Going Danish

Hi, I'm James Le, currently a third year student at Denison University. This blog is dedicated to my 2016 spring semester abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark via the prestigious DIS program. Join me along this adventure!

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This is going to be my last vlog for this YouTube series that I started for my term abroad. Hope you all enjoyed my video content and my travel adventures in Europe. For the last time, enjoy beautiful Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and sunny Iberia!

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I had a phenomenal 2nd day climbing to the top of Eiffel Tower and Montparnasse Tower to get a sweeping view of Paris. See this beautiful and elegant city from the top of the sky with me!

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I am in Paris, the city of love! Check out my short adventure in the capital of France right here!

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This is footage from my 2nd and 3rd day in Amsterdam. A big chunk of the video is filmed inside the Riijskmuseum, one of the biggest art museums in Europe. Besides from that, the music from Coldplay and George Ezra hopefully made my video more exicting :)

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After DIS ends, I continue my travels to 3 different countries: Netherlands, France, and Portugal. Amsterdam is my 1st stop - it’s a lovely small capital famous for its liberal approach to a lot of social issues, including prostitution and cannabis. This is footage from my 1st day walking around the city on my own and with the tour.

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My Top 5 Outdoor Spots to Hangout in Copenhagen

Spring has come to Denmark over the last few weeks, and I was so thrilled to ride my bike around the city and enjoy the warm weather. The city’s population almost doubles up as everyone flocks out to the street to soak up the sun. There are a ton of cool outdoor places in the city for friends and families to get together for picnic, sports, swimming etc. By far, here are my favorite places:

1> Amager Strand Beach/Park: Since I live in Amager, this area is only half an hour away by walking. I’ve been here a few times both by myself and with friends. From the beach you have a spectacular view to a windmill park and the impressive bridge Oresundsbroen connecting Denmark and Sweden. The beach park is a very popular place for both sunbathing and relaxation as well as for all kinds of sports and activities. When I were biking around, I saw runners, skaters, suffers, swimmers and even kayakers engaging in many activities. My favorite experience to date is when I and the Denison friends here get together for a dinner picnic in the park and we watched sunset as we walked along the beach. Hygge to the fullest!

2> Island Brygge: Also nearby where I live, Island Brygge is a harbor front area that is very popular during the hot summer days. It has an open-air swimming harbor bath with free access for everyone. I have been biking and strolling around this area many times and absolutely enjoyed people-watching. It is a cool spots for locals to meet up to tan, relax, read a book, or party.

3> Nyhavn: Without a doubt the most popular hangout spot for tourists, Nyhavn still amazes me every time I check it out. The colorful old houses, the busy boats and sailors, the lively pubs and bars, the enthusiastic tourist from all over the world… make this place so special. During summer, Nyhavn is the perfect place to end a long day, whether it being casually walking along the river or enjoying a beer while resting feet at the quayside.

4> Amaliehaven: Amaliehaven is a small park located between Amalienborg Royal Palace and Nyhavn. It is definitely one of my favorite place as from the park, you can enjoy both the water view (in which you can see the Opera House and Copenhagen Street Food Market) and the palace view (with a big water fountain in the middle). It is a popular spot to take a lunch break in the middle of your workday. The park itself abounds with different varieties of plants and fragrant flowers whose colors and natural shapes creates a contrast to the geometrical layout of the park.

5> Dronning Louises Bro: This is the bridge across The Lakes in the central city that joins Frederiksborggade in Indre By with Norrebrogade in Norrebro. I biked across this bridge so many times after class to check out the cool coffee stores in Norrebro. I remembered my 1st time visiting it during a scavenger hunt for our building at the beginning of the semester – the lake was completely frozen and people could walk on top of it. Now the water is clear and provides an incredible sense of peacefulness. During the summer day, it is an ultimate spot for students to hang out and soak in the warm weather and the open space while observing people biking across the bridge.

