Short Study Tour - Western Denmark

Thursday, February 3^rd

I left for my short study tour, which is for our program’s core course. My core class is my European Business Strategy class. Our class had to meet that morning at Frue Plads at 8:30, which turned into a problem. The day before we had to leave, we received an email from DIS saying there is a possibility of a bus strike, always a great thing to hear. As my friends and I were leaving that morning we looked to see if we would see a bus going past. Since we saw a bus we thought we were in the clear, little did we know we weren’t. As we got to our normal bus stop we looked to see when our bus (the 14) was going to show up. We saw it would be there shortly so we let the 1A bus go. Thankfully, a nice-old Danish man told us the 1A bus was the only bus running. A few minutes later we caught a bus to take us semi-close to where we needed to be. With our bags in hand we walked a distance to our meeting place. Let me tell you walking in heels on cobblestone streets and my ability to walk in general made that walk feel twice as long as it should. Thankfully we made it to our meeting place to go to Coloplast, our first company for the tour. At Coloplast we received a lecture from 10-noon and a free lunch. The lecture was really interesting. We got to see some of their major products, learn about the company’s values, stories about how the company lives up to its values, and how the company achieves its short term goals. After our presentation we had a 3 hour drive to Skanderborg, which is on the island Jutland. During our drive we saw the second largest suspension bridge. By the bridge was a small island. On this island was a building that was formerly the Institute for Overally Sexual Promiscuous Women. Our 3 hour drive led us to the castle Kolding Hus. By the time we got to the castle, we didn’t have much time to look around. We got a guided tour to learn about the history of the castle and the church.

The best thing we saw there was the Beatles Forever exhibit. We got to see clothing, what a bedroom looked like, posters, magazines and other stuff from the era of The Beatles. We also saw pictures of the Beatles during events, clothing and other items that had The Beatles on it. After our time at the castle, we headed to our hostel for dinner and socializing. 

 

Friday, February 4^th

For the second day of our study tour, we got to visit the company Vestas. When we walked into the presentation room, the company had bags of free stuff for each one of us. YAY!! Got to love free stuff! The presentation was very interesting. Our presenters discussed with us how Vestas used to be focused on winning and profits. In the past, companies would call Vestas saying it would like to order a turnbine. Now Vestas has found itself getting into trouble with is nothing but winning and profits strategy. (I could have told them that…thank you Kelley School of Business for teaching the importance of customers) In order to overcome its difficulties the company has changed its strategy to customer focus. After our presentation was over we had a quick bus ride to downtown Århus where we had lunch and time to explore the city. Århus was a small, but adorable city! 

After walking around for a few hours, my friends and I met the rest of the class at the ARoS Museum. What to say about ARoS? I sit here pondering with the words interesting, strange, freaky, weird and amusing crossing my mind. I suppose all those words describe the experience of ARoS. Our group received a guided tour. Our tour guide started us off with paintings, which was by far the most normal exhibit there. Next we got to see the infamous boy statue named BOY. 

 The temporary exhibit is where things got interesting. The first piece was saw was a sculpture of a baby made out of nothing but margarine. This sculpture has been well preserved for years because of the ingredients in margarine…kind of disgusting to think we eat it…definitely reconsidering eating margarine again. As we were about to go in the next room our tour guide asked if we would want to see it because an earlier DIS group had a student faint. Once we said that our group looked around and had an expression of “what the hell is in this room?” Well this room contained some grotesque sculptures. There were statues of people cut open, Michael Jackson with no head and using his head to give himself head, people covered in blankets, Mickey Mouse’s exploding, Jesus (made out of silicon) all cut up and blooding (but was really a self deception of the artist), a man giving anal to a corpse with only half a body. Strange, very strange. After our guided tour we had time to look around ourselves. Thankfully, the exhibits did not get any stranger. After ARoS was the hostel, and then a night out on the town.

Saturday, February 5^th

The last day of our study tour of course would not be complete without a 3 hour bus drive. As we were leaving one of our trip leaders announced that he brought medication for headaches because he knew we wanted to go out. As we walked down the bus he would ask people who wanted the medication if they wanted to sleep or not to sleep. When he asked people this we just laughed. After our drive we arrived at our location, which consisted of the café we were eating at, Gavnø Slot (Castle) and Føniks Slotsryggeri (Castle Brewery). We received a guided tour of Gavnø Slot (Castle), which really shouldn’t be called a castle because it’s basically a mansion. 

After our tour we went over to the brewery for a tour of their brewing process and a taste test of 6 of their beers. Once we finished our session at the brewery we made our way to home sweet Copenhagen.

I had an amazing time on the study tour! It was a great chance for our class to get to know each other, plus we have a really great group of people. I can’t wait for our week long trip to London in March!