Parliament

CPH 

48 degrees, rain

 Today I took the most memorable elevator ride of my life.  Enter the Paternoster.

This is one of only four left in Denmark and can be found in the Parliament building, where I went today for my Danish Politics class.  This may have been the most interesting aspect of my visit to Parliament today.   Just kidding.  But maybe I'm not...

Anyways, I love this elevator, so efficient, so clever.  Well played Denmark.

The rest of the building was beautiful as well.  Go figure

 

There are 800 clocks in Parliament such as this one here.  All 800 must be changed but hand for daylight savings.  Yikes

(The A and M at the bottom is not in fact AM, as I cleverly suspected.  Rather, 7 minutes before a meeting of parliament the M flashes and the clocks chime.  And 7 minutes before parliament is to vote the A flashes.) 

I also stopped into the Royal stables on the way out.  Pretty nice digs if you are a horse, or a human. 

All the horses had guilded name plates over their stalls.  This here is Consula.

Back on the home front now, I was recently paid a visit to by two Danish Jehovah's witnesses who were going door to door.  I was spared a bible sermon because their bible was in Danish and I just. don't. speak. Danish.  They seemed more disappointed by this than I.  

And speaking (or not) of Danish, let me just say that it is a tough nut to crack as far as languages go.  A tough nut indeed.  The grammar is not difficult, neither is spelling for that matter, and many of the words are very similar to english.  But the pronunciation!  Well, that will get you every time.  There is a certain je ne sais quoi about the way you have to gargle the letters in the back of your throat that makes speaking particularly challenging.  

My danish oral midterm in two days will be a real spectacle.  I'll let you know how it goes.

vi ses