The best sentences I read this week: Vol.9

“It was everything bad about everything, all at once.”

–7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook

“Researchers found that for every kilometer traveled by bike instead of by car, taxpayers saved 7.8 cents (DKK 0.45) in avoided air pollution, accidents, congestion, noise and wear and tear on infrastructure. Cyclists in Copenhagen cover an estimated 1.2 million kilometers each day –- saving the city a little over $34 million each year.”

–Denmark Is Considered The Happiest Country. You’ll Never Guess Why.

“Stationery has historically pertained to a wide gamut of materials: paper and office supplies, writing implements, greeting cards, glue, pencil cases and other similar items.”

-Wikipedia

Catch 1000

The Danish university system emphasizes different things than the Canadian one does. I am in five hours a week of classes for what would be twelve hours a week back home. Evaluation is also more lenient. Instead of a midterm/paper, a paper, and a final/paper we only have either a paper or an oral exam. That is it. I will write about fourteen pages this semester.

So I was thinking to myself what is the catch. Well, there is a catch. Reading, lots and lots of reading. I am expected to read 2000 pages in four months — each syllabus prescribes a certain number of pages that must be read for the number of credits given— which is how they balance out the limited amount of class time. It is an adjustment for sure and requires a lot of discipline to get done. For my one class this week I had to read an article and 120 pages of one of the textbooks — that is just one.

It’s not like back home there were no readings, they were often just considered to be optional. The key to being a good student was to figure out which readings needed to be done, and which ones didn’t. Perhaps that is the key here. We will see.

It is also nice to know that we are indeed covering a lot of material, just not in class.

Sixteen months

They like to say that there are sixteen months in Copenhagen: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, November, November, November, November, and December. The night in question was a prime example of why they say this. It was raining and grey. The northern latitude meant that sunlight was a rare treat, gone far too early most of the time. It was raining a steady but not torrential kind of downpour.

I had been invited for drinks on the other side of the city, effectively a 45 minute bike ride each way. I set off knowing that I would be soaked through almost right away. Riding in the rain can be almost pleasant once you get a rhythm going — unlike riding in a blizzard, which is generally cold and slow. The worst part is being damp and cold once you arrive at your destination.

I peddled along, thankful for my standard issue fenders, rain dripping from my helmet (how deeply unDanish) onto my face. I felt extremely hardcore and almost as Danish as can be this. This was as Danish as eating rye bread while sipping Carlsberg. Some of my friends hadn’t even purchased bicycles and here I was slogging along.

When I finally got there I decided to order a latte to warm myself up instead of a beer. My friends were late as usual so I got a book out to amuse myself. Before I finished the first paragraph someone was asking me how I liked the book, which quickly led to where I was from and what I was doing in Denmark. Two Danish boys and I struck up a conversation and before long they had invited me to join in their board games. The only problem was that the game was entirely in Danish. It was far beyond the eight or so words I had collected. They tried to prod me into participating, missing the futility of such an attempt. Ultimately they seemed to enjoy their private world of Danish and who was I to stop them?

642 Things to Write About: Write about an arrival that caught you or your character completely unaware

The flight in was short and uneventful just an hour or so from London. It already seemed likes ages since I’d been back home a mere week ago.

Me and my sister both left for new places on the same day on flights two hours apart. She was bound for Moscow, me for Copenhagen. I sat at Heathrow for the two extra hours more bored than nervous.

Copenhagen’s airport struck me as unimpressive upon arrival. We wandered through dingy corridors through an abandoned terminal, past a 7/11 (I did not yet know how commonplace these were or how much I would miss them when I left). At customs they said nothing to me and didn’t even ask for the visa I’d gone through so much to get.

The luggage carousel had nothing on the shiny glamour of terminal five. It was simple and old. I wandered into the main area lost and looking for a cab. I was not about to brave an unfamiliar transit system with my luggage. I paid handing over unfamiliar bills to receive unfamiliar change. I have no idea how much that cab cost.

