Friday Bar!

My new international friends at Friday Bar.

From left to right: Rui(Portugal), Marieke(Belgium), Zach(Kenya),

Robert(Sweden), Nate(Minnesota), and Kristin(pronounced Christine, from Slovak Republic).

You can't see it very well, but there are portraits drawn all over the walls of prominent people that graduated from DSMJ.

Today is one of the few sunny days we've had in a while. I'm very excited to fix our bike settings and go for a ride.

TV Class is going well

I'm loving class. We have a lot of short breaks during the day. Christina and I have almost watched half of last night's The Bachelor.

Sunday, we made a trip to Ikea...I've never been before! It's set up like a maze, so that you have to view the whole entire store before you exit. They also have a restaurant in the very beginning to lure you in with their exceptionally cheap prices. Best thing is... we now have tupperware!! No more ziplock lunches :)

Tonight Christina and I ate with our bus friends, Maria and Bea from Madrid. I attempted to make Mom's poppyseed chicken; however, I was unable to find poppyseed, cream of chicken, or Ritz in the Danish grocery stores. So, I improvised. It tasted ok. I burnt the rice a tad, and I think the cream of mushroom I used was actually a soup that contained some type of Caesar dressing flavor. I did ok with the buttered cracker topping and the actual chicken though. I guess you're never going to get it perfect the first try. But they all seemed to like it. I guess since I was the only one who knew what it was supposed to taste like, I was the only disappointed one.

We have received our 1st TV assignment due the 16th. I'll be sure to post our final copy here. It must be a profile of someone. We have 2 ideas right now, and we will decide tomorrow once we get all the information on both sources. One is to do it on a local Zumba instructor. Another is to do it on a chef participating in a cake decorating competition. Either one will have great visuals. So, I'm excited to get my hands dirty. I want to get better at shooting, so I need lots of practice. I've been watching Man vs. Food episodes to get ideas for camera angles and shots. I think I'm developing a real knack for the producing side of things. I the planning and research of assignments. Constructing the idea, angle, fascination, making calls, networking, and basically producing the story. That's probably my favorite part, which makes me feel good that I'm starting to see those key skills in myself. Don't get me wrong, I want to learn how to be a better videographer, and be more advanced in Final Cut Pro. However, I don't see myself becoming a photographer or editor in the future. It's good to be well-rounded and have that skill set anyways. You never know when you'll need them.


A side note to Tommy, or whoever taught me the wrong pronounciation of this word... Everyone keeps making fun of me anytime I say the word "naked." Apparently, I'm saying "nekid." Sounds the same to me, but oh well. They're just going to have to deal with a little southern drawl.

Danes sure do LOVE Fridays

So I wanted to post a short video from our Pub Crawl. I documented the entire night, but the movie was too large to post, and the clip ending up taking an eternity to load also. I'll try to upload the Youtube link once it has loaded.

We went to 5 bars including Peter Gift, Pub 'ens, Hunter's, Drop Inn, and finished the night at Heidi's... a bar/club. It was a lot of fun, but you could tell they took us to the cheapest bars they could find. Our mentors Mette and Niklas led the crawl.
I think this Friday, Kristin from Slovak Republic wins the award for Most Entertaining.

Saturday was so beautiful and sunny outside, yet so very cold. Christina and I used the day for exercising. She went on a run, and I popped in an Insanity workout.

Later, we made a massive grocery shopping list and headed out around 6pm. We forgot everything closes early on the weekends here. Something to add to the "Things I Miss" list... stores that are open 24 hrs. So we get off the bus, realize we're too late, then hear a loud crash. We look over our heads and someone has chucked a grocery cart off of the bridge above us. Then, we hear four police cars rush by. It's not very well lit, and it doesn't take us long for us to realize we're not in the best part of town. On weekends, the bus only comes twice every hour. We decide to walk to the next bus stop. Along the way a chain of cars pull up honking a tune together, we pass several shady looking loners, and finally arrive at the first sign of a lit up restaurant. Pizza didn't sound bad, so we ordered the typical Danish pizza (Shwarma pizza) complete with Shwarma meat, salad dressing, and lettuce. Then, we notice the windows out of the restaurant have been broken. Three more ambulance and fire trucks drove by also.

