Beer, Bites, and Ships...

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline.  It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

- Frank Zappa

I have been missing fall in Wisconsin.  Here the weather has just been cold and rainy, but the leaves are finally starting to change color and fall!  Last week some friends and I decided to go and visit Carlsberg Brewery.

These photos were on the beautiful walk there.

 Carlsberg was founded in 1847 by J.C. Jacobsen.  The company was named Carlsberg after Jacobsen's son Carl and berg (which means hill) because the brewery was built on pretty much the only hill in Copenhagen.

 This is the original brewery location.  The beer is now brewed outside of Copenhagen, and this is now a visitor's center and museum.

 Carlsberg now also owns and brews Tuborg.

Along with the price of admission you received two beer coupons.  I drank about half of this and decided it wasn't worth it.  I will never be a beer drinker.

 J.C. Jacobsen was an avid art collector and philanthropist.  His art collection is now housed in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek which is in Copenhagen.  He also commissioned and donated the Little Mermaid statue to the city of Copenhagen.  This is a smaller model version of the one in the harbor.

 Any guesses what this is? If you guessed breathalyzer you got it correct! I am not kidding, the funny thing is that you need to pay to use it.  What drunk person is going to bother paying to see if they are drunk?

 The Carlsberg Company's logos include and elephant, swastika, and a 12 pointed star.  The swastika is obviously no longer used, but still remains on some of the buildings and statues.  The swastika was not used because the company supported the Nazi Regime, but because before the Nazis stole it, the symbol meant good luck or strength.

 Carlsberg also has draft horses.  I was a little upset by this fact at first thinking that they just copied Budweiser until I found out that Budweiser was not formed until 30 years after Carlsberg.  Kate, one of my friends, was very excited to see the horses since she competes on the UW-Madison Equestrian Team.  The horse was not so excited to see her and tried to take a bite out of her boob.  She has teeth marks, that's how hard it bit her.  I of course found this hilarious.

 This is the original gate into the Carlsberg Brewery and you can see the 12 pointed star on top.  Jacobsen not only started the brewery but he also started a laboratory to scientifically figure out problems related to brewing.  The species of yeast used to make pale beer, Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis, was isolated by Jacobsen.  The concept of pH was also developed here.

Danish road signs are not exactly helpful, they just kind of point in a general direction even if that means pointing through a building.

 This is the elephant gate.  There are four elephants for Jacobsen's four children and each elephant has an initial on it. Since the gate was built the elephant has been a symbol of Carlsberg.  The brewery even began selling the Elephant Beer in 1955.  

 I imagine that the two statues in the balcony are supposed to be Jacobsen and his wife, but I actually have no idea.

And then we ate pizza (I feel like I could end every story with that).

 And found this store, with marshmallows, which are apparently a "true American tradition"

 Since I only have four hours of class a week I have been improving my cooking skills, on Friday night I attempted to make eggplant parmigiana.  It was actually pretty good.

 Then on Saturday my Nordic Mythology class took a field trip to the Viking Ship Museum.  The museum houses five viking ships that were deliberately sunk around the year 1070.

 The coolest part of the museum is that they have actually built replicas of all five of the ships.  With these replicas historians have sailed most of the shipping routes the Vikings are thought to have used just to study how the people on board would have lived and if the ships could possibly have gone as far as historians believed.

 Also there were tepees, not quite sure why, but there were. 

The museum was expanded in 1990 and during excavation  9 more ships were uncovered including the longest warship ever found, at 39 yards (36 meters).  These new ships are currently being treated so that the wood doesn't further deteriorate.  

Random Denmark Facts:

- During the Dark Ages Vikings made up an elite force of soldiers known as the Varangian Guard and worked as the personal bodyguards of the Byzantine Emperors   

- The vikings settled Canada about year 1000.  The settled in parts of Greenland and Canada.  They called this land Vinland.  The Vikings did not think of this land as a "new world", they just thought it was an extension of their homeland.