It wasn’t until I reached the hotel that it hit me. I had just moved halfway across the world to a strange city with dingy luggage carousels. Everyone here seemed to speak Danish and I did not. The whole foreign language thing did not hit me until then. The letters looked strange. Prices were in numbers that were absurdly large. What was 100DKK worth anyways? Would I ever adjust? Where was I anyways? Where was my housing? How was I going to make friends? What was I doing in this strange and foreign place?

I spent the evening freaking out and facing a reality that was exciting and terrifying. I was an exchange student, the next day I moved into my housing and started at a new university. It all seemed completely overwhelming.

I later experienced the exact same feeling after moving to Washington, DC, that what am I doing here. I imagine I will feel that way for a few days in every new place that I make my home.

We always feel the need to sugar coat travel. We say our trip was good because it is usually too many things to say at once. I later told my sister about this feeling. My sister agreed with me. We were taking the harder route by moving away from the familiar comforts of home and our social networks to a place where we had no idea how to take the bus. It was hard but it was worth it. Over time all of my questions were answered. I figured out the currency. I made friends. I found my way around. That feeling of what am I doing here was replaced by a feeling that there was no other place I was meant to be. 

My exchange university vs. my home university

It was my first day of classes since arriving in Denmark. My class was at 10 am. Fortunately, I got there early. The social science campus was huge and I had no idea what the numbers corresponding to my class meant. After wandering aimlessly I figured out that they corresponded to building-floor-room. That was easy enough. I found a map and then wandered the halls to what seemed like the right building. I got to my classroom and no one was there. I checked the schedule posted outside and my class was not listed. This was not what I had been hoping for. More aimless wandering followed. Eventually I found the information desk and they informed me that my class had been rescheduled to 2 pm and moved to a different classroom. For some reason the university had decided not to notify me.

When thinking about my exchange one of the last things on my mind was the actual academic side of things. Yes, I’d jumped through the appropriate hoops to get my courses recognized (including being on hold for almost an hour multiple times and emailing the vice-dean). I had thought loosely about what I wanted to take but ultimately I hoped it would be a vacation from the insane standards of North American universities. I tended to be that girl who disappeared into the library for the last month of school and was ready to think about exploring rather than thesis statements. It turned out that some of the biggest cultural shocks had to do with my classes and the way the university was set up.

Classes start 15 minutes after the posted time

When I did manage to show up to my class at the right time I also showed up early. By Canadian standards this meant arriving ten minutes before the scheduled time at 1:50 pm. To my surprise I was the first person there, as I tended to be. As it got closer to the hour more students trickled in but the room wasn’t even half full. In my mind I would give the prof had 15 minutes to show up and if they didn’t I got to leave. That was how it worked back home.

As students arrived at quarter past I realized that the rules here were different. For some reason all classes started at quarter past even though the time was listed at the hour. I never really managed to kick my punctuality and was always one of the first people to arrive.

Coffee breaks

One of my favourite things about the Danish university system is their fondness for coffee breaks. Every lecture of my political science class had a slide reading “Coffee Break!” My prof would excitedly announce the break as we scurried downstairs to buy inexpensive coffee from the campus snack place. Often times my other professor would make tea and coffee, and bring us snacks.

Reduced work-load

It would be unfair to say that my classes weren’t demanding in some ways, however, they were a lot less demanding than my North American classes. In my last semester of fourth-year I wrote about 150 pages worth of assignments and papers. The expectation was that assignments should take up a lot of my time. My friends and I were perpetually behind on our work. There was always something else that needed to be completed or read or studied for.

Scandinavian attitudes were very different. I spent less time in class (5 hours a week for the equivalent of 12 back home) and wrote one ten page paper. To make up for fewer hours spent in the classroom we had lots and lots of readings. It amounted to about 60 or 70 pages a week, and we were expected to be able to discuss all of them at our oral exams.

