Update!

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Copenhagen, 18^th February, written in two parts 😉

Friday 15^th February – thank god it’s Friday!

There I am again, it’s 8 am and I’m sitting in the classroom already. It’s kind of light outside already, guess the days are getting longer. Luckily! I heard that during wintertimes, there are very few hours of light here, whilst during summer, it gets dark only very late at night and just for a few hours. I guess it’s more or less logical, since this country lies more northern in relation to the Netherlands. But, then again, I’m no weather specialist so I couldn’t tell. I’m a public health practitioner!

So, last week Thursday I uploaded my first blog. Since then, quite a lot has happened again. The best boyfriend ever in the world, Rowan, made the lovely last-minute decision to skip carnival and come and visit me for a few days. After picking him up at the airport, and placing his luggage in my room, he – and I, I must admit – couldn’t wait to experience how the students over here party. Therefore, we went to the ‘studenterhuset’, a place in the very city centre, where the university students can hang out or do some studying during the day, and have some drinks at night – with student’s discount. They were hosting a semester welcoming party for all international and Danish students, so we went there and encountered some people from my study and my student residence. We had a fun night, enjoying the music, drinks and of course the people. Afterwards, we had to get home. Somehow. I had found out the schedule of the night busses in town, so after a pit stop at Mac Donalds, which really did us good I have to admit, we had to walk quite some time – way too long at that time – to the night bus’ stop, where we found out the bus had just left, and so we had to wait another 30 minutes in the freezing cold, wind and snow. But, we got home, after more than an hour and with a boyfriend who fell asleep while waiting for and sitting in the busJ

After this night, real fun, but very tiring, we decided to take it easy on Saturday. We just headed into the city centre in the afternoon for a walk around the shopping area, but got back quite soon to chill out in my room and practically enjoying doing nothing. Useful to saving our energy up for Sunday; watching football in the Irish pub! The city is full of all kinds of pubs, places we like! So we met up with Bianca and her boyfriend, and Sophie, to watch Manchester United’s game and enjoy some drinks. We didn’t really get to watch the game, since rugby was previewed on the big screen in the pub and some fanatic supporters were shouting around. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the afternoon with some drinks – oh, not to forget; my first Guinness beer, I thought it was just like some ordinary dark beer; sweet! However, it was completely the other way around; bitter as hell! But I finished it, and we wisely moved on to the ciders. After having eaten spareribs in a cosy restaurant that night, we all returned home.

On Monday we decided to go shopping and walked around the city centre for quite some hours. Indeed, you need quite some hours to see at least a part of all the shops, since the world’s oldest and longest pedestrian shopping street runs through the middle of Copenhagen’s shopping area; the ‘Strøget’. With 3,2 km of length, and many side streets, one can easily spend days of shopping here without getting bored or any of that. At least, if your wallet can handle it. We walked through the whole street, and at one end, where we could only do some window shopping – Cartier, Mulberry, Louis Vuitton etcetera – we were close to the ‘Nyhavn’, one of Copenhagen’s most touristic places. We decided to walk there through the cold just to see it. Nyhavn is a small canal and entertainment district of Copenhagen; recognized by brightly coloured townhouses, bars and cafés, surrounding the many heritage wooden ships in the water.

In the afternoon, we decided to have a bite and a drink in the pub before returning home. There, we got engaged in a conversation with a Belgian couple, who had noticed we were speaking Dutch. We sat there with them for over an hour, exchanging some nice stories and experiences. They loved travelling, and were here to visit her brother who was working here since some time. They asked me how I experienced the Danish people, since her brother found it so hard to get in contact with his colleagues. In fact, they were flabbergasted and found him super-social when he threw a small party at his place and invited some colleagues to get to know them. I couldn’t agree more with this; the Danish are indeed very individualistic people, and it’s quite hard to get to them. If they invite you for some social occasion, you should be really honored and go, because this will not happen too often. Luckily, even though I notice this, I’m surrounded by many international people and actually few Danes. Plus, the Danes I did meet so far, were not all like that. Another thing the Belgians told us, was that we really should go and see ‘Christiania’. I had heard of something like it, but didn