In Denmark, May the Shenanigans Commence

Quote of the day:

Christina (Danish Language and Culture Prof): "This is Tiger, it's a sort of 'everything for 10 kroner' (roughly 2 dollars) store."

Student: "Sort of like a United States 99 cent store."

Christina: "Except that you can't buy anything in Denmark for 99 cents."

Today was my first full day in Denmark. I arrived yesterday morning and met up with my host family (more on that later). After a brief drive through Copenhagen, we drove the 40km north to Gorlose (the o's have slashes through them and it's pronounced Guhrluhseh), the small town that I'll be living in for this week (more on that later as well). After unpacking most of my stuff in my room, I spent some time relaxing with my hosts and then we went for a drive.

We drove to the location of my host family's new house, into which we will be moving next week. I'm not sure of all of the details yet, but the new house is beautiful, with a large lawn and loads of space. It should only add about ten minutes to my commute.

This morning I awoke at 6pm, massively jetlagged. It didn't help that I looked at my watch in the morning, having not remembering to change it from Eastern time, and saw that it was still shortly after midnight in the time zone where I had spent the vast majority of the last 15 years. I was tired, and I felt it all day.

The first event of the day was at 9:00 at the Black Diamond (Denmark's Royal Library), in Copenhagen. To get there, I walked 10 minutes to a train, took a train for 8 minutes, transfered trains, took the second train for 45 minutes, and then walked another 25 minutes (from what was not, in hindsight, the closest possible train station to the Black Diamond). It seems long, but once I start having work to do, it will provide a good opportunity to crack a book and maybe actually do some work while I'm over here.

The black diamond gets its name from it's remarkable color and shape. It is truly a beautiful building and an example of modern architecture done right that good rival even that of the '62 Center. While we were there, we had our Opening Ceremony, which included a few speeches and more than a few examples of attempted humor gone wrong, and a performance by a Wind Quintet which was quite good.

After the ceremony, we had roughly three hours off before our next organized activity. I took advantage of this time to find a Danish sim card for my cell phone (which actually works over here!) It's wicked expensive, so I'm not going to post the number here, but if you would like to know what it is, shoot me an email, and I'll decide whether or not you're worth it...

I then picked up all of my books, which are rented to us by DIS at no cost. Truly a wonderful service, and I have no idea why Williams can't manage to pull off a system like that given it's close to $2 billion endowment. Oh well. After that, I went to lunch, which was a packed pita sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a Carlsberg (my first legally purchased beer) from...I kid you not...the local 7-11.

Copenhagen is strewn with three things I thought I was bound to see less of while I was here: 7-11's, Irish Pubs, and McDonalds. However, the McDonalds here are of a significantly higher quality than in the United States (the wonders of effective food quality regulations) at a significantly higher price.

I was warned how expensive everything would be over here, but I was still not prepared for it. Lunch can easily run you 70 kroner (13 dollars) on the street, and almost certainly more in restaurants. I need to start finding the nooks and crannies and places that offer food on the budget of somebody who has been earning week American dollars for the last 4 months.

After lunch we had our first class. Not an official class, but it was a sort-of crash course in the Danish Language. Danish is going to be very VERY hard to learn, but I'll put in a good faith effort and try to at least pick up some of it.

After that, I got back on the train and went home, where I got a wonderful 9 mile (15km) run through the danish countryside before dinner. Since, I've spoken with the family and a couple of friends (readers?) and done a little bit of reading for a class on friday. Unfortunately, there's much more where that came from. Then I sat down and wrote this novella for the enjoyment of all of you!

Anyways, Denmark so far is amazing. Copenhagen truly is a wonderful city and the country itself is unbelievably beautiful. There are also many aspects of their culture (public transportation, biking, reuseable energy, etc.) that the United States really needs to think about. The ease of getting places is outstanding, and you can now certainly count me among the supporters of Obama's high-speed rail proposal.

I was going to write a little bit about my host family tonight too, but it's closing in on 10:00pm (4:00 your time for most of you) and I'm thinking it's just about time for bed! More to come later!