Instead of feeling like I was being throttled all the time the expectation was that relaxing and socializing were an important part of an education. I liked the more laid back pace. Life was something to be enjoyed and lived. Students were no exception to this.

Rescheduling classes

In Canada your class is set at a specific time on a specific day and that is the only time a professor can expect you to be available. That is not the case in Copenhagen. My classes were rescheduled almost as often as they happened at the regular time. I would get an email ten minutes before class that it was cancelled or moved if there was any notice at all. Professors would be confused when you missed rescheduled classes because they were at inconvenient times. One week I forgot to go to my Thursday afternoon class because it had been so long since my class had actually been held on a Thursday afternoon.

I made one of my good friends on exchange because of this. We would both show up to class and when it turned out it was cancelled we would go hang out downtown instead.

No campus

After four years at a campus that was distinct and apart from the rest of my city it was weird not to have a campus in any meaningful way. Different faculties had buildings spread out throughout the city. You went to the ones that your classes were at and left when they were done.

Oral exams

When this was first brought up my class collectively tensed up. We had never done oral exams before. It seemed scary and a lot of pressure. Our entire mark would come down to a fifteen-minute conversation with the professor. It almost made me miss the three papers system. If you messed one up there was another one to average it out. What if we had a cold, or got asked a really hard question?

Overall it was fine. I probably over-studied. We were expected to know all 1200 pages of assigned readings well enough to discuss them. The fifteen minutes went by before I knew it. I was asked to wait outside and five minutes later I was told my mark. That was it.

Excursions

Excursions, or as Ms. Frizzle would say field trip!, were commonplace in my classes. My political science class went on two separate field trips to the Danish parliament and my Danish religion class was invited to my professor’s church. My friends in the Danish architecture class went to visit several buildings instead of just talking about them. This kind of hands on learning was not a part of my Canadian university experience in any way.

All in all the differences between my exchange and the rest of my education were easy to adjust to. I liked the calmer pace, especially since it was assumed that none of us were there to spend all of our time writing papers. Most of what I learned was from living in an unfamiliar place where I didn’t speak the language or know how things worked.

Bike hunt

We are on a very important hunt, and taking one of the most important steps towards becoming a true resident of Copenhagen: we must find a bike. I have never walked this far down the street. The city is still new to me. We walk past trendy stores and coffee shops to an area that is filled with kebab shops. By the time we get there it seems like we have been walking for ages. The store has a reputation for selling cheap bikes, that is all. They are not necessarily good, and were probably stolen, but they are cheap and we are students.

The storefront itself comes off as being small. Incredibly small. Smaller than our living room. It is filled with wheels and accessories that he will try to sell us at unreasonable prices. This is the beginning. We step through dodging items as we go along and trying our hardest to shake the felling that this place is very very sketchy. We enter a courtyard and find numerous bikes lined up. None have price tags. We’re told that some belong to other residents of the building but not which. A vague hand motion is not enough to make me feel certain. Then we find it. Down a half-storey of steps there is a basement that must be home to half the bicycles in Copenhagen. They are shoved row on row with some hanging from the roof. There is no way to get any of them out. Not all of them look mechanically sound. Quantity over quality. The man who owns the store greets up. He works his way easily through the muck of bikes and takes us out to the courtyard. These are the bikes he wants to sell us and we’re not really in any position to object.

Then the summer I spent working at a bike store hits me. My friends know nothing about these machines and how questionable they are. They know nothing about locks or bike lights but I do. I know that these bikes are less than mechanically sound, but then again we’re going to be leaving them out in the rain for the next few months so what difference does it really make?

Bikes are selected with a sure why not style. We are glad to get out of that place and hope our new bikes are worth what we paid.

Connecting the dots

Last spring I visited Toronto to apply for a visa—why the Danish government required me to fly halfway across Canada to apply for a visa is beyond me—perhaps they forgot that the amount of time it takes to drive across Denmark is the amount of time it takes me to reach the next closest city. I was there for less that twenty-four hours and flew in on the red eye. I found the city disorienting in part because of my tiredness and in part because the downtown went on forever and ever and ever.

