Part I: Lessons from Copenhagen

My family took a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark this summer. I am often asked, “Why did you choose, Copenhagen?” Well, with a lot of prayer, financial discussions, and just wanting to avoid HUGE crowds across Europe this summer, we settled on Copenhagen. We thought about Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia. We hotly debated going to Italy or the Alps. Iceland was an easy second choice as Nashville has cheap, direct flight tickets into Reykjavik. In the end, there were cheap airfares into Copenhagen which also has an affordable public transit system. It was that simple. It was a cheap option for Europe, wasn’t slammed with tourists, had good public transportation, and has excellent safety ratings. Away we went.

I am a huge proponent of taking lots of photo for building lessons. If you are a teacher, feel free to use any of the photos I have attached to the Copenhagen posts. They are my photos(and unless they contain proprietary information), you are free to use them in a lesson. And truly, these types of trips…we love to share our experiences. So, if you are in our region, we would be more than glad to share about this trip or museums of NYC(last summer).

As with any vacation to a country which doesn’t speak your language(and they do speak a lot of English), there are a couple of initial days where you are taking in information with a fire hose. Things are similar to the States, but any big city has its own learning curve.

This post is the first in a series of posts which will explore education, urban planning(parks and street food specific), architecture, museums, athletics, and bakeries of Copenhagen. I will continue to hammer home why learning via experience is exceptional. I might even delve into European cathedrals and THE heat wave which we experienced. We did take a day-trip to Sweden and really enjoyed it as well.

I don’t post these as a gentle brag. I think there are things that we can learn from the Danish people, and I really want to explore how Copenhagen was resurrected as a thriving city after the collapse of its industrial base. And that resurgence has occurred only during the last 30 years.

Kingsport, we need to learn from this and not be content to be a retirement community!!!! Copenhagen’s renaissance is possible in Kingsport with the right leadership, vision, and dreamers.

Thumbnail photo credit…me.