University of Minnesota Athletics
Leslie Knight Diary Traveling on Big Ten Foreign Tour
7/22/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Leslie Knight Journal Thursday, July 20
Last night all of us went to an amusement park named Tivoli. We went and found different restaurants and Megan (Skouby, Iowa) and I ate at this buffet that provided an enormous salad bar, French fries, and all sorts of meats. We ended up being seated right next to a Danish man and his wife, which made dinner quite interesting. We talked about Denmark and their king and queen. The man started quizzing me and asking me which countries the king and queen were from and how many siblings they have. I was so embarrassed because I didn’t know any of the answers, but his wife rescued me and came to my defense! They tried teaching Megan and I how to say “Can I have the check,” but it was extremely hard! After dinner, we walked around the park some more and received many unbelieving looks, I think because we are fairly tall.
Today we went on a city tour. We saw some incredible buildings with enormous towers and plenty of statues. The Rosenberg castle was neat and there were these guards standing outside with their very large guns. I walked over to one and asked if I could take a picture with him. He didn’t even look at me and with an awfully stern face he told me that I had to be five feet away from him. Another building that was interesting was the stock exchange building. There was a huge tower and it was made of twisted dragon’s tails. We also went and saw where Hans Christian Andersen lived and visited the statue of the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is right on the rocks, so all of us gathered around it and took a picture. Our tour guide however, told us that they are thinking about moving the statue out further into the water because her head has been stolen multiple times!
Friday, July 21
This morning everyone gathered in the hotel restaurant for another wonderful Danish breakfast. The type of breakfast food is a little different here, but I’m proud to say that I tried it all. It is common for the people here to eat different types of bread along with different cheeses and various meats, so I grabbed a plate and went for it. The bread was extremely dark with lots of nuts, I believe I had Swiss cheese (that I sliced myself,) salmon and some type of curry sauce. I also sampled a piece of Herring and a small dab of Patella, which I think was fish, but I wasn’t completely sure. To say the least, I took one bite and that was about as far as I wanted to go! The other food that was provided consisted of delicious Danish pastries, fresh fruit, fresh bread, a plethora of cereals, eggs, bacon and plenty of different juices.
After breakfast we headed to a boat tour. The boat tour was about an hour long, full of interesting facts of all the different buildings and their histories. We learned about houses that used to be inhabited by naval troops, different churches, sculptures, small cities, buildings that used to be orphanages, old breweries and modern buildings as well. We floated under many low, narrow bridges, all the while listening to our tour guide speak English and the native tongue, telling everyone to stay seated.
After the boat tour we walked over to what is called the Round Tower. The tower does not have stairs, but it has a ramp that goes around and around, going up and up and up. At the top we had a fantastic view of Copenhagen. We had our second game tonight and we won once again. At every game we give each player on the other team a t-shirt from our school and they give us something in return. Our first game we received pins and tonight we received mugs. After the game we had pizza at the gym and talked with the Danish team. Tomorrow we play again and then head on to Sweden!
Just on a side note, some different things that I have noticed here are that almost everybody rides their bicycles, small buggies are used instead of strollers and the women wear tights or jeans underneath their skirts or dresses.
More to come...
