Michael Carøe Andersen

Tag: Copenhagen

  • Scandinavian Capitals

    The Scandinavian trip was great and – as expected – very expensive. Once you are used to Czech prices everything in Scandinavia is quite expensive – especially for alcohol.

    Anyways we had a great time and got to cover a lot of ground in the 10 days the trip lasted. We started out with four people Andres (Ecuador), me, Femi (Northern Ireland) and Mehmet (Turkey) here in Copenhagen, King’s Garden in front of Rosenborg Castle.

    In the Kings Garden

    The best thing about the trip was reconnecting with a lot of friends. In Copenhagen we stayed and partied with Moses, Daniel and the rest of the old IAESTE Copenhagen crew. Went to concert with Sophie who was in Prague last summer. I met my cousin Rikke for some drinks, my thesis buddy Mikkel made a great dinner and my best childhood friend Johannes gave me lunch. Michael, a friend from bording school saw on Facebook that I was coming to town and joined one of the parties and old university buddies Sohl and Corneliussen joined at Christiania.

    It was great being back in Copenhagen on some of the early summer days and we did cover some of the touristy spots like Nyhavn.

    Nyhavn

    We jumped on the boat to Oslo and sailed through the night and woke up in Norway. We needed some recouping sleep after Copenhagen and the cabin on the boat was just right for that.

    The Copenhagen-Oslo boat

    We walked the city of Oslo for the day and met up with Mikkel from my university who showed us Vigelands Parken. After a day of strolling Oslo we took a bus at midnight towards Stockholm.

    Vigeland Sculpture Park

    After a bumpy night on the bus we came to Stockholm very early and checked in to our hostel and went out to see the town. Two more friends from Prague, Murat (Turkey) and Jeremie (France) joined us and for the rest of the trip. Here is a female guard from the Royal Palace in Stockholm, do we have that in Denmark?

    Royal guard

    We found a cheap cabin on the boat to Helsinki so the whole grouped went further east for a cruise. It took one night in each direction and then we had a day to walk the city of Helsinki. He we are in front of the orthodox church.

    Orthodox Church in Helsinki

    Back in Stockholm we met up with Backsell, and Freddy two friends we met in Michigan. They showed us the nightlife of Stockholm and the fashionable Sturaplan in particular.

    Backsell and Femi at Stureplan

    After 10 days of traveling and partying it was nice to get home.

    There is 200 pictures from Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki on flickr.


  • Moving on

    So Ive been flat mate and business owner with Femi for 8 months. To tell the truth I wasnt sure we would make it for more than 6 months before wed run out of money. Luckily that has not been the case. Were still in business and doing well for the time being.

    We have to leave the flat we are subletting in Copenhagen in about two weeks and weve just signed the contract for our next place – in Prague.

    I ended up in Copenhagen by chance, started a company as a crazy idea turned real and now Im moving to Prague because I can. Im loving it and I cant wait to get set up in Prague.

    Copenhagen is a great city and even though Ive seen a lot of it over the past couple of months I will probably return.


  • Mi casa es su casa

    Last weekend two guys from Madrid stopped by our place for a couple of days. I didnt know them and they didnt know me but they found me on the website Hospitality Club (HC) where travellers can find free accommodation. Ive been a member of the site for two years but so far I hadnt used it myself and wasnt home when people wanted to stay at my place. This time it worked out – and it was a blast.

    The cool thing about HC (and other sites like CouchSurfing) is that everybody gets something and it doesnt cost anything – social software at its best. When I travelled to America in 2000 I tried to use Servas – an off-line predecessor of HC started in 1949 – to find some people to stay with in US. The idea was great but in practicality too cumbersome for me. With HC its fairly easy and relatively safe to meet local people and get cheap accommodation.

    Nacho and Alfredo are studying aerospace engineering and architecture and they had found some cheap flights to Malmö. So they had a few days to visit Copenhagen. They brought along some Mahou Negra cerveza (thanks!) and local red wine and then they cooked a traditional Spanish omlet. Here they are in action:

    Spanish cooking

    They stayed with us from Saturday till Monday so we went to a private party Saturday night and to Sunday Reggae at Rub A Dub (thanks for that idea, Alice).

    Reggae Sunday

    Nachos and Alfredo invited us to a party at their apartment the 16th so now we just need to find cheap tickets to Madrid

  • Copenhagen Ambiance

    This post was written for the international people on the IAESTE Weekly mailing list to tell about Mikael Simpson and Trentemøllers concert at Ungdomshuset December 5th. I figured I might as well post it here so I could include pictures and videos.

    As winter sneaks up on us and the sun becomes the friend we see too seldom and too short, the Danes get into a darker, melancholic state of mind for a couple of months until spring finally greets us again. Here is my suggestion of how to embrace yourself for the gloomy winter with some cool Danish music in the middle of Copenhagen history in the making.

