Vikings!

What started out as a cold, rainy morning turned out to be a very fun sunny day!! We took a morning commuter train from Copenhagen to Roskilde. Like I said, it was very rainy outside! And of course, we had left our ponchos at the hostel. So I bought one of those super cheap plastic ones to go over my backpack so it wouldn't get our important stuff wet.

We found the tourist office in no time and got a very nice guide and map to the city. From there we breifly stopped to observe the cathedral, though the rain and wind prevented us from fully enjoying it. Then it was just a short walk to our main destination, The Viking Ship Museum!!

Ticket price for students was only 50 dkk (or about 7 euro). The first building didn't seem that impressive on sight, but we had plenty to discover! The museum houses 5 viking ships which were discovered at the mouth of Roskilde fjord, sunken on the sea floor. In viking days the ships had been a barrier to block the fjord from attack. In the 50s a team excavated the site thinking there was one ship, what they found were the reminants of FIVE!

The museum recovered all of the wreckage and rebuilt each boat with what had been preserved on the sea floor. (Which is not a lot, perhaps the most any boat had left was 25%). Then they used modern day technology to draw what the full boats would have looked like. They used those models to recreate the boats, paying attention to even the finest details! They used the same type of trees, the same type of tools, they even used wood with the same wood grain patterning. All in all they have about 8 recreated ships in the museum harbor.

Out of all of these viking ships, The Sea Stallion was the largest. After the recreation of this ship was finished, they gathered a crew of 65 men & woman to test it out! They spent a month and a half in 2007 in the viking ship sailing from Roskilde, Denmark to Dublin, Ireland!!! Then 10 months later they sailed it back to Roskilde. Today it rests in the harbor and is open to visitors to climb on board and imagine their own viking adventures!

We got to watch a movie about the incrdible journey of the Sea Stallion, as well as a video about the origins of the five ships. We saw each ships remains, with information about their uses width, length, weight, etc.

Then we moved on to a room with 2 half-recreations full of viking supplies to give you an idea of what the ships looked like when they were used. PLUS, they had viking costumes for you to try on!! So obviously we dressed like vikings and played on the ships for a while. :) other activities included two viking board games and learning to write your name in ancient runes.

The museum was really great! They even had an area with tables to each lunch, a cafe, an impressive viking gift shop, and in the high season you could have even sailed around the harbor on one of the viking ships! It was super fun.

By the time we left it was sunny outside. Still very, very windy...but at least it wasn't raining! We went back and enjoyed the cathedral, walked around the old palace's gardens and wandered through the shopping area.

We stumbled upon a chocolate shop with many types of truffles and treats. Heather bought a chocolate which looked like an oversized gumdrop, encased in dark chocolate with coconut on top. Not knowing what it was filled with, she bit into it tentatively. Come to find out it was full of super light marshmallow cream!! So I immediately went back and bought one for myself. The Danish treat is known as a Hjemmelavede flødeboller...but we just called it yummy.

After our adventures in Röskilde we returned to Copenhagen and had dinner at the hostel. We had their spaghetti bolgnase with a local beer. It was very good!

We realized it was early and we had nothing to do, so we located the nearest movie theatre. The Palads cinema is AWESOME! The outside was brightly colored and provided posters of movies now playing, much like in the states.

The inside was gorgeous!! The building obviously used to be something else, because it had marble pillars and a beautiful staircase with high ceilings all decorated with marble, granite, and detailed wood carvings. The crowd was that of a typical Saturday evening at 18:45. They had automatic ticket machines, and the box office stations. The lobby also had two very large window displays for upcoming movies. There was one for Winnie-the-Pooh which releases here later this month. The display had 5ft tall stuffed characters, large posters, a bee hive in a tree and other adorable decocrations! It was impressive.

We proceeded to the box office and bought two for the Ryan Gosling film, 'Drive' (which was being presented in English with Danish subtitles). The cashier asked where we wanted to sit and showed us the seating chart of the auditorium. We picked our seats and got our tickets. We then explored the snack shop. They had a concession stand that we are used to, but it only had popcorn and drink. The snack shop was like a convienent store! They had aisles of candy, chips, ICEE machines, coffee machines, mix & match candy by the kg, a variety of fountain drinks and bottled beverages. It was insane! We decided to save our money and headed downstairs to the 'Pixar Lounge'. The lounge had about 20 theatre seats on a platform with a projector playing trailers for upcoming films! You could just sit and watch trailers if you wanted to! The lounge was also decorated with life-sized cutouts of Pixar characters! I got a picture with Mr Fredrickson. :)

There were other movie scenes painted on the walls and posters for upcoming movies. Including a poster for 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' which would NEVER be displayed in the states. The girl was topless and Daniel Craig behind her, his arms around her waist. Scandlous! Haha

We finally made it upstairs where our theatre was and admired the bar area which is also decorated in quotes and posters. We were finally allowed to seat and found our seats easily since they were pre-assigned.

The movie was really good and it was weird to watch a 'foreign' film but speak the language. I know from experience that some things and lost in translation when you watch a subtitled film, so it was interesting to listen to the other people's reactions.

After the film we stopepd by 7-Eleven and got a can of Carlsberg Elephant beer. We suspected it might be a lighter version of the beer we had with dinner, but really it was darker. Nevertheless it was enjoyable. The thing about Scandanavia is, beer is available EVERYWHERE. Apparently you only have to be 16 to buy anything under 12% alcohol by volume, and 18 to buy anything more than 12%. Plus, they don't really have open-container laws. People drink on the trains, buses, walking down the street, while bicycling, and anywhere else they please. It felt really ilelgal to be walked down the street drinking a can of beer!!

We made it back to our hostel and got packed up. We are sharing with 2 nice Italian girls who were just hanging out in the room when we got in. When we settled down for bed, they kindly left to continue their conversation some other place! Very thoughtful. Well time to sleep, early train to Berlin tomorrow!

Safe Travels,
- Kit & Heather