So we passed the time eating and headed to the next bus stop. Man, was it far away! Definitely, the longest we've had to walk in between a bus stop. The bus arrived 10 minutes later and we finally made it home safe :)

Today, was a very productive day. Kim, Thorsten, and I worked used our access card to get in to school, just to have a head start on editing. For the next two days, we don't really have school. It's just time to work on our project. So we've agreed to sleep in an extra hour this week :). But we accomplished quite a bit today in just a few hours. We've now written our voice over and arranged the sound bites and produced a really good profile of Chef Kristensen. I think he'd be pleased. Tomorrow all we really have to do is just match the video to our sound, then spend Tuesday fine tuning everything to hopefully achieve one of the rare "A"s our teacher hands out. She believes nothing is perfect or worthy of an A. What a load of hog wash! Why make the letter A if you're not going to believe in them. I guess it really doesn't matter. My grades only transfer as pass fails, but I still like to be the best. That's what I'll be aiming for this semester.

It's hard to believe that I'll have been here a whole month this weekend. Speaking of this weekend!! I am so excited to travel to Berlin with Marieke & Kim. Hugo from Canada is making us a list of things to see and do. I've also been reading Samantha Brown's travel guides. Time is really flying here.

Virus scare

<--Kristin and I at one of the bars Friday.

So, last night was pretty awful! I could not sleep one bit. I was in the middle of watching a How I Met Your Mother rerun on my laptop, when all of the sudden, my computer started taunting me... LITERALLY. It said, "You have a virus, You have a virus." I unplugged it, and shut it down immediately. Worried about it all night long, and continued that in the morning. I did better than I usually would've I just kept reminding myself that I'd had a virus like it before and was able to fix it then, so I could surely fix it this time. I was very paranoid about making it worse though, so I waited until I got to school. I went to the IT department, but he said the school couldn't help and to try a store called Fona. Thankfully, Thorsten knew what to do when I brought it to class. Two hours later and the AntiVirus 2011 Virus was off my computer.

Then, time to get to work on our assignment. I was too stressed in the morning to think about it yet. We wrote and voiced our voice overs, and started matching video to audio today. It's kind of funny, while reading over our lines, we were trying out different accents. I've got the National Geographic hunting in the wild voice down pretty good! My British isn't so bad either. I always have the urge to use it over here. I'm slowly developing my Danish one also. It's a work in progress :)

Do snow days not exist here??

Woke up this morning feeling sick from all this cold weather. Yeps, definitely under the weather. **yeps** is common danish slang.

Last night was a new accomplishment for me. I was able to find the right bus by myself, and the connecting one to get to where I was going all by myself in the middle of a snow storm. Thank God for my eskimo jacket. Once I arrived, Kai, Bart & Anouk treated me to Dutch pancakes for supper. They made bacon, cheese, apple, and then regular ones. It looked pretty simple to me. Throw whatever you want in your pancake on the skillet, pour the batter over it. Then, flip. The bacon one was very good, I highly recommend you try it!

Then, off to the Studenthouse party where Kai and I were supposed to meet everyone. Apparently, they were scared off by the snow though. So we stayed for a while and then, off to my next challenge.... catching the new set of buses home. Luckily, I ran into my bus friend from Italy at the party. She told me what to do and pointed me in the right direction. So, we're back in the sideways snow, which is now half way up my shins. I make it off the first bus ok. Waiting at the next stop was brutal. It was a 15 min. wait that felt like an hour. I made a new friend while waiting though. Nick goes to Bloomington in Indiana and he's in Aarhus getting his masters in religous studies and theory. He was nice enough to take bus 14 with me and walk me home through the forest. 14 is closer than 15, but I never take it at night because I hate walking it alone. You have to walk through a dark tunnel also. In the snow... well that was a funny sight too. So, we get off the bus at Skjoldhoj and I start running home.... had to pee! I stopped in our grocery/bar area but the snow was so high I missed the door step up and did a sort of dance slide on my knees into the hallway. No one saw :P

