I’m so domestic!

I have already (have only?) been in Copenhagen for two weeks now! I feel like I have been here for way longer actually. I thought it would take me a lot longer to adjust to a new place, school, life.

Anyway, this weekend was a blast. On Friday, DIS sponsored an event called Networker’s Lounge for students and their Danish roommates or Danish buddies, so Jessica and I decided to go. They had free food and drinks for everyone, and we just sat around and talked with people for a few hours. Then, Jessica showed me and a few of my friends here this bodega called Bobi Bar. A bodega is basically a small bar that serves just beer, and it is extremely smoky! Oh, and apparently this particular bodega also has boiled eggs on the menu? Random. It definitely a place for locals, and there was quite the mix of people. It is also fairly cheap, so I would probably hang out there if it wasn’t for all of the smoke.

On Saturday, Gabi and I decided to make dinner over at my apartment. We made salmon, waffle fries, and salad… delicious combo. We also had some wine of course :) The salmon was super tasty, so we were pretty proud of our cooking abilities.

After dinner, we went to the city for cocktails and dancing, and I got home extremely late once again. I wanted to take my camera out, but I have never really had good luck with cameras. I don’t trust myself to make it home without my camera being broken, stolen, lost, or dropped.

Since the last couple of days I have been everything but productive, I decided to do my homework and go to the laundromat. At home, I do my laundry like once a month, but here I have to carry all of my laundry about 1km to the laundromat. Therefore, I have to do laundry twice as often… not fun. Even more not fun is when I walked into the laundromat and saw this:

?????

Huh?

I was so confused. Since the directions were all in Danish, I just guessed some random buttons… and miraculously I  figured it out after staring at them for about 10 minutes.

Since I was being productive today, I decided to do my Danish homework while my clothes were washing. When I sat on the bench in the laundromat, I looked up at the sign in front of me, and saw this:

English directions. Wow, well those would have been helpful 10 minutes ago!

 

Until next time,

Emily

Field Study to Christiania

Yesterday I had my first field study of the semester. Basically, no one has class on Wednesdays, and instead, each class is assigned time slots throughout the semester to go on “field studies.” The field studies are an opportunity for experiential learning, so we aren’t just sitting in the classroom the whole time… which is nice :)

This particular field study was for my Danish Language and Culture class to an area in Copenhagen called Freetown Christiania. It is a large commune that began in 1971 when a bunch of hippies and homeless people took over an abandoned military area, and since then, they have created their own type of society. They each pay 1900 DKK per month to live there, and they make a living through working either in Christiania or outside in Copenhagen. About 1000 people live in Christiania, including children, and they all follow a “Common Law.”

The rules are: no weapons, no hard drugs, no violence, no private cars, no bikers colors, no bulletproof vests, no sale of fireworks, no use of thunderflashes, and no stolen goods. However, marijuana is legal, and is sold out in the open in a specific area called “Pusher Street.” One of the reasons this has been able to go on so long is because many people believe that if it is shut down, drugs will be sold all around Copenhagen instead of being more concentrated in this little area. Honestly, this place kind of creeped me out. It looks very run down, and I couldn’t imagine anyone living in some of the “houses” we saw. My teacher said it looks a lot worse than the last time she was there a year ago.

The picture above is of a mural of Christiania’s history that was painted by one of the men who lives there. It hangs in one of the cafes that is run by people from the town.

Our tour guide was a Swedish woman who has lived there since the mid-1970s, and she took us into a lot of the little shops they run. A lot of people make household goods, jewelry, clothing, etc. and they sell it to tourists for a living. The picture above is from one of these shops that was full of old restored ovens. They were fancy back then! After seeing a lot of the shops, she showed us a bunch of the areas where people live. Apparently many of the people built their own houses, which our tour guide seemed to be very proud of. I just had a hard time believing these people truly care about their town because it seems like it is falling apart, and there is trash and random stuff laying all over the place. I am also a clean freak, so that is just my opinion. I am glad I got to tour and learn about Christiania, but I doubt I will ever be back.

