introducing kobenhavn

This is the first picture that I took here. It's a view down one of the streets outside DIS (Danish Institute for Study Abroad where I'm studying here), which occupies a few fantastically old buildings in the Copenhagen's medieval city center. The immediate area is filled with great food places- thus far my favorite and affordable being Shwarma/Falafel and bagel establishments and a really good bakery called St. Peters. Those yummy pastries aren't called "Danishes" for no good reason. Down the street is the Radhuspladsen where my bus drops me off. It is essentially the Times Square of Denmark-giant electric billboards and a grand plaza generally full of people and entertainment. There were two guys playing Native American music there the other day.

The greenish tower in the distance is very characteristic of Copenhagen-there are tons of steeples and towers and minarets on the skyline, which lacks skyscrapers even in the financial and commercial districts. Gotta love Europe.

The trucks and cars are tiny. Sixteen-wheelers don't appear to exist, probably partially because the streets are too narrow to fit them and because everything seems to be done on a smaller scale. The truck in the picture is about as big as they come, even when transporting major hauls of construction materials, food, etc. I saw my first Ford F-150 in over two weeks yesterday and my jaw almost dropped because there are really hardly any big cars here...the few I have seen are sleek Range Rovers that I like to think are driven by European ballers, not oversized pickup trucks driven by a guy with cut-off sleeves.

It's kind of sunny in this picture- but that's rare this time of year. A lot of grey days. Sun rises around 8:15, and sets at around 4:30(?) Sundown is way earlier than I'm used to, that much I know. It's been somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees fahrenheit since I got here and, being a city on the water, it's windy. It's snowed a couple of times--just a light dusting that's generally gone by sundown of the next day. When I got here, I stayed optimistic about the weather by assuming that it would only get better.

Then I found out that February is typically the coldest month of the year here. 

That said, the Danes are happy people: Denmark has been voted the happiest place in the world for two years running now and my friends and I are determined to try to find out why over the next few months. 

The Danes have a word called "hygge" which basically means cozy and warm and is a principle these people live by. There are candles everywhere-it's tough to find a restaurant or store of any kind without them-as well as lanterns and oil lamps that hang or are put on the ground outside stores in the streets. The bins just inside the entrance to the grocery store are filled with bags of tealights. There were three waiting for me on my windowsill when I first arrived here. Light and warmth are achieved in any way possible to make up for the environment that lacks both during the winter. 

Denmark also conserves light and energy. All lights in public places--the stairwell to my apartment, the rooms at my school, bathrooms, etc. are regulated by motion sensors. Denmark is the world's biggest producer and exporter of wind energy-something like 20% of the country's electricity. There are giant wind turbines in the landscape outside the cities-many of which I saw on the architectural tour I just returned from. Sustainable design is a repetitive term here.

You can drop a coin here and it could cost you about $4. Kronor come in 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 coins. It makes wallets heavier. At first it feels like I'm spending exorbitant amounts of money here just because the numbers are about 5 times what they are in the States. I spent something like 250 kronor on my grocery shopping trip. Cover to a club is 60. The numbers are just bigger. But I've gotten really good at dividing by 5 and 6, depending on my optimism regarding how the dollar is doing against the kronor. Before I left, my grandmother gave me kronor that she had leftover from their trip to Scandinavia. I'm thinking free kronor, awesome.

Turns out it's Swedish kronor, which is only accepted at 7-11 here (that's not so terrible because they're on literally every street corner). I tried to use the Swedish kronor to buy my first bus ride here and the driver looked at me like I was crazy/a dumb American. A look I've gotten somewhat used to.

For one, doors here will make you feel like a foreigner. All the doors to school, stores, my apartment open in instead of opening out. I can't count the number of entrances and exits that have been ruined for myself and everyone else not from around here. A casual "See you tomorrow" followed by the inability to open a door correctly is just plain embarrassing. But we've all been humbled by it. And learned to laugh.

The Danish language is so unbelievably different spoken than written, getting directions verbally is almost worthless. We all joke that you can assume half the letters of every word are silent and just plan on mumbling the rest. They have three letters in their alphabet we've never seen before, pronounce their d's kind of like l's (when they're pronounced), and r's are pronounced with a part of their mouth I'm pretty sure I don't have. Fortunately, everyone speaks English. Even their Swedish neighbors can't understand them, so it's out of necessity to communicate with the rest of the non-Danish speaking world. It doesn't sound like any other language, but at times reminds me of a mixture of French, German, Spanish, and English.

That's all for now. Godnat. (Despite troubles with pronunciation, some of the words are pretty obvious).