Now, I wake up and the whole entire dorm complex is covered!! It comes up to my knees in some areas, but Danes aren't stopped by the snow like Tennesseans. The buses still run, cars still drive, and would you believe the bikers still bike!! They are hard core. I'm so glad I bought a bus pass for February. It really was fascinating to see so much activity and bustling around on such a snowy day. Usually, I think of hot chocolate, a warm blanket, and a fire place on snow days.... maybe the occasional snowman building or snowball fight. But it was like any other day for the Danes. I will have to keep getting adjusted to this Scandinavian weather.

Dankschen Berlin!

We skipped school Thursday afternoon and began our journey to Berlin! I think our teacher, Kate, wanted to come with us. She just told us to book a later train ticket next time... but this was the cheapest one!

So we made the 7 hour train ride to Hamburg then Berlin and found a hostel for the night. It ended up being a wonderful hostel too. Heart of Gold was its name. We got free linens, breakfast, and internet. Plus, the employees were able to help us with our restaurant and bar picking for the next few days.

Friday morning we checked in at the Holiday Inn Express which was pretty cozy for 3 people. We were able to push the twin beds together to make it work. We also had to be extra stealthy about sneaking in a third person into a two person reservation. They are pretty strict about that in Europe apparently. We did it though :) Once again, the breakfast was complimentary, so that was nice! We started packing lunches from the breakfast bar, so that we really only ended up paying for suppers while in Germany. Got to save where you can. The beer was good, of course. It was very cold there though!! We spent the entire Friday exploring the sites and walking everywhere.

Now, I'm not a big museum fan, but I went ahead and paid for the Museum Isle hopper just to be in the warmth for a couple hours. We saw so much! The Berlin Wall (or what's left of it), the Memorial of the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery (a portion of the wall that you're allowed to write on... which I did!), Mitte, the TV tower, Checkpoint Charlie, Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Berliner Dom, Reichstag, Pergamon Museum, Museuminsel, Brandenburg Gate.... the list goes on forever! We saw pretty much everything we could fit into one weekend.

Saturday, we took a tour of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. I was amazed at how being on the site gave me such a nearer perspective of what it must've been like. Here I was in 4 layers freezing cold. I couldn't even feel my fingers or toes. Then, the guide said prisoners would be out there in weather 20 degrees colder, starving, and some without shoes. We saw the gas chamber rooms, the operating rooms where they conducted human experiments, some of the torturing devices, as well as their rooms. I couldn't believe the kind of unsanitary living conditions they were in. Three would share one bed in a bunk 3 stories high. That's 9 people to a bunk bed. If they didn't fold their sheets at a right angle in the morning they'd be punished. They only had 45 minutes in the morning to use the bathroom. That's their only bathroom break all day. So if the person from the top messes up the right angle of the bed getting down, the person on the bottom gets punished. It was just so terrible to think about. I also didn't about the ranks of the prisoners. I just assumed they were all treated about the same I guess. But there were levels. Jews, homosexuals, and Eastern-Europeans fell to the bottom of the ranks. Professional criminals and Germans often received more bread rations, maybe didn't have to share a bunk, and received a wool jacket sometimes. Granted, these prisoners were subject to the beatings also. They just had a little bit better sanitary conditions to live in, I suppose. I also never thought about the guards, and how they are human too. How could they do that to people? But unless they wanted to be imprisoned too, they had to follow orders and constantly raised the cruelty levels in order to not be seen as weak or showing compassion. Heidi, our tour guide, told us often it was worse to be sent to a death camp than a labor camp. I never had thought about that either. It was really an eye opening day for me. Despite the unbearable cold I really enjoyed learning more about the Holocaust and seeing a more upclose view of what things must've been like.