“You are entering the EU.”

Hmmm… Weird.

I love oatmeal… so much, in fact, that I eat it every single day for breakfast. This is what I, and most Americans, think of when we think of oatmeal for breakfast:

Ahhhhhh yes, cooking oatmeal, warm oatmeal. It’s so normal, even McDonalds and Starbucks do it:

However, to a Dane, this is super weird. They love oatmeal, but heating it up is a completely foreign concept to them. When I think of oatmeal, I think of cold days when a piping hot bowl of oats makes me nice and toasty! Denmark has a lot of cold days, but they still eat their oatmeal like this:            

Bowl + milk + raw oats = Breakfast.

That’s it! Quick and easy, and it actually tastes good too (with some cinnamon, banana, and raisins). It’s a lot cheaper than boxes of cereal, maybe this is their substitute? Oh, Denmark.

Emily

Vikings and Kings

I have officially been in Copenhagen for a week, and I can honestly say I get happier and more comfortable here every day. I actually helped a Danish women with the metro yesterday! She didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Danish, but somehow I told her which metro goes to Norreport :)

This was also my first full weekend in Copenhagen, so Gabi and I decided we would sign up for one of the many trips DIS was offering. We really wanted to go to Elsinore castle (aka Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s castle), but that trip filled up very quick. We signed up for Vikings and Kings instead, which was a trip to Roskilde Cathedral and the Viking Ship museum on Sunday afternoon. Roskilde Cathedral has been the main burial site for Danish monarchs since the 15th century, and it has been added on several times since then.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get home until the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, so I was pretty tired during the trip. Even more unfortunate is that the cathedral closed last minute, so we weren’t able to go inside. It is apparently really beautiful. Here is a picture from wikipedia:

Source

However, we did get to walk around the outside while the tour guide explained the history. I was extremely cold though, and we were outside for way too long. Therefore, I didn’t really pay attention to anything that was said… oops! I did get some pictures though.

Then we went to the Viking Ship museum, which was kind of cool. I thought it would be bigger, and the tour guide went off on a lot of tangents that made no sense to me.

These are some recreations of the Viking ships that are all around outside of the museum. The tour guide said they are better to look at in the summer when it’s nice outside. I agree.

One of the coolest things I think we saw are five ships that were recovered from Roskilde Fjord. They were put in the water as a system of barrages to prevent against naval attacks in the 11th century. We also saw a short film of a project called “Thoroughbred of the Sea,” which is a project done by some Danes in 2007-2008. They constructed their own Viking ship, and 65 crew members sailed it from Denmark to Dublin and back. It was extremely impressive. I definitely could not have handled it! They also had a bunch of the notes from life aboard the ship, and most days at least 1 person was seasick… yuck!

Just a pretty swan outside of the museum.

Overall, the trip wasn’t what I expected, but it is obviously not DIS’s fault that we couldn’t go inside the cathedral. Maybe I can go see it another day.

In today’s news, I had another day of classes. I did sign up for a visiting family though, so I am extremely excited to have a home-cooked meal again and get to know a Danish family. I requested one with a dog! I miss mine a lot, and my roommate’s cats just aren’t cutting it.

Homework time!

Emily

Early Reflections

The past couple of days have been very busy! Thursday was the first day of classes, and having class at 8:30am was pretty difficult considering I still have not adjusted to this time change of being 7 hours ahead. I also switched my classes around… probably a few too many times. They make it so easy to switch classes here (you can just do it online), so my fickle self took advantage of this. Like I’ve said before on the blog, I was signed up for Public Health in Northern Europe, Health Economy and Health Policy, Danish Language and Culture, and Gender and Sexuality in Scandinavia. Well, I read the syllabus for Gender and Sexuality, and realized that it didn’t sound that interesting to me. So I switched to A Cultural History of Travel because it was listed as an anthropology course. Yeah, it was definitely less emphasis on anthropology and too large of an emphasis on history for me… history makes me fall asleep. So then I switched to a different anthropology course, Muslims in the West. I think I finally got it right! This class sounds super interesting. I now have two classes on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Wednesdays are reserved for “field studies,” which are half day trips to places around Copenhagen with our class to get hands-on learning experience. For example, for my Danish Language class, we are going to a soccer game! I will write more about the classes next week!

