First Blog in Denmark

So I got the idea for a blog from my boyfriend (danny), and at first the idea sounded kinda lame, but now that I think of it-- it could be pretty fun. You know, documenting what I'm doing, letting others know, posting pictures, and yeah, when the sad day comes to leave I'll be able to one day look back on it all-- and be able to remember :). But I guess this is all the point of a blog-- so I'm not telling you anything new ;).

I guess I'll start with what I've been doing thus far-- since i've been here for two and a half weeks there's already a lot to talk about.

The flight was a bit long-- around 8 hours, and it was really cramped. There were complementary drinks, so I had a gin and tonic and some red wine with dinner and just tried to enjoy myself, but they drinks didn't really help. It made me have to pee, and sitting next to a fat lady who I'm pretty sure spoke no English was blockading my path. My legs cramped up quite a bit, and I felt really apprehensive about flying to a new country-- to Denmark! I had been waiting so long to finally get here, to be with Danny, and I was finally on the plane =).


Danny greeted me at the airport when I arrived at the ungodly hour of 7AM, or as they just say here 07. He drove us back to the apartment, where I first witnessed all the Danes biking to work. They were right when they said there was biking traffic in Denmark-- it was crazy! We finally arrived at the apartment and I was really surprised. I though it looked wonderful, it was just perfect for the two of us. We have a bedroom, living room, small kitchen and a bathroom. Danny had spent a lot of time moving his stuff in, and painting. He's really sweet =), and I was really surprised =). The place is nice, just on campus, and right next to the grocery store called the døgn netto, and døgn means "all the time" in Danish, and netto means net, as in remaining after deductions.

So there's obviously a lot that went on from then until now-- and I feel that way. I wish I started this earlier but I'll just try to talk about the most significant stuff that sticks in my mind.

The first day I got here it was really obvious the difference in people here, from anywhere else I've ever been. I spent three-months in Israel over this past summer, and I'll tell you one thing, Danes and Israelis are really different. Israelis are loud, a bit rude, and can be obnoxious, but they are very warm and welcoming. The Danes are very quiet, as polite as they need to be, and are very sincere. They are quiet when you first meet them, but are really good people when you get to know them. These attributes became extremely apparent when I went to the Lyngby shopping center. Which is the mall in the town I live in. Lyngby is a suburb of Copenhagen-- and is considered to be part of the "greater Copenhagen area". FYI: The suffix "by" means city.

Yeah-- physically everyone looks very different than I'm used to. I'd say the Danish people are a good looking ethnicity. Although-- blonde isn't my type-- they do have some inexplicable charm to them.

OK. So major things after this point? Well. There's been a lot. I went to downtown Copenhagen, spent new years in Lyngby, three birthday parties, started my 3-weeks course, and have experienced a lot of culture since.

I don't have energy to write about ALL this now, because I do want to spend some time doing other things here, so I plan to elaborate on these things at a later point-- maybe when there is less going on. For now I'll fast forward to the present.

Today I actually did a lot. I had to turn in a report for my three-weeks course. I'll tell you more about the course later, but since we already did most of it, we decided to meet at 11AM, one hour before it was due. I woke up early, at 830 so I could eat breakfast with Danny and then I walked him to class. On the way we actually saw a girl that came to RPI with Danny's exchange group, and I thought that was pretty cool to see her in Denmark. After I walked Danny to class, I came back and went on a run around campus. It's really cold here in Denmark, around 36F today I think, but I've never run in something like this before. It was great to finally work out again, I have been feeling really weighed down from all the good food I've been eating!! It was pretty tough on my lungs, but it was a good run, it took me around 25 minutes ( I think...).

I invited my groupmates, Mathlide & Sabrina, over to my apartment for some traditional Danish open-faced sandwiches for lunch. There's actually a lot to say about Danish open-faced sandwiches. They are typically on a type of bread called rugbrøed. "rug" is a type of grain, and brøed means bread. This bread is very very dark, and dense, and heavy, and grainy. Take your average american whole grain bread, multiply that by like 10, and then add some, and that's some rugbrøed. Anyway, the apartment is nice, but like I mentioned it is a bit small. It was hard to fit all three of us, and danny as well, so he came later. To put on the sandwiches we had some deli meats, hardboiled egg, cheeses, pesto, tuna, cucumbers, peppers, leverpostej and my favorite, remoulade. I assume you all know what the first 7 items are. However, you probably don't know what leverpostej is. It's something very very popular here, and it literally means: liver paste. It comes from pig and is seasoned, mashed and put in an aluminum so you can heat it up. I know it sounds kinda gross, I thought so too, but it's actually pretty good. The remoulade is this sort of yellow condiment that I really like that is supposed to go on fish, or you can put it on meat like I do, but I don't think you're supposed to. Anyway, we had these sandwiches, and went back to class. We were supposed to do group work today, and we got our second project, but everyone was kinda lazy about it cause we just haded in one project so we all left early. Now I'm gonna go to the netto and cook some nice dinner for tonight.

I'll write more later on... take care all =)!