Kim had a fun night on her own Saturday. She planned to go check out a local pub, while Marieke and I stayed in and tried to get better. (I was sick the whole trip, with a cold+fever). Well, Kim walks in the door, and all eyes are on her. She orders a beer, quickly followed by a free round of champagne for everyone. She's surprised when a guy asks her where she's from, because she's the only one he doesn't know there. Turns out Kim had walked in on a private 25th birthday party! They all got a kick out of it. She met the birthday boy and made it home safe and sound with one heck of a story! Not many people can say they've crashed a German party before!

Sunday, the sun came out, and I was so happy! Granted, it was still super cold, but the sun at least made it look warmer. We started the day in Mitte, a shopping area with lots of good food, jewelry, knick knacks, and fire hazards! Then Kim pulled another crazy stunt when she went to warm her hands by the bon fire. Marieke looked and said, "Kim your gloves are so tan." I then realized her gloves were on fire and yelled for her to clap it out lol. Now she has two toasted marshmellows for gloves, including some holes too! Ahh Kim haha.

We spent our last night in Berlin at a cozy bar called Alt Berliner WeiBbierstuben where I tried a traditional German meal. A Berliner Pilsner, currywurst, fries, and salad. It was pretty delicious I must say.

We got back to Denmark today after a 2 hour delayed train!! The good thing is we may be getting a refund for our train ticket. We're filing the paper work this week.

Assignment 1- René Kristensen

Get ready to be fascinated by food!!

Heavy Cake Table - René Kristensen from Lauren Smith on Vimeo.

A trip to the sperm bank

Yep, you read the title right. Last week, I was attending a massive cake festival, and this week I'm off to the world's largest sperm bank. I love journalism! I'm discovering something else about myself too. I love to learn. Who knew?! After enduring long, boring lectures of gen. ed. classes the first couple years of college, I never thought I'd say that I love to learn. But I think it is at the root of my love for journalism. It's fascinating. Last week, we profiled a chef. I learned all about this cool heavy cake table event that is actually an annual Danish tradition.

This week we are doing a story at the world's largest sperm bank, conveniently located here in Aarhus, Denmark. Today we went to Cryos sperm bank to set up a time for an interview. We originally planned on finding a donor to talk to and find out what motivates so many students to donate. They can get paid up to 500 kr ($100) each time they donate depending on the quantity and quality of their sperm. Students make up the largest portion of donors here. When we talked to the director, we decided to change our angle though. He started explaining how the laws are different from country to country, and how there is a big grey market for sperm donations across the world. Many rules only apply to doctors, so midwives or the mothers can bend the rules easily for single parents or lesbians. There's a lot of information here, and I can't wait to produce our story next week.

I'm really enjoying classes and finding stories that hook people's curiosities from the start just like they do mine. Once, the story hooks you, the tricky part is keeping people from grabbing the remote and flipping the channel. You have to keep their interest up for the entire package or show or whatever you're producing. It is a challenge I welcome for our next assignment.

Kate, our teacher, is AWESOME. Last night was our big class dinner at Kate's house where we all prepared a dish from our country. I made fried apricot pies because there are no peaches right now. I was really excited to visit a real Danish home. She has the cutest dog! I miss Fergie and Buddy. Juliet and I became buds last night though. We ate around 8pm, but didn't leave until after 11pm! There was wine, beer, dancing , an enormous amount of food and endless conversation. It was funny. Around 10pm, we started to leave... then, Kate turns up some music and insists we all stay and dance. How cool is that! It was good music too.
p.s. I made 22 pies. They must've been good, because there were no left overs at the end of the night :)

The weeks are flying by... only 95 days til I'm back home

We sure are having a good time over here. I love all of our weekly get togethers and parties! We have such a strong community not just in Skjoldhoj, but with our TV class too.

This week has flown by so quickly. I'm afraid they will all be speeding up very soon, because we just keep getting busier both with school and our social lives.