So Thursday night was a success. My new friend Gabi and I decided we wanted coffee after class, but we didn’t want to spend a lot. Gabi said she remembered seeing a sign for 20DKK coffee at a Greek restaurant (that’s about $4, pretty cheap here), so we went there to hang out for a little while. Then I had to go to this store called Fotex, which is like the Danish Target. I had to get off on a different train stop, but I didn’t get lost for once!!! I was proud. I had to go to this store to get a new hair dryer and a new flat iron because my old converter fried the ones I brought from home. Apparently this is really common, and you should just buy European hair appliances when you’re in Europe. Now I know.

Last night DIS had their Welcome Party for all of the new students at this club called Disotek In. We got free wine/champagne/beer and they had some snacks. It got pretty crowded after awhile, but I had a blast dancing and hanging out with everyone. After the DIS party, we decided to go to another bar called Sam’s. It ended up being a karaoke bar!!! They sang some songs in English and some in Danish, which was pretty hilarious. And no, I did not get up there and sing… I didn’t want to scare everyone away. After that we went to a shawarma, which is like a middle eastern sandwich. I got the falafel, and it made me miss Oasis in Iowa City!

Ok, so the title of this post is Early Reflections, and I just want to talk about some of the things I have noticed after being in Copenhagen for almost a week.

1) The city is so quiet! People don’t talk as loud, there are less cars, it’s just quieter. One time two girls walked by laughing extremely loudly, and everyone else around me got super annoyed looks on there face. One of my teachers said that Americans talk a lot louder than Danes, which I totally agree with. It is even more noticeable on the busses and trains, except when there are teenagers or kids around.

2) Packing… I actually did a good job. I don’t think I forgot anything, except a wristlet for going out so I don’t have to bring my huge purse. Thankfully Jessica, my roommate, let me borrow one last night.

3) The look of the city is not really what I expected. This is my first time in Europe, so I guess the images in my head reflect what I have seen of big cities in the US. I expected bigger streets, a grid layout, better sidewalks. It’s actually cool to look at a map of Copenhagen because the oldest part of the city has crooked streets in a random layout, but the newer parts have straighter streets in a more grid-like pattern we are used to in the US.

4) Culture shock hasn’t been that bad coming from the US to Denmark. Since basically everyone speaks English, it hasn’t been hard adjusting to life here. I would say the hardest part of the whole week has been adjusting to being away from home, my family, and my comfort zone. At first, I was pretty scared because most people know people here from their home schools, and living with a Danish roommate made it harder to get to know other DIS students than if I were living in DIS shared housing or in the Danish dorms, which are called Kollegiums. However, after the first week, I am glad that I live here. I can come and go when I please, make the food that I like to eat (although I haven’t really cooked anything but oatmeal and eggs haha), and my commute is really short compared to other students (only about 20-30 minutes from my apartment to school). However, I do want to get a visiting family, which is a Danish family that I can visit about once a week or whenever we decide to set something up. That way, I can still have family dinners and get to know more Danes while I am here.

Oops! That was a long post with no pictures. Tomorrow I am going on a DIS trip called Vikings and Kings, so I will have pictures to post from that!

Adios amigos!

Emily

UDSALG!

The title say it all… apparently January is the big month for sales in Denmark, so obviously I spent lots of time shopping lately.

At this huge department store, Magasine du Nord!

Just kidding. No shopping for me!

I really have spent the last two days just exploring Copenhagen and attending orientation meetings. Yesterday we had a meeting in the morning about living with a Danish roommate/host family. Then, Gabi and I explored the city.