I grew up in Calgary—and somewhere along the way fell in love with the city. In many ways it shaped who I am and how I conceive of what a city should be. It fits with my desire for things to be neatly organized and compartmentalized. The downtown is small and well defined, mostly for geographic reasons. It is the area between the river, the train tracks and a major roadway. It can go no further. Then there are outlying high density communities of various names. These regions are not downtown. They are near downtown, but they are adjacent to it as opposed to a part of it—or at least that’s the way I see it. I find that everywhere else I go downtown is so much more loosely defined.

Growing up downtown seemed big and mysterious. In junior high I transferred buses near Knox United Church and got to know it a little bit better. I wandered the blocks between buses stops and started to become familiar with the downtown core. In high school me and a good friend of mine went on outing to downtown we called doing downtown. He would try on expensive menswear—there is nothing like debaters going suit shopping—and we would wander in the shadows of office towers. We started to frequent the alternative movie theatres downtown, and to explore downtown’s parks. We waited on C-Train platforms. Over time I got to know the streets and the areas around downtown. I knew which buses ran where.

After moving to a new city it always seems like this endless blur. It begins as the area around your house, the area that you live and work in. From there you explore and develop places that you like to pass your time. You visit the places your guidebook recommends—or at least a couple of them. You are aware of metro stops and different locations. Over time you begin to connect the dots between these. I can trace my way down streets, I know how to get from point A to point B. I know how things relate to one another. I know that if I keep going down this street for long enough I will reach a certain place. It is like in Age of Empire how you begin with a big grey map and as you explore. Eventually it all becomes familiar. I can trace Copenhagen in my mind. I can picture the streets and how the connect. The bridges over the river. Downtown to Tivoli to the meatpacking district.

However, I don’t think I can say that Copenhagen has a downtown, at least not in the sense that Calgary taught me. There are areas where people work but they don’t have the same feel to me. Perhaps I will always carry that idea of downtown as something small and well-defined in my head. I will divide blocks of office towers into more easily defined areas to make sense of it all.

I do not like rye bread

Rye bread is a big thing here. Everyone tells you you have to eat it, it’s the Danish thing to do. I fell for it. I bought into the trap of trying out Danish cultural things. I have an entire loaf of rye bread in my kitchen and I have made an informed decision that it does not taste good. Sure it has lots of nutritional value but it also tastes like it has lots of nutritional value. It tastes like eating seeds, and not in a good way. I regret not just going for the delicious (and potentially far less nutritious) white bread that I am so fond of. Perhaps rye bread is like wine you hate it at first and then if you drink enough it becomes tolerable and then if you drink more you might actually grow to like it — it is presumed that this processes occurs over a period of time longer than one night. Maybe. Probably not. I will let you know in about fourteen slices if I feel any better about rye bread. I know one thing for sure, it will not be on the list of things I miss about Denmark.

Rye bread update

Rye bread is better with just butter. It almost cancels out the nutritional value. Oh yeah.

Everyday is a winding road

So it has been a while since I posted on this blog. Too long probably. Traveling and school got in the way, but that is no excuse.

I had an awesome idea for posts a while back and I am going to try and put those into motion before departing this lovely city. My plan is watercolour sketches of my favourite things about Denmark and Danish culture like bike lanes, candles and bakeries.

One month

I have a little over a month left in Copenhagen, this crazy city that has grown quite dear to me. It sometimes feels like I am running out of time, that there are too many things I want to do still, neighbourhoods to explore, and baked goods to consume. I feel like one semester is not enough — but then again in life we only get so much time and we have to do the most with what we get.

I feel like I have begun to know this city very well. For the most part I no longer get lost — except when I go new places and have minor disagreements with my navigation app. I know which streets lead where, and where the cool coffee shops are. I have my spots and places that feel quite at home to me. I even now know of a place where I can take my bike when I get a flat — yes I have another one and don’t feel excited to deal with it.

