While students often love Copenhagen, they also get overwhelmed with how lively the city is and how much there is to do outside of class time. After a week in the city, we traveled west to Odense and Svendborg for a few reasons: 1) to see how the smaller Danish cities compare in terms of cycle infrastructure, 2) how the country is investing in bicycle tourism and long distance routes, and 3) as a break from the intensity of the city portions of the class. With a 28 day class, we find it important to provide space for rest and reflection so that students can in turn learn as much as possible over the course of 4 weeks.

Our first train trip was 2 hours with a transfer in the middle. We had the choice of reserving seats for everyone, or letting folks travel on their own. Students would have all their luggage with them so we left the choice up to them for their preference. I was a bit surprised that they wanted to all travel on their own, but excited! After only a week the students were becoming more independent in their travels. Everyone made it to the train station, transferred in under 20 minutes, and arrived at final destination of Svendbørg.

After a week of eating out for every meal, we organized a taco dinner potluck which ended up being quite a bit of fun relaxing with everyone and orchestrating dinner for 25 people! We had a quiet night as the early the next morning we had to meet to take the ferry to Ærø Island. We arrived at the island around 10 AM and had until 5 PM to cycle 48 kilometers (about 28 miles) around the island.

Rebecca and I cycled together all day, and had fun seeing other groups along the way. Like with most of our activities, the ride was self paced and independent so students get the same experience as if they were there on a personal trip, compared to biking with 16 other students. It was a beautiful day and I was surprised at both how well marked many of the cycle routes were (credit to Denmark promoting bicycle tourism!) and how narrow many of the roads were. In many cases the roads were so narrow it felt like cycling on a multi use path! Whenever we did come upon a car, they would generously slow down to a crawl or wait for us to pass before continuing. It was a great example of a true share the road scenario, something we haven’t quite figured out in the US yet.

​With the many hours of daylight (around 18-19 hours) comes busy days for the students and professionals. We generally start the day around 9:00 or 9:30, meeting with local professionals or city staff. In the past week, we met with representatives from the Traffic Playground (Trafiklegepladsen), Gehl a local urbanism/design firm, and Copenhagenize a local firm that specializes in bicycle transportation.
 
Gehl and Copenhagenize gave us overviews of Copenhagen’s approach to urban living and transportation, and then showed around town via bike. It’s always interesting for students and professionals to hear there is no “silver bullet” to urban transformation. In Copenhagen’s case, they were relatively broke in the 80s (oil crisis) and as the city grew they needed better ways to transport people around their city. For them, it was easy and inexpensive to construct bicycle lanes on the edge of their existing roadways. This created the backbone of their future cycle network, a raised, unidirectional bike lane between the motor vehicle road and sidewalk. However their real transformation didn’t begin until the early 2000’s with the leadership of a mayor invested in adding more cycle infrastructure.
 
But, perhaps their biggest difference compared with the US, and one of the bigger surprises Americans learn is that they don’t stop improving their infrastructure, and don’t stop improving their overall network. They are continually working to add more cycle infrastructure.
 
After presentations in the office we always go for a cycle tour around the city. We generally end around 12:30 or 1:00, and then give the students an afternoon assignment that involves cycling around the city exploring. We intentionally send them off in pairs or on their own, so they get the true experience of being a local traveling by bike, as opposed to a group of 17 tourists biking around together. Rebecca and I will generally head back to where we’re staying to relax and catch up on a few things, and then venture back out for happy hour, dinner, or evening drinks with some of the professionals. Copenhagen is such a stimulating city that it can be hard to ever want to go home, but we would typically get back to our flat around 10:30 or 11:00 and head to bed before waking up at 7:30 to do it all over again!
 
Here are some photos of the group biking, happy hour at the docks, evening bike rides, and other neat stuff from bike tours!

