Week 1 Updates

Hi. Here’s a fun fact for you: that’s actually how you’re supposed to greet people in Danish (ok, the actual spelling is ‘hej’ but it sounds exactly like its English counterpart). It has been one week since I touched down in Copenhagen, and while I cannot yet say that I’m a seasoned veteran ready to write the beginner’s guide to Denmark, I will say that in small ways I am slowly beginning to adjust (it should only take another, oh, 5 months and 24 days to really get acclimated)

(And no, unfortunately I do not have many pretty pictures: I will use the bleak, grey weather as my scapegoat until a time arrives where my photo taking becomes more frequently and hopefully more impressive)

Home

Quick correction: my address here is
Tranehavegard 27, 3, TV
2450 Kobenhavn
Denmark
(‘TV’ signifies that mine is the left unit on the 3^rd floor)

I am living in a shared apartment located in the southern district of Vesterbro. If you refer to this handy map (compliments of Google Images), Copenhagen like most other large cities is separated into several districts that possess their own unique character and flair.

Within each district are also specific neighborhoods – Vesterbro for example is home to the Meat Packing District where old meat packing/processing plants (who would have thought) and warehouses have been converted to small bars, restaurants, and whatnot. My particular neighborhood is located immediately adjacent to that green patch in Vesterbro’s bottom left corner – the green patch is actually a cemetery.

For lack of a better word, my neighborhood is a city suburb: the blocks are dominated by large housing projects (some of which really convey a really depressing ex-Soviet Block vibe where it’s a plain concrete building with small, jail-like windows). My particular building fortunately features balconies and a few other details that at least make it somewhat more aesthetically pleasing:

Taken during the year’s first snow: don’t be fooled, it melted a few hours later and now everything is back to damp, grey and drab

Although the university system here does possess what we would call dorms, these are not plentiful nor are they common. Rather, the universities have contracts with different apartments or housing complexes across the city that set aside a certain number of units specifically for students. The rooms are located all over the city and come in varying shapes and sizes: my particular unit is a 1-bedroom + kitchen + bathroom where the living room has been converted to a living unit.

Floor Plan (this was done with generic software
so all you architects - ignore the fallacies)

Yes, the angle of this is odd, but believe me
it’s hard to take a picture in this room, of the room

Put simply, it’s a cozy apartment. The multiple radiators in the apartment work wonders, and I can comfortably wear a t-shirt and shorts while indoors. There are hardwood floors throughout, and it came furnished which was great. Some of the kitchen utensils leave a lot to be desired, but it’s enough to survive and then some.

School

The University of Copenhagen is composed of 38,000 students and 6 faculties (think College of Letters and Sciences, College of Engineering, etc.) that are located on different campuses throughout the city. Each faculty has its own separate facilities, enrollment system, tech support, and there next to no cross-faculty communication or consistency. Applying as an anthropology and city planning major, I was accepted (somehow) into 3 of the faculties: Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences

For the month of January, the Department of Scandinavian Languages hosts an intensive language program where they attempt to teach 150 international students the Danish language in a matter of 3 weeks. We have been split up into smaller classes of 12-15, and most of us have class on the Faculty of Humanities located in Amager:

They have canals running through their campus.
American universities should take note

Danish, I find, is a rather difficult language. Fortunately, it is an alphabet-based language so there aren’t any inherent difficulties with writing, but it’s the type of language where there are silent letters, odd vowels, and sounds/tones that do not come natural to an English speaker. Interestingly enough, knowing Chinese comes in handy for pronouncing certain words, but there the advantage ends. I’ve been told that German speakers and other Scandinavian language speakers (ie. Norwegian, Swedish) have the easiest time picking it up, but for the rest of us we’re struggling to learn the basic “Hello, my name is ___ and I come from America (where we are uncultured and do not learn other languages starting from youth)” (I’m paraphrasing here, don’t ask me to actually say that in Danish). Class runs 9a – 12:30a every day, with a combined 30 minutes of break scattered throughout

City

Copenhagen is a big city, and one that I shall attempt to catalogue in coming posts. Besides, you’re probably tired of reading at this point anyways.

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Oh, and it would be quite nice to hear from you all. Call me traditional, but I still very much receiving letters in the mail: there’s something extremely satisfying and nostalgic about it (but 1 line emails or messages are fine too...)

Do let me know if you’d like me to send you a postcard or something. No promises on how soon I’ll write them or how soon they’d actually get delivered (or frankly that they even will arrive I’ve lost mail before…but regardless, an effort will be made on my part)