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My Top 5 Greenspaces in Copenhagen

Denmark is one of the most sustainable country in Europe and Copenhagen is considered the green capital of the world. So it is no surprise to me that the city has designed its urban architecture to have a lot of green public spaces like parks and gardens. It is quite amazing to enjoy the peaceful atmosphere in any of these places below:

1> Frederiksberg Gardens: This is definitely one of the largest and most attractive greenspaces in Copenhagen. Frederiksberg is an extremely modern residential neighborhood in the southwest side of the city center. It is also very close to the Copenhagen Zoo and Copenhagen Business School, which explains why Frederiksberg Garden is full of young people and families. I visited the garden back in February and it is filled with lakes, woodlands, and lovely picnic lawns. It would be awesome to make a running workout in this garden over the weekend.

2> Faelledparken: This park is right next to the Parken Stadium, home of FC Kobenhavn. I have been there once while going to a football game back in April. There are play grounds for the children, outdoor chess tables for chess players, sportsgrounds, a dance pavillon, green lawns for all other kinds of activities. Faelledparken is also where the May 1st workers’ demonstrations take place.

3> Botanisk Have: University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden is located right in the center of the city. With close access to campus, it becomes the prime spot for students to hang out after class. The garden has an extensive complex of historical glasshouses with a wide variety of plant species.

4> Assistens Kirkegard: The Assistens Cemetery is in the heart of Norrebro. It is the burial site of a large number of Danish notables, most notably H.C.Andersen. The park is beautiful in the cold weather when the snows cover the graveyard and left the tree lines in a spectacular view.

5> Bispebjerg Kirkegard: The Bispebjerg Cemetery is suited in the north slope of Bispebjerg Hill, northwest of center of Copenhagen. A sunny spring day is Bispebjerg Cemetery for a special excursion. The best part: it is overpriced with Japanese cherry trees that blossom into a long, pink tunnel flower time.

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My Top 5 Coffee Shops in Copenhagen

Copenhagen is well-known for their pastries and coffees; in fact, I feel like there are more coffee shops in this city than even Seattle. Within the last 4 months, I have been able to explore many different coffee shops in the city – and here are my top 5 of favorites:

1> Studenterhuset: I am definitely biased a bit here because first, I am a volunteer here and second, the place has a great discount for DIS students: 12 Danish krone (equivalent $1.5) for a coffee and croissant. Anyway, it has nice coffee (my favorite is Cappucino), good chocolate croissant, lovely strawberry pie, and even tasty beer at a very steep price during happy hour. Additionally, the place has a lot of events happening throughout the week, such as swing dancing, language coffee, quiz & board-game night, and even livestreamed UEFA Champions League game. I personally spend a lot of time here besides volunteering, and I have met a lot of international students studying in Copenhagen.

2> Bevar’s: I know about this place thanks to one of my friends from class. Bevar’s is located in the hip neighborhood of Norrebro, where a lot of young and multicultural people live. Bevar’s is the perfect place for you to come enjoy a sip of coffee and do work. There are many tables in the shop and all are equipped with the candles. I also particularly enjoy the music they play – very conducive to make you become productive.

3> Original Coffee Illum: This shop is located on top of the big Illum mall in the shopping street Strogen. The view is spectacular from above – it is a perfect spot to sip a nice café latte, enjoy a conversation with friends, or take an Instagram pic with the view behind you J If getting bored, you can walk around the top floor of the building, there are a few restaurants and chocolate shops that give you free tasting.

4> Coffee Industry: This Swedish coffee house is very next to University of Copenhagen, which is only 5 minutes by walking from DIS. A very cozy place with lovely lighting, it offers a variety of pastries from Sweden as well as multiple sandwich options for lunch. It is also a great place to do work, with a lot of table settings both in the lower and upper floors. In the first 2 months, I came here very often for lunch break just to get a cup of Americano while preparing for my next class.

5> Parterre: I have only been to Parterre once and it was last week. However, it has a prime location – right in the Christianshavn canals that oversee all the beautiful home-built boats. Parterre has outdoor sitting, but I prefer the window spot in which I can look out to the canals view while jotting down my thoughts.