Thursday, my friend from Tennessee came to visit me! Brian is studying abroad in Germany this semester until July. But his housing doesn't start 'til March 1st. Fortunately, for him, Wendy lent us a massive air mattress. So he'll have a home in Aarhus 'til Tuesday. I went to meet him at the train station at 3pm. Then, he texts me that the Germans are striking, and he wouldn't be there 'til 9pm. He had quite a long day! Not long enough to stop us from going out to the Skjoldhoj Bar for Karaoke night though. I will have Vanessa Carlton's "Thousand Miles" stuck in my head for a little while now.

Yesterday was a very exciting day for Christina and I. Not only did we find the best store ever, Bilka... but Kim discovered Allrecipes.com for us. We've been putting "skillet" in the search ending and finding all sorts of new things to try in our mini (only 2 stove eyes to work with) kitchenette. Last night, we prepared Chicken Marsalla. It was restaurant worthy for sure :)

Not going to lie, when we discovered Bilka (a combination between the new Kroger Markets, Target, a liquor store, and Bed Bath & Beyond)... we were pretty frustrated with our mentors Niklas and Mette. They just dropped us in the middle of the city centre, said good luck, and pointed us to our bus stop. We ran around that center for 2 days finding everything. All that time, we could have just gone to one store and gotten everything we could possibly need for dirt cheap. Plus, it's only a 15 min. walk from where we live. I know one thing is for sure. If I have the opportunity to be a peer mentor for international students when I come back, I'll put in more effort than these guys. I guess 50 students can keep 2 people busy and all... but come on!

Last night, we went to Robert's house to enjoy drinks and snacks at Robert's apartment...which by the way is soooo much nicer than the unit we live in. All the Swedes decided to find their own housing instead of letting the university do it for them. That might have been a wise choice although I am glad we're kind of all here together. Robert's was really fun. I tried a new wine that comes from tree sap. I seriously felt like I'd licked the bark off a tree when I sipped it! It was very unique, and I still can't decide if I liked it or not.

The preparty was a big hit, but then it was off to school! See there was a Danish band playing in our cantina. It's still so weird to me to see people drinking and dancing inside of our school. It was like they'd turned our cafeteria into a club. Except not many people were dancing. For some reason they wrote "Tigermis" on our hands. Apparently, our phrase "I thought I saw a pussycat" They have one referring to a Tiger, hence the "Tigermis." I still don't understand why they wrote that on our hands, but this morning I woke up with it smeared across my face... grrreat.

Today, is another big interview. We have our case study today at 2pm with a lesbian couple that was inseminated and now have a child from an anonymous donor. Monday, we'll be all done with our shooting and on to editing and writing. Before you know it I'll be in Oslo working on our next assignment! We're hoping for polar bears... we'll see if we can make something happen.

P.S. Booked my tickets to Barcelona!! We will be enjoying the many tapas bars and sangria the first weekend of April. Can't wait to go somewhere warm!

Pictures from Cairo

My new friend Ahmed is in the Photojournalism course.  His hometown is in Cairo, and last week, he couldn't stand being away from his country with everything that is going on.  So, he flew out to Egypt for 2 weeks.  Hopefully, he will return safely sometime this week.  Here are some of his photos.

Please keep Ahmed in your prayers this week that he will be ok while shooting there and make a safe trip back to Aarhus.

A Spermtastic Assignment

Bans on Sperm Donation from Lauren Smith on Vimeo.

FINALLY we see sunshine

Thought I'd finally upload my videos from Berlin! Next stop Oslo! Our class leaves a week from today for our 3rd assignment. This time I'll be working with the other Americans, Christina & Lakiesha from San Francisco.

This weekend has been beautiful. It came just in time, because I'll admit, I was close to getting a little depressed from all of this gloomy, cold weather. We are finally in the mid 40s though, and hopefully, it will only get better. I'm actually writing this outside on my little patio area. Wendy and I are laying out as long as the sun is out, then maybe going for a bike ride or walk.

Reaching the halfway point

Thought I'd start this blog off with a little video that Maria posted on my Facebook. She says I'll be doing this when I get back in the states and have my first diet sundrop! Ha ha.