    Ungdomshuset – Home of the rebels
    Ungdomshuset (transl. The Youth House) has been a vibrant institution in Copenhagen for 20-something years but it might be over within the next couple of weeks.
    ungdomshuset
    Photo by emo.ware

    The history of Ungdomshuset goes back to when it was build by the labour movement in 1897 as a cultural house for the workers of the community. It has been the base of several demonstrations and other events organized by the labour movement in the first half of the 20th century. The place was more or less abandoned in the 1950ies until BZere (transl. squatters) moved in in early 1980.
    In 2000 a Christian sect bought the house from the municipality with the use of a front company and since then there has been a legal struggle to evict the young people using the house. It might all end December 14th (or some day close to that) were the authorities will probably use force to get people evicted.

    Read more at Wikipedia, about the house or about the trials (More extensive sources in Danish: 1 2 3 4 5)

    So take this opportunity to get inside Ungdomshuset December 5th where a couple of the most hip Danish artists are showing their support for the house. See what Copenhagen is also like and meet some interesting people with Mohawks and piercings all over their face – and dont worry they wont eat you, most of them are vegetarians.

    Mikael Simpson – The One and Lonely
    Mikael Simpson
    Photo by Stig Nygaard

    Mikael Simpson is a Copenhagen-based artists that catches the restless night spirit of Copenhagen. He makes all his music in his apartment on Nørrebro and here is his latest video that shows you what goes on in his apartment:

    He just won the P3 Guld award which is Danish National Radios finest award (backed with a 100,000 kr cheque).

    Electric Wonderboy
    Trentmøller is a Copenhagen musician/DJ with remixes for Pet Shop Boys, Moby and Röeyksopp to his name. Trentmøller recently released the laid back solo album The Last Resort that has been getting a lot of praise. Here is a performance from last weekend:

    Hope to see you there – Mikael Simpson and Trentemøller

  • Arb Design Photos

    Several people have told us that they want to see some photos on the Arb Design website – and we are now ready to comply :) Together with Søren Sunnyboy Sohl we went out to the streets of Copenhagen and shot a lot of rounds. We started out at Danish Design Center and continued past the parliament through The Royal Library Gardens and ended up by The Black Diamond.

    At the turntable

    Show us some teeth

    Femi and Michael

    Femi and Michael

    Corner of The Black Diamond

    Arb Design guys

    We had a lot of fun running around and posing for these photos, See more photos from the session here.


  • My todo list for Copenhagen

    Copenhagen streetlights

    Copenhagen is still a new place for me. Ive been here a dozen time throughout the years but always on short visits. Now Im living here and I want to take advantage of that. This is my list of things I want to see and do in Copenhagen before I leave again.

  • Metablogging – Copenhagen bloggerdinner

    Yesterday I joined a group of bloggers in Copenhagen for dinner and socializing and it turned out to be really interesting.

    The dinner started out at a bar, moved on to a restaurant and ended in an apartment. I didnt know any of them personally and I doubt any knew who I was when I showed up. I knew who most of them were because they have been active in the Danish blogosphere in general and particular in the scene of corporate blogging and social software.

    It is very interesting whats going on around blogging right now, now that it seems to seriously hit mainstream in Denmark. Blogging is not exactly new anymore but a lot of people are starting to use it professionally – and the people that were here are some of the pioneers in Denmark that try to make a living providing services in social software.

    It was a really pleasant evening with some inspirational people and meeting people in person always adds an extra dimension when you only know them from their writtings.

    I didnt get around to talk to everybody but Copenhagen is pretty small so I will probably meet them again somewhere.

    A couple of pictures at flickr

    BTW – this post is my first attempt with Microsoft Live Writer and its suprisingly cool.

  • Hitchhiking video: From Copenhagen to Aalborg

    I finally got around to edit the clips I took from my trip to Jylland.

    I had four different rides, all of them was with interesting people. The trip took 5 hours which is pretty good. The only lag I had was in the beginning where it took about 40 minutes to get the first ride from the entrance of Holbækmotorvejen.

  • Tourist in Copenhagen

    A couple of weeks ago Alberto and Luiz visited me in Copenhagen for a couple of days. It turned out to be a beer infused trip to some of the wonderful sights in the city of Copenhagen.

    We walked, biked and sailed around Copenhagen for three days. I shot some video along the way and cut it into this 12 minute video.

    See the video at Blip.TV or Google Video.

    The places visited in the video are (inspired by Anetq):

    The track in the credits is Love Shops Copenhagen Dreaming.

    The pictures from the trip can be seen at Flickr.

     

  • På turne i Jylland

    De sidste par uger er gået med at få genset en del venner og familie rundt omkring i landet. Først var fætter Christian i byen, så vi var hos Martin til en god middag.
    Carøe cousins dinner

    I forrige uge tog jeg på en tur rundt i det jyske. Først blaffede jeg til Aalborg, hvor den stod på grill med de studiekammeraterne Tomas og Carsten og frokost med de ESN folk der var i byen. Fra århus sad jeg bag på Christians motorcykel til Rømø (udtales Romø, hvis nogen skulle være i tvivl).
    Pez on his bike

    Tomas og Mikkel og Palisgaard dukkede op et par dage senere og så blev der badet, solbrændt og festet et par dage inden turen igen gik mod Kbh. Det har været ganske hyggeligt at gense folk, og det er fedt at være i Danmark, hvor man kan komme til stort set alle steder på et par timer.
    Last dip of the day