In my last post I mentioned we six transportation professionals attending the course with us, in addition to 17 undergraduate and graduate students. The students have always been required to blog as part of their class grade, but this year we made blogs required for professionals as well. We always hope the professionals become inspired to go home and do excellent work, yet it can be quick to forget your experience once returning home. So the intent with the blogs is for the professionals to think critically about their own organizations and communities, reflect on how their experience traveling about Denmark feels different, and then consider what barriers they face in their own work to bringing about change.

The professionals will also find time upon return to share the lessons they learned with their management and broader institution, again in an effort to create change and learn from Danish best practices. I've shared the professionals blog links below, and the student blogs before that, for anyone who is interested in exploring them further.

Professionals
Robin Lewis, City of Bend
http://www.greatcommunitybicycling.com

Andrew Martin, Lane Transit Distric
https://andrewbikesdknl.wordpress.com/

Susan Peithman, Oregon Department of Transportation
http://Susanpeithman.wixsite.com/dktransportation

Shane Rhodes, City of Eugene
shanearhodes.tumblr.com/

Robert Spurlock, Portland Metro
https://denmarkinspiration.wordpress.com/

Katherine Ambrose, US House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure
http://katherinebikesdenmark.wordpress.com/

Instructor
Rebecca Lewis, University of Oregon
https://blogs.uoregon.edu/rebeccalewis/blog/

I love Copenhagen, but I love it even more when I get to experience it through the eyes of others seeing it for the first time! For this trip we have 17 students, whom are a mix of undergraduate, just graduated, graduate and even one PhD! Plus, we have six transportation professionals from across Oregon, including staff from cities, transit agencies, regional governments, state government and even one representative from a US House Committee. What is most surprising to me about the students is that most of them are not necessarily bicycle advocates, or passionate about bike transportation, but have taken one or two classes in planning, and bike around for transportation at home. These are always my favorite people to chat with, because they don’t know the details, they just know how hard is to bike around where they currently live, and then how easy it is to bike around in cities that have prioritized it. I asked one student yesterday, “what are your thoughts on Copenhagen so far,” and they said “I keep trying to find something wrong with it, but I haven’t been able to find anything.”
 
I’ve been taking fewer pictures this time and just trying to enjoy myself (I also took approximately 2,000 in our 4 months in Sweden) but here are a few of, you guessed it, people on bikes.

Rebecca and I left our Malmö apartment on Wednesday and moved over to Copenhagen to prepare for the University of Oregon's 2022 Bicycle/Transit Study Abroad course. For the next four weeks, we'll be guiding 17 students and 6 transportation professionals across Denmark and The Netherlands, exploring how other countries and cities design their transportation systems. I'm particularly excited to be back in Copenhagen, a city that I love dearly for it's grittiness, social culture, and bike-ability. Over 60 percent of people in the city of 800,000 bike to work or school every day of the year. There is one bridge in particular that has over 40,000 bike trips per day!

The class kicks off at 15:30 local time tomorrow, Monday, 20 June where everyone will meet each other for the first time in person (due to COVID). I'll be sharing a link to the professional's blogs, which I'm excited about this year because we have representatives from city, regional, state and federal jurisdictions, as well as staff person from a transit agency. We'll be in Copenhagen for about a week before heading west to smaller Danish cities and then onto The Netherlands on 4 July. I participated on the trip back in 2019 and blogged during that trip. Feel free to visit Campo2Copenhagen to see that trip.

If you have any questions, thoughts, comments or things you'd like to see, feel free to drop them in the comments below!

Well, the best of intentions resulted in me shutting my brain off, and avoiding even a single blog post in the 3.5 months we've spent in Malmö, Sweden. There's a lot to share, so I'll work on a better medium/format for that content soon, but in the meantime we are wrapping up our time in Malmö before heading to Copenhagen for the start of the 2022 Bicycle Study Abroad Course through the University of Oregon. It is most definitely bittersweet to be leaving a city both Rebecca and I fell in love with, so it's hard to put into words exactly what that feels like. A good friend once shared this quote with me and it feels pretty applicable to our time here:

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again...
So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
~ Rene Daumal

So how can I sum up 3.5 months? With pictures! Hiking, biking, public space, excellent transit, and coffee.