Tour de Bornholm :)

READY TO RUMBLE

As clearly depicts the picture above, some HEAVY DUTY biking occurred this weekend! Friday night, we were bussed, ferried, and bussed again to our hostel in Gudhjem on the island of Bornholm! Here is the first picture I took upon our arrival:

One plus of overnight ferry rides: beautiful view of the sunrise :)

Everyone was more or less half awake after spending the night on the ferry, but all it took was a few moments of looking around to perk us RIGHT up. It was BEAUTIFUL! Our hostel looked right out onto the Baltic Sea, and was conveniently located in a lovely area amongst some great shopping opportunities (I'll elaborate on this later!). 

Hostel

Part of the very Scandinavian-looking neighborhood :)

Until a few days before we left, I was under the impression that Bornholm was Swedish territory. Actually, it's a Danish island, but I didn't get the impression that even the Bornholm citizens thought of it as such (for one thing, I got a text message upon our arrival saying "Welcome to Sweden" in SWEDISH).

It almost looks closer to Poland than to the rest of Denmark! We stayed right around where that red dot is on the map.

After dropping our bags at the hostel, we were free to roam the island as we pleased! The tour leaders had planned three routes for the day, and I chose the aptly named "Killer Tour". The Killer Tour was a 62 kilometer route (although after numerous extra excursions, getting lost, etc., we figured we did at least 80!). The first half of the ride went right along the coast and the second went through the middle of Bornholm which consisted mostly of forest, farmland, and very picturesque houses.

Off we go!

"Cycle-Vai" - Just like the American River Parkway on Bornholm!

The ride was so amazing and, surprisingly, pretty tough! I have to admit I wasn't expecting much of a challenge, considering any DIS student who chose to could have signed up for the ride. Bornholm is both hilly and windy - two of the deadliest ingredients a bike ride can have! We stopped at various points of interest for photo ops, water breaks, and food. Here is a sample of what we saw!

Lots o' farmland

A windmill! SO Scandinavia. 

The sand at Duodde beach! It's supposedly the finest sand in the world, and is also the sand they use for hour glasses! Lots of fun to play in, roll around in, etc. 

The Baltic Sea! The water is so pretty and clear. AND cold.

Our lunch destination - Duodde beach!

The day was SO fun, but GRUELING (I really shoulda brought my fancy padded bike shorts!). The ride back was extremely windy (the weather went back and forth between gorgeous and kind of scary. At least it wasn't rainy the whole weekend as was predicted!) and wind is no fun to bike in, particularly when there is a lot of uphill involve AND you're tired and, in many of our cases, lost! We got back to the hostel around 7:30 (I'm pretty sure we were the last to return!), wolfed down some food, and sat and recounted the day's experiences with each other. The hostel even provided beer and board games! :) It was a fun, relaxing way to end the day and, after a night on the ferry and a full day of biking, I'm pretty sure no one made it past 10 pm :)

Sunday was more of a cultural excursion kind of day. After waking up and eating another delicious hostel-provided meal, we started biking north (Saturday we went south, so, new territory!) toward Helligdomsklipperne (what, you can't pronounce it?). Hellingdomsklipperne roughly translates to "The Sanctuary Rocks," and is known for its big impressive cliffs:

 

There was also a cave! You had to climb down a ladder to get into it, and it was verrrry narrow and dark!

After exploring the rocks, we biked a little further and found a great hiking spot. After hiking in half a mile or so, we found a beautiful little waterfall! Later, I found out that this was actually one of the tallest waterfalls in Denmark. HAHA. 

It was a beautiful forest!

Not to mention all the COOL WILDLIFE it included:

After exploring the natural side of Bornholm, we biked back to Gudhjem in search of the island's infamous smoked herring! I sampled the herring, but decided on this instead:

Smoked salmon and potato salad! PHENOMENAL. The Bornholm-ers know their fish!

After lunch, we wandered along the harbor and went into some of the shops. I noticed that the stores in Bornholm don't scream "tourist attraction," which I really liked! A lot of the shops in Copenhagen are so geared toward tourists you can't walk into more than one without seeing a lot of the same things. The stores we looked at in Gudhjem were more about the craftsmanship that went into whatever they were selling and sharing it with the world. There stores included the first toffee shop in Denmark (free samples!), a handmade chocolate shop, and a few blown glass stores! Glass blowing is big in Bornholm, maybe because they have access to the best sand in the world? :) My personal favorite was, for lack of a better title, a condiment store (Mom, you would have LOVED this place!). They sold various types of marmalade, honey, vinaigrette, jam, seasonings - EVERYTHING! They even had a sample counter with bread and pretzel sticks out for taste testing :)

I think we spent a good hour and a half here. The atmosphere was just so cozy, and there was so much to look at! In addition to the aforementioned products, there were also numerous candies, liquors, and pastries for sale. Everything looked so GOOD! I might have picked up more than a few souvenirs here...

We took pictures of each other sitting at the cute little table.

We stopped at a delicious crepe cafe for desert (five of us split two - we had one with chocolate, ice cream and nuts and another with apple and cinnamon! Mmm!) and headed back to the hostel JUST in time to clear out our rooms by check out time. After packing, we had dinner, did a little more wandering, and played cards in the hostel common area until it was time to leave to catch the ferry.

Beach by NIGHT

A seriously cool looking picture! They GLOW :)

 The ferry left Bornholm at 11 pm, and landed in Copenhagen around 6 am Monday morning. This made for an interesting day of classes, but, after after a long debate with myself, I DID actually attend all of them!

This was a wonderful weekend; I've always loved bike rides, so 100 kilometers of cycling on a beautiful island with great company agreed with me quite nicely :) Copenhagen is great, but it's so nice to get out of the city and experience something a little less hectic once in a while. Also, Bornholm is much further removed from American influence; because Copenhagen is so modern and populated, it has, understandably, molded to a more universally accessible model, which (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the context) includes some Americanization.

Copenhagen life is going well, as per usual. I'm now a PRO on the bike in city traffic, the fall colors are starting to come out, and, as of tomorrow, I will have been here an official MONTH! How weird is it that the semester is already a quarter of the way done?!

Thanks again for reading; I miss you all and love hearing from you. 

Hej hej! (Yeah, they say "hi hi" as goodbye. They're goofy here.)