to be even or anything. but apparently it mostly is. i chopped the hell out of it man. twas pretty fun.

i'll post a picture so you can judge for yourself. should i drop out of architecture school to become a stylist? keep in mind, this pic was taken about fourteen seconds before typing this sentence, and i've been out all day on a study tour in the intense intense wind. so i'm a bit.. wind-swept.


edit: while on the subject of water, i also have a problem with danish air. maybe it's biking in the wind so much, but i have lately been confusing my own skin with a hayley-shaped piece of sandpaper. i dislike unnecessary things like perfume and whatnot, but lotion may suddenly be removed from that list. i'm afraid i might crack open..


anywho that's all for now. gotsta pack for my study tour to western denmark! three days on buses and in hostels.. should be an experience. thank stars for cliff bars (yeah rhyme)! who knows how it's going to be to be vegan out there..

oh yeah i'm also uploading a video showing the result of my fight with the european can opener. the first fight, not narrated, was figuring out which utensil in the drawer was a can opener. i figured, it had to be there. i tried like eight different bottle openers. finally found it, and you can see the results...

receipts and politics

hmmm...
so i've noticed that i'm usually so flummoxed about being in denmark that when i shop i can't just browse around looking inquisitive. i feel the need to get my shit and get out. i recently decided to start looking at my receipts, later, when i get home, to check out how i did. not that i DON'T look at prices while i'm in the store, but if i see something that looks vaguely like what i need i just kinda get it.
the results?
here's my receipt from my trip to the store today:
Smoothie 1 L 39,75
Dr. Shaer Penne 35,00
Asparges 20,00
Oatly Imad 11,00
Urtekram Olie 54,00

translation:
juice, which i needed for vitamin C because i've been sneezing lately and not eating any citrus: $7.20 !!!!
gluten free penne because it was the only kind in a nonplastic box with the smallest plastic window i saw: $6.30 !!!!
some asparagus, about three or four dinners worth: $3.60 (phew)
a tiny tiny thing of oat milk, just to try: $2.00 (fine)
olive oil, organic: $9.80 (olive oil's always expensive)

they don't drink juice here the way we americans do at breakfast, i tell you what. you don't really see orange juice in cartons. which is fine with me except for when i need to up my vitC intake.

specialty foods are definitely more expensive. it doesn't help that i'm eating my weight in carbs for no reason every day. what can i say? european bread/honey/cookies/chocolate is delicious.
also, p.s. about this, you have to pay for bags here! HA.

in arguably wildly more important news, copenhagen is a bit.. politically charged at the moment. that's funny to say because i get the feeling about 80% of danes are sitting quietly around drinking beers wondering why all this shit is going on. but at the moment there are several rather wild happenings occurring in the area.
the first and second are in regards to the youth house being torn down about six months ago. on the six-month anniversary date, there were some night riots right near my house (although i slept quietly through them)-- some windows broken in, some tear gas dispersed, some firey blockades of furniture or something.. i was invited to this riot, incidentally, by some self-proclaimed "norrepunks" (we live in norrebro) on a train. i think it got pretty violent. secondly, today, there were supposedly peaceful "protests" although everyone's calling them riots again. i don't know much about it except that we were told to be careful and also, it was really loud outside during a lecture and i had no idea what it was because, surprise, it just sounded like louder-than-normal danish. if you don't know the language, it's hard to know what's a protest and what's just some people yelling out "hey meet ya in five minutes, love you snookums" (or whatever).
thirdly, some terrorists were arrested here yesterday/the day before. apparently it's pretty serious, although authorities aren't releasing enormous amounts of information. but it is sad because i sort of have to watch out. and i don't like suspecting something bad about people i don't know. but i live in an ethnic district, so i try to keep my wits about me.

that's some good info. that's all you get. receipts and politics.
h

p.s. here's a video showing you my apartment. it's pretty boring unless you're intensely interested in what rooms i occupy throughout the day.