January was a whirlwind of excitement! I spent New Year’s Eve with friends, still in shock that I’ve known some of those people for 10 years and we can still come back together once or twice a year and still be just as close as we were in 7th grade.

After getting about 6 hours of sleep, I proceeded to finish packing for my nine and a half hour flight from MSP to AMS in Amsterdam. I’ve said BEFORE that this trip was crazy in that it was planned in just a few days between my dad and a friend of his he met while studying abroad in France back in their college days. They even crazier part of it was that they hadn’t spoken in 25 years! They just reconnected, and then sent my sister and me over to Denmark to meet her and her family.

My dad’s friend and her family were some of the nicest people I have ever met, and I am so grateful I can call them my friends now too. They were generous enough to give my sister and I keys to their apartment so we could explore Copenhagen while they were at work and school, and come and go as we please.

At this point, I have little to no words to describe Copenhagen other than beautiful and rich. Rich in history, art, architecture, and language. The danish language is very different from the other languages I've dabbled in. It is hard to learn in that some of the letters you read, are pronounced in a completely different way from English, or may not be pronounced at all! Being immersed in a culture and language I knew nothing about, and forced to go about a daily life was perhaps one of the biggest adjustments I had to make in the first few days. But honestly, I am so happy that I did go through that pressure that forced me to use my resources as best I could (especially the internet since I had a very limited international plan) and also just putting myself out there to be embarrassed. I am pretty sure the only word I ever managed to speak that sounded native was ‘tak’ (pronounced like ‘talk’), which is thank you -- probably due to all the help I received.

Though it was cold and the city was not bustling with as many tourists and locals, and some attractions were closed for the season, there was still plenty to see. Their aquarium was amazing to see different marine life from different parts of the world, especially the sharks! Similar to the Mall of America, the U.S.’s largest shopping mall, Field’s is Scandinavia's largest shopping mall located right in Denmark, a few metro stops from where I stayed! Field’s is nowhere near the size of MOA, but my sister and I definitely had fun popping in out of all the clothing stores, and enjoying rich ice cream when we needed a break. And the castles! What beautiful architecture, with all the tiny details everywhere you looked. I also cannot believe how old some of the castles are, and are still in such amazing shape. It really is quite humbling compared to how new American architecture is. Two or three hundred years isn't anything compared to some of the Danish buildings.

If anyone wants a mild winter European vacation, Copenhagen is the place to go. I know I definitely cannot wait to go back in the warmer months to see Copenhagen in full swing, but the colder winter months were just as amazing.