Tomorrow is the start of a busy next couple of weeks. We are going to Oslo for our news assignment, coming home, turning around and flying to Milan, Italy with Mom, coming back home again, producing our story, sending Mom back to the states, starting our fourth project, then running off to Barcelona, Spain! Wooo! March 27th, I'll be at the halfway point of my semester. It's bittersweet. I do miss home at times, especially when I'm waiting for the bus for 20 min. BUT the sun is finally starting to peak out, and this 40 degree weather feels like 70 to me :) Biking has been so nice this past week.

Today we took a ride just to go exploring and found a really nice shortcut to Bilka. While in Bilka, Christina and I bought hair dye on an impulse. Well, it was 2 for 103kr. (which is super cheap, about $9 each) Christina went black, and I am now a blonde again!! I've missed it so much too. Being a brunette for a few months was nice to try, but I'll always feel like a blonde. I think when Mom comes I'll go even lighter.

I've noticed that I make decisions on a whim over here. It's like there's no wrong decision, and if there is, it's ok. No one knows me. No one is grading me. No one even cares if you make the wrong choices, because most of them have already anyways. So, it's just no big deal to mess up. Kind of a relief, huh?! There's no pressure, and I love it. It is making my life a lot easier and carefree. I am much more relaxed over here. The tour guide we had in Berlin said she heard everyone in Denmark is on happy pills, but I think there's just something about their beliefs or culture that makes you content with just about everything. Or at least that is how it is for me right now.

Missing work already

With last week being so busy, I sort of got a high from all the work I was doing. I actually enjoyed the feeling of being under a deadline and the pressure to do a good job. This week we are researching our topic and finding out as much as we can through sources, literature, and of course, Google. I think I'm going to let it be a surprise this time, and let you see the topic once I post the video here. Hope you've enjoyed them so far. I feel like the majority of my learning here doesn't necessarily come from lectures, but more from the feedback I receive from my mistakes. As long as I keep getting better...bring on the criticism. Our teacher can be pretty harsh at times, to some groups more than others. But I think it's good to have high expectations to work for. My goal for this semester is still to get an A on one of my assignments. I am determined to break this whole "I never give out As, nothing is perfect" philosophy of Kate's. A B+ is never as satisfying.

Oslo: World's most EXPENSIVE city

Oslo is beautiful, a real winter wonderland... but I feel so poor! I've been surviving off the free hotel breakfast, several cups of free coffee, and ramen noodles. I'm not even kidding. The breakfast includes an egg/tomato sandwich, apple, and OJ. Then, we have free coffee in the lobby. I save my apple for lunch, drink lots of coffee, and fix my pack of ramen noodles for supper. I can't wait to get back to Aarhus, where I can afford to eat. Let me just give an example. A meal at TGIF would cost 299KR. That's $57. Ok so that's touristy, but the cheapest thing we've been able to find is an indian buffet for 99KR. That's still $17. It is ridiculous. So, once I realized I'd have to just be hungry for the week, the city itself is really clean and pretty looking. The castle looks over the entire city, which is surprisingly small. Last night a group of us took a trip to the harbor. I felt like I was in Inception, watching the water move! It was frozen on top, but you could see it moving underneath. It reminded me of flubber!

Our story has gone really well. We've managed to make all of our interviews on time, and all without a cellphone! A sim card was going to cost 220KR and we felt it was a waste. Too bad we didn't think about that before we bought a 7day bus pass that we used maybe once. I think today we may just hop on and ride all day to get our money's worth out of it. All we have left to do today is write and record our stand ups. Then, I'll head home all by my lonesome to Aarhus, where my Mom will be waiting for me! I'm so excited to see her. We will be taking a trip to Milan, Italy this weekend. I promise to include much more pictures and more detailed posts when I return. Be expecting them sometime next week.

Taken by Lars

So, my parents always taught me not to take rides from strangers, but what if it was going to save me an hour of waiting and an hour of travel time....

