It’s been another packed week in Gothenburg, and this time Copenhagen as well! Let’s take a look back at the work we’ve done and the three day weekend afterwards.
This week was the first week of, well, the build part of Dare2Build. A few people stayed in Hammarkullen on Monday morning to finalize the schedule, material list, and drawings. The rest of us, excluding the food and fika teams, immediately got to work. I, along with a few others, started the day off by seeing how well the strategy of putting logs in holes works. We quickly found out that the ground was incredibly spongey, making this strategy impossible. Because this was at the core of my team, the frogs design, we spent the rest of the day coming up with something new. We eventually decided to dig a little bit, place the logs, and add connections in the form of wooden poles between them. I also helped the wilderness team to come up with a new plan of using rafts, as seen below.
Tuseday was very different. I was the food and fika guru, along with Megha, Sagar, and Walter. We cooked tacos with chicken, cheese, vegetables, and salsa. The quality of the food was very good, however a lot more people came after the fika so we didn’t have enough food for everyone. The chicken went especially quick, in hindsight I would’ve bought much more meat.
Wednesday and Thursday were very similar. I had an officer role on both days, Wednesday I was the communications officer and Thursday I was the safety and efficiency officer. I took a lot of photos Wednesday and conducted one interview as well all for instagram (that’s the communications job), but most of the day was spent helping the project manager, Ben organize people because we had a big turnout that day. On Thursday I was checking that everyone was using the equipment in a safe manner, but spent the majority of the day getting the log cutting stations to work efficiently. When I had the time, I helped the frog team level the path, lay down geotextile and gravel, and cut logs. Thanks to everyone’s hard work, a lot of progress was made this week, as seen in the second picture below.
Friday was a national holiday called Midsommar, which celebrated the longest day of the year. Everyone in our group was still really tired from the work week, so we took it easy during the day. I slept in, went for a run around Liseberg, the theme park in Gothenburg, got brunch with Megha, Scott, and Christian, and spent an annoyingly long time trying to plan a trip to Copenhagen over the weekend. That night, we went to the park for a few rounds of four square. Ben and I then decided to scooter to downtown Gothenburg to check out the Midsommar scene. Upon realizing that everyone was in a club (which we were too young to get into), we were forced to scooter back. Instead of going directly back, we went to the top of a hill I had ran up last week. It was pretty then, but I have to admit that nothing beats it in the middle of night, looking down upon rows of city lights gleaming below.
That’s it for Gothenburg. Now the exciting part begins. On Saturday morning the seven of us took a bus to what would be an awesome weekend in Copenhagen. I started the day off by getting some tandoori chicken at an Indian restaurant before we checked into our hostel, the Generator Inn. We then walked around the center of Copenhagen, which I immediately fell in love with. I’ll scatter some of the photos I took but they give you an idea of how pretty this place is.
The next place we went was an island known as Christiania, an awesome community where hippies are everywhere and rules are extremely relaxed (photo below is a statue in this area). We did some hardcore parkour in a skatepark, and then everyone except for Ben, Scott, and I left Christiania. We sat down in a park to enjoy the atmosphere, and were approached by a man named Peter. Peter had a guitar and an amplifier with him, and offered to play some tunes for us. Essentially, we got our own concert and had some great conversation with him as well. Ben offered him some money for playing for us, but he refused and said that true wealth is measured in friendship. Needless to say, that moment was special.
Peter had to go after a few songs, so we explored Christiania a little bit more. We stumbled upon a beautiful lake, which is shown in the picture below. This lake happened to have its very own rope swing, which all three of us used and somehow didn’t fall into the river.
After that we headed out of Christiania and joined the rest of our group closer to downtown Copenhagen. It was time for dinner, and Scott’s o-week mum who’s studying abroad in Copenhagen this summer. She recommended a place called Refshaleoen, a place on the other side of Copenhagen with a bunch of food trucks. We scootered there, and found it that it had a rock climbing wall as well. We all gave it our best effort on a number of paths, but I was only able to make it to the top of one of them. We then checked out the area and found a hundred food trucks all in one area. It was right next to a skate park, so I enjoyed some delicious tacos while watching some kid showed everyone up on a scooter.
On Sunday morning I went for a run around the city, which was nice because I saw landmarks we didn’t have time to see otherwise, such as the famous little mermaid statue (which came out way better in other people’s pictures than mine).
After a quick brunch, we spent the rest of Sunday in the art museum and wandering through the botanical gardens. Our bus left at 5, and with that our awesome little trip to Copenhagen was over.
