Denmark

Yes I am now in another country

Actually I have been for a couple days, but the computers were being
goofy and not letting me write stuff in the text box when I used
explorer.  I’ve found some computers have mozilla and it works
fine (I find it cool that the computer labs even have mozilla
installed). I sent out an e-mail yesterday with some news, if you
didn’t get it send me your address and I’ll add you to my list.

Anyway I haven’t done much except wander around the city a bit
yesterday. It’s a really cool city. Easy to get around in on foot and
there’s a lot of cool looking buildings. Today we had our first of
4  3-hour crash course in Danish that we get before classes. Today
it wasn’t been anything real new since I had been teaching myself some
before coming here, mainly I liked having the chance to figure out how
much I’ve been butchering pronunciation.  I did learn how to say
what my major is in Danish though (Jeg læase biologi og kemi). So far
the limited language hasn’t been a problem, it’s actually harder to
think to use what  Danish I do know since it’s so easy to use
english here. I haven’t had any real major culture shock yet. Just
little things that I notice seem a bit weird. Like yesterday I left
københavn for the suburb where I live around 6:30 and the city was
already dead with all the stores closed. By the time I got home I
couldn’t even buy groceries since only one store was open and they were
about to close so I just grabbed some bread and meat to make a sandwich
for lunch today.  It is also bugging me a bit having the different
keyboard. When I type without looking the ‘ key is actually æ and the ;
is ø and the @ is alt-‘ instead of shift 2. 

Well I should get going so I can get food tonight. Just thought people
here would like an update. I’ll try to update again when I get my
camera and can post some pictures. I’ll be able to give responses
sometimes though since we’re supposed to check things online everyday
for our classes.

6 Responses to “Denmark”

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Ooooo… what’s it like? Lots of… um… Dennish people?

Owen - August 24th, 2004 at 12:37 pm

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Good to hear from you, Andy!

It’s strange to me that everything closes early there, since I thought it was a fairly major city… and most big cities (Europe or otherwise) that I’ve visited seem to never sleep.

Paradoxdruid - August 24th, 2004 at 1:37 pm

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There’s more Danish people here then Dennish. It was pretty suprising to see things closing so early, though a girl I’ve been talking to from Poland said it’s that way in a lot of german cities she’s visited. Things like cafes and restaurants are still open late, but it’s really expensive to eat out so that is usually just for special occasions. Most people generally get together at someone’s house in the evenings.

mcmillan - August 25th, 2004 at 8:22 am

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Have you met any cool Danish people yet? Or have you just been on such a whirlwind tour of the place that you haven’t had time for much? Have you gotten your camera yet? By the way, I really enjoyed your e-mail. I’ll write back soon. Life is just hectic now that I have regular working hours. It’s hard to do everything that I want to. 🙂

ShortSpeedFreak - August 26th, 2004 at 8:02 pm

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I haven’t met a whole lot of danes yet, but a few. Mostly it’s been people living in the Kolligium with me. I still pretty awkward since I don’t know much danish and I feel kind of weird when they’re all hanging out talking to eachother and I come in so they feel they should speak english or try to translate for me. The people I have talked to are always real nice though and really laid back. Mainly I’ve been meeting people from DIS program with me, but even that hasn’t been all Americans. There’s a few people from other countries and I’ve been hanging out with a girl from Poland a lot. Too bad she has a boyfriend though.

Still no camera, but I asked one of my friends to send me some picture she took today at a tour of a castle. I’ll try to post those sometime soon. It was a really cool castle north of Copenhagen that’s been turned into a history museum on the inside. There’s an amazing garden on the back that’s been recently restored. One odd thing we noticed was that there seemed to be no squirells there, which we haven’t seen in any other parks, anyone no if they are in europe? One cool thing that I wish I had asked Lea to take a picture of was the wall with sheilds for all the people that are the Danish equivalent of being knighted. People without a family coat of arms design their own, I thought it was cool that Niels Bohr’s is a black and red yin-yang symbol.

I start classes tommorrow, it’ll be nice to actually start some work rather than all the orientation they made us go through this week. I’ll write once I get those pictures from my friend.

mcmillan - August 29th, 2004 at 10:49 am

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Wow… Boring World of Neils Bohr– NOT. That’s very cool.

Good to hear from you, Andy!

Regarding the weird pause as you walk in and they switch languages… yeah, I remember that from France. But they’re just trying to be nice. 🙂

I’m looking forward to some pictures!

Paradoxdruid - August 29th, 2004 at 11:40 am

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