Yep, last night, I totally hitched a ride from a complete stranger against by best judgement. I began my journey home to Aarhus from Oslo around 5pm Thursday, right around the time Mom's flight was landing in Aarhus. I took the shuttle to Oslo Gardermoen Airport and worked on my People Crossword Puzzler for an hour or so. Then, hopped on my plane to Billund Airport which is about a 2 hour bus ride away from Aarhus. I was planning on waiting an hour for the shuttle, taking it, then sprinting across the city to catch the last bus from Aarhus train station back to Skjoldhøj. It would have put me home close to 1:00am. Possibly later, if I didn't make the last bus out and had to order a taxi.

Well, then I met Lars, a nice, friendly man around my parent's age who seemed to enjoy my company. Apparently, Lars was from southern Denmark, but had spent the past 22 yrs. working in Germany. He moved to Aarhus, a year ago, and drove to Billund. When he found out I was planning on taking the bus back, he insisted that he would drive me to the station since, it was on his way. So I took the remainder of the plane ride to feel him out. Flashbacks from the movie Taken were playing out in my mind. They pretty much continued during the entire car ride.

As soon as we got to Billund, I called Katie to see if Mom made it to Aarhus ok. Of course not! They lost her luggage. So, of course I wanted to get home to see Mom asap. Taking a ride from Lars seemed alright to me, he hadn't raised any red flags yet. I knew he had a 19 yr. old daughter, 17 yr. old son, and 2 ex wives. So, I work into the convo with Katie that a nice man on the flight was giving me a ride, and that I'd be there soon. I wanted someone to know to come looking for me if I didn't show up within a couple hours.

Red Flag #1: He traveled with NO LUGGAGE.

The only time I've heard of people doing that is when Barney did it to pick up girls in a How I Met Your Mother episode.

Red Flag #2: He drove a Chrysler Pacifica, but the backseat had been taken out and replaced with a divider like a cop car would have.
Explanation= In Denmark you get a tax reduction for driving 2 seaters. Ok I can believe that. The Danish government likes to make it really inconvenient for people to eat chocolate, drink, or drive.

Red Flag #3: I watch his GPS change directions, and he doesn't follow them. Fortunately, I do begin to recognize city names, and I know he is going in the right direction. Maybe he was taking a shortcut. I did watch him type in the correct address, so I still felt ok.

I began to feel uneasy at this point and definitely a bit paranoid. Then, as I work into our small talk about how surprised I still am by all the children running around by themselves here, he starts telling me about how safe Denmark is, and how he can't even have a knife or gun in his car without getting in serious trouble by the police. I let out such a sigh of relief and said, "Well, that makes me feel so much better." I guess I forgot my filter, and he realized I probably was freaking out a bit by taking a ride from a stranger. He laughed and assured me he was taking me where he said and not planning on kidnapping me or anything lol.

Red Flag #4: He says, "I'm just really parched. Do you mind if I stop here at this gas station for a bit?"

I take this as another opportunity to call Katie and let her know I'm 15 min outside of Aarhus at a gas station and to come find me if I didn't call/text back in 20 min.

Lars was so nice. He came back with a diet coke for me! Then, he tried finding Skjoldhøj Kollegiet in the GPS. Turns out it was closer than the train station, so he might as well drop me off at home.

I arrived safe at Skjoldhøj by 11pm. Lars was so nice to me and all I could really do was promise to pay it forward someday. I enjoyed his company despite my paranoia and pretty much ran to my flat as soon as he drove away. I wanted to see my mom!

Turns out we both had interesting flights! She saved a man from a heart attack and was asked to make the call on whether to land the plane or not.... wait to go Mom. Her luggage arrived on the plane after hers, and after a few phone calls, the airline arranged a taxi service to bring her suitcase straight to my door. She also met a nice girl from Milan that gave her tons of information(places to eat, go, not go,) as well as the address to her lake house!!

We are now safe, and super exhausted in our hotel room in Milan. I fell in love with Italy today, but I'll fill you in on everything here a bit later. A blog about Italy without pictures/videos seemed just wrong.