WYD Wednesday(s)

Hi everyone!

One of the coolest things about DIS is how they utilize Wednesday’s. You might be thinking how can Wednesday’s be that cool? Hump day?? Let me explain. Wednesday’s at DIS are fully devoted to field studies (a cooler version of field trips you would take in elementary school). Each class has two field studies throughout the semester that relate to a topic or theme of the class.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had three field studies. The first one was for my class Partners and Rivals: US EU Relations. We visited the Danish Foreign Ministry and got to talk with some Danish diplomats about Denmark’s relationship with Russia and its involvement in the Arctic. The discussion of Russia was particularly interesting because Denmark has to take a dual approach to their relationship. This means that Denmark must strongly condemn Russia’s bad actions (confrontation, misinformation campaigns) while also talking to them due to their interconnected commercial interests and presence in the Arctic. The visit was very eye opening and something I never would have gotten the chance to do elsewhere or on my own.

For my next field study my core course class and I visited the Danish War Museum. We had a wonderful tour guide who was basically a walking encyclopedia of the history of Danish military history. We walked through Danish military history from the 1500s to the present day. Denmark has surprisingly been involved in quite a few wars. The Kingdom of Denmark used to include Norway and a portion of Northern Germany. Over the years Denmark has lost a lot of land which is an often discussed topic here.

Not related to the National War Museum, but the leaves have started to change color.

My final field study was with my Anthropology of Food class. We ventured to the Coffee Collective to partake in a coffee tasting. After learning about the process of ethically sourcing coffee and the different types of beans, we got to smell and taste the different coffees. I love a good cup of coffee, but honestly don’t think that much about where is comes from. However, I must admit there was a big difference in taste between the supermarket variety and Coffee Collective’s coffee. It was really interesting to learn about the lack of transparency in the coffee industry and how Coffee Collective is challenging that.

Outside of my field studies I visited Frederiksborg Castle with my visiting hosts. I got to explore with them as my tour guides. This made the visit pretty special. I also went to La Glace with my friend and her grandparents. La Glace is a famous cake shop in Denmark is known around the country. The Queen has all of her cakes made here. Let me tell you, it did not disappoint. This was some of the best cake I’ve ever had. The pictures do not do it justice.