Day 6 - January 6

I will have to adjust how I do photos, since wide photos do not fit and shrinking them just makes them look weird. Hmm...

What I can say in Danish: Numbers from 1-199, the time, what my name is, where I’m from (and where my mother and father are from), various nationalities, what languages I can and can’t speak as well as languages I can read and hear, and the days of the week.

Observations: The Danish don’t have the same personal space issues Americans have. The metro seats are two seater benches, but the two seats aren’t separated like on Boston’s T. If there’s only one person sitting at the bench, you sit in the other spot. You don’t avoid it at all costs like an American would.
The stereotype of blonde Danes is a little bit of a misnomer. Maybe it’s different elsewhere in Denmark and not in a big, international city, but so far there’s been about the same mix of blondes as there would be in America. A lot of the blondes I’ve seen have been dyed, elsewise it’s a lot of light brunette. They’re also tanner than you would imagine with fair-haired people (like the English, or like me).
The metro is perhaps the nicest public transportation system I’ve seen. It has glass panels separating you from the track, so a drunk person wouldn’t be able to fall in (like happened this last semester in Boston). Like with London, there are electronic signs telling you when the next train is coming. It’s very sleek, and the stations are clean and very nice looking. I also really enjoy my line, which has a couple of outdoor stops, but the Danish are smarter than Bostonians. The tracks go above the roads, so the train doesn’t have to stop at stoplights. This makes it very smooth, and you’re able to see more of the city (though it’s only above ground on the outskirts).

I was once again in the city center after class. I attempted to find a bakery, but for some reason I had the hardest time. I did find one, but like so many things in Denmark, it didn’t have a line but a “take a number”. By the time I figured this out, I had also realized that because the pastries and breads were so spread out, it would not be easy to point and say “I want that”, but I had no idea how to pronounce what I wanted (which was a Danish-type pastry but, of course, they are not called Danishes actually and I was not about to ask for a Danish). Now, it’s not like with some languages where you can attempt to pronounce something and hope to at least land in a reasonable ballpark. The word, “spegl” for all I know could be “spel” “spay” “spayl” “spy” “spuh” and probably five other pronunciations. So I thought maybe I would find a bakery where I could just point. In my search, I managed to not get lost per se, but to take a street that did not lead me to exactly where I thought it would, so I found myself in the “American shopping street”, as I decide it was. There’s a main shopping street that has a lot of neat shops (there are a absurd number of shoe shops, and they’re all different, as well as a large number of dress shops), but the one I was in had more big stores and fast food restaurants – Subway, an Apple Store, and others which I cannot remember but large brands that I recognized. There were no bakeries on this street, but I did end up on an impromptu jaunt around the area. I never did find a bakery (though I passed by over ten hot dog stands and two places selling Belgian waffles). So I went into Field’s (the gigantic mall across from my kollegium and also across from the metro station) and went to the bakery there…they had no Danish (spegl?), but they had a huge cinnamon roll that I was planning on eating in two sittings but somehow in the updating of this has managed to be fully consumed, gaining me a stomachache.

Weather here: The city is beautiful in the snow. It seems that a lot of European countries have been having unusually cold winters, including Denmark, which does not normally get this much snow, nor in the negative temperatures (Celsius). The temperatures are very similar to Boston weather, so it hasn’t bothered me a bit, and I’d rather have a snow-covered city to a gray and bare city.

In essence, six days in and I’m super happy to be here. The first days of confusion and anxiety were helped away by a routine and the realization that there were hundreds of other students just like me. My moment of pride for today: Getting my metro card, he asked which zones I needed it for. I told him the stop I get off at – Ørestad – and though when I tell that to the international students they all say “what stop?”, he knew exactly what I was saying.