We saw the Black Diamond/The Royal Library. It’s really cool because the old part connects to the new part:

    

The picture on the top right is from the skywalk, and the bottom picture is the weird escalator up to the skywalk that has a beautiful view of the water. Then we saw this pretty building which I forget the name:

Today I had a meeting at 9am for another group exercise around Copenhagen. We were in a group of four and had 5 places to go see around the city. We also got a free and delicious pastry, but I ate it too fast to take a picture. Our first stop was Rosenborg Castle, the old castle of the Danish royalty.

Legend says that the king who used to live there (a long time ago!) used to keep his gate key under the lion’s tongue of this statue so he could get inside at night after spending hours at the bar. Since the drinking water in Copenhagen was so poor, everyone drank beer, and the king had to outdrink them all!

This is Amalienborg Palace, which is where Queen Margrethe II lives in the picture on the top left. Her son and his wife along with their children live in another one of the buildings right next to the Queen’s.

After wandering around the city, we went to a grocery store to purchase some items for lunch. Each group bought part of the meal, then we made Smørrebrød, which is an open-faced sandwich.

In the afternoon, I had a meeting for my core course, Public Health in Northern Europe. I am really surprised how many colleges offer Public Health as an undergraduate major! I am very excited for this class… and it starts tomorrow at 8:30am. Bright and early! Hopefully I can get some good rest tonight and finally adjust to this time change.

Hej Hej!

Emily

The Beginning

I made it to the beautiful city of Copenhagen! My flight left at 10pm from O’Hare, and I don’t think I really felt like I was leaving until Kevin dropped me off and I was all alone. There were a lot of DIS students on my flight, so the couple hours before we boarded me plane were spent talking with a bunch of them. Hopefully I see them again! There are almost 700 students here this semester! The flight was pretty uneventful. I sat next to another DIS student from Seattle, so I talked to him a lot and slept about 5 hours. They fed us mashed potatoes and beef stew for dinner (ehhhh…) and a ham sandwich and OJ for breakfast (weird…). Then I checked in with DIS at the Copenhagen airport and my Danish roommate, Jessica picked me up and took me to our little apartment.

Here is my room:

It’s a little messy right now… Don’t hate! I just moved in! We also have a little kitchen and living room. Oh and our bathroom is literally a closet. You have to pull curtains over the toilet and in front of the door, and the drain is just below the sink. I think it’s about a 3’x3’ space. Very efficient, indeed.

Last night Jessica made me a traditional Danish dinner, some meat patties, potatoes, and salad. We stayed up talking for a long time with her roommate whose room I am now living in. She was just back from Norway for a couple days visiting.

This morning I had to be at DIS at 9am for the welcome ceremony, which meant I had to wake up at 7am (about midnight at home). Let’s just say I was a little tired. After some speeches by DIS staff, we broke up into teams of six for a scavenger hunt, which we decided not to complete. Instead we walked around the city exploring and we each grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch. Since we didn’t have anything to do for like another 4 hours, me and another girl in my group, Gabby, walked around Copenhagen some more and grabbed coffee together. She got an $8 latte and I got a $4 coffee (it was itsy bitsy and no free refills!), but we were very cold and tired from walking. Here are some photos I took while we were walking around:

		Walking in the City VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Then we went to the cultural immersion fair where I learned about signing up for yoga classes. I am going to go to the free class first to see if I like the instructor… otherwise I will buy my own cheap yoga mat and just do yoga on my own. I am very excited to start classes! Tomorrow we have some more orientation stuff in the morning, but the afternoon is completely open. I wonder what the day will bring tomorrow.

PS. I forgot to mention that I got lost on the way home today. Actually I got lost this morning in the city too, but a nice Dane helped me find my way. Tonight I couldn’t remember which train to take back home since I have to switch trains and there were three to choose from. I went to the wrong stop, so I had to turn around and try the next one. I was sort of freaking out… but it was a learning experience!

Until next time,

Emily