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Pizza Space Delivery Game Development

At the time I am writing this post, I am essentially done with all my classes. I don’t have any final exams, but only two big assignments for the Computer Science classes and one final paper for the Sustainable by Design class. For my core class Game Development, our final project is to develop our own game applying what we have learned so far in the semester. To give you the context, our class have been focusing on learning Unity to develop games. I have no prior knowledge about making games before coming to DIS, so this class is really a fresh-off-the-boat challenge for me. A lot of concepts have been covered this semester, including C# Programming Basics, game mechanics, 2D platform game development, physics, 3D Computer Graphics, materials and shaders, AI, animations… Without a doubt, it is quite a challenge to apply such knowledge for the final project, as many of them require high time commitment to master.

For the final project, I am the project leader in a team of 5, including me, Gregory Greene (Grinnell College), Benjamin Allen (Skidmore College), Wesley Lin & Kevin Ellenburg (Vanderbilt University). We started working on the game since the beginning of April, and finished the production by early May. I actually wrote a bunch of diary posts that log our development process on my Medium account, which you can check out here. Nevertheless, I want to write this post as a personal reflection on making this game, since all team members dedicate a lot of time and efforts in making it.

My dream career post-grad is to become a technical product manager; and throughout the making of our game, I have striven to put myself in that exact position – CEO of the product (in this case the game we were making). The original game idea and story progression came from Kevin (pizza space delivery), the bulk of engineering features is implemented by Wesley and Greg, the design graphics are made by Ben, and my job is to be the scrum master who communicate and put all these components together. There are 3 basic platforms that we use to keep our game on schedule:

Google Drive – to organize all documentation such as idea docs, brainstorm sessions, game design doc…

GitHub – to collaborate on code sharing and real-time updates on the changes we make.

Facebook Messenger – to communicate with each other regarding the status of our work.

Here are the challenges that we encountered throughout the game development process:

Master GitHub: Except for Wesley, most of us have little experience using GitHub before, so it took quite a long time to figure out how push and pull code into the system.

Prioritize features: We were originally very ambitious – coming up with lots of cool ideas for our game. However, given the tight deadline and limited resources, we were forced to select the most practical features that we can build.

Develop the story: Kevin really owns the story of the game, but all of us also contribute original thoughts in making the plot more exciting – especially with the addition of the voiceover and audio tracks thanks to Gregory.

You can play Pizza Space Delivery on this web build here.

You can also check out our source code and download the Unity project from this GitHub link.

Lastly, here is my message for future students taking this class next semester: 

I bet a lot of you don’t have previous knowledge about game development before enrolling in this class, but that doesn’t stop you from experimenting and trying to learn new things. Programming is certainly the most important skill you need for this class, but knowing a bit about game design and visual aesthetics will help you a lot along the way.

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2nd day in Oslo, a completely different experience from the rainy 1st day. Oslo is beautiful with a nice weather - and the 7 hours walking around town can’t cover enough what this city has to offer...

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A little bit of glimpse to Oslo, the capital of Norway - the close Scandinavian neighbor of Denmark and Sweden. This is a spontaneous trip with my housemate Ryan, and kudos to him for narrating throughout my trips!

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This is footage from the 2nd part of my trip in Stockholm, Sweden with my DIS roommates Bryan and Jacob. A great day exploring Skansen Open-Air museum and Nordika museum!

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This weekend I visited Stockholm, the capital of Sweden and Scandinavia. It is a very beautiful city with a rich history. This is footage from my 1st 3 days walking around and checking out the Photograph Museum in Stockholm.

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Thanks to our awesome LLC coordinators, this week our LLC event is to visit one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, Tivoli Gardens. 4 hours well spent in this magical place of awe and wonder :)

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There is a reason that Budapest has the nickname “Pearl of the Danube” - check out my experience in the Buda Castle district and enjoy the view from far sight :)

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My house in Budapest - My, my hidden treasure chest, Golden grand piano - My beautiful Castillo...

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Vienna really surprised me with the sustainable environment that it offers - open spaces, parks, gardens, local rivers... My 2nd day there was filled with refreshing air and green atmosphere!