There are still so many places to explore and so many readings left to do. One month and counting.

Christmas time in Copenhagen

Everything in Copenhagen seems to have become very Christmassy all of a sudden. One day I was walking down stroget and noticed that there are now Christmas decorations everywhere. They are in coffee shops and all over the place.

Danish Christmas decorations place a strong emphasis on hearts — hearts also appear on Danish money and in the Danish coat of arms — and garden gnomes — the second one I don’t quite get.

Now that fall is over it is quite a lovely time to be in Denmark. It may be cold and gets dark quite early but the Christmas feel is lovely.

Tivoli x Christmas

Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to got to Tivoli for Halloween but I have heard it was gorgeous. Thankfully I did get to go for Christmas and was impressed by how full out they go for their theme. The entire amusement park is covered in decorations, lights and fake snow. There is a Russian winter theme — Emily Gilmore approves.

Since first going to Tivoli I have come to appreciate it far more as a part of Copenhagen. It is in a fantastic location right between the central station and town hall. I ride past it every time I go into town. I overheard two Danish people at a hotdog cart discussing when Tivoli was going to reopen for Christmas.

Culture? shock

Before going on exchange I was warned that there was a chance that I would get culture shock, and find it strange to adjust to fitting into a different culture. This hasn’t entirely been the case. Ultimately the most confusing thing about Copenhagen is the zone system used on the S-tog and metro (mostly because the penalty for having the wrong zone ticket is almost as much as my bike cost and the maps are as clear as mud).

Overall most of the people I hang out with are international students — there aren’t a lot of Danish students in my housing and all of us English speakers seem to gravitate to one another. We are a jumble of people mostly from Australia, the U.S., Canada and New Zealand, as well as the Netherlands and Finland. There is really no natural culture amongst us. Some of us say elevator, while some of us say lift, while all of us complain about how slow it is — sadly I live on the top floor and have managed to paint several masterpieces in the landing while waiting for the elevator. We use different terms, with the Australians and Kiwis sharing a lot, and the Canadians and Americans sharing others. There is an on going disagreement on whether brunch is a favourite meal or a favorite meal — Americans do not use the British spellings of words.

Then there are other subtle differences. A Canadian invited me over for tea and I happily went over, while my Australian roommate fretted about showing up empty handed — apparently tea means a meal in Australia, whereas in Canada tea means a hot beverage. I never know whether to take my shoes off inside, usually it is split but I take them off because wearing them inside is weird. Apparently in Australia only lowbrow people drink beer out of cans or tins, whereas for me it is more efficient than having to clean out a glass unnecessarily. There isn’t really a culture to shock us, because we don’t really have a particular dominant culture. Sometimes differences are quite noticeable, other times they are funny.

Otherwise Danes are a very efficient and sometimes cold people. If you ask someone for help they tell you whether or not they can help you. That is all. Canadians are not so efficient. We are also far friendlier when checking out. One day I will train myself to stand stoically at the grocery check saying only ja and tak. No “have a great day” you crazy Canadian.

Construction

There is construction everywhere. Next door they are building an apartment building, the metro and S-tog are being expanded, and a lot of apartments still have the new building smell.

Parts of Copenhagen have the feel of a classic European capital with cobblestone (a paving material that is far more aesthetically pleasing than it is comfortable to walk on), while elsewhere there are signs that it is a growing city.

Growing up in Calgary I was always surrounded by construction, as the city’s skyline expanded and neighbourhoods gentrified. The city was booming and constantly expanding. I get some of that feeling here. There are no sky scrappers going up, or a massive new C-train line, but it feels like a city that is growing, especially in the newer suburb where I live. It feels like it is expanding and becoming more modern.

I am surprised by finding that feeling in older more established cities — I felt it in parts of London too. It seems fitting to a city like Calgary that is still so young, and is really just taking shape. I guess that other cities are never finished either. Copenhagen is not done growing yet, as new buildings and suburbs spring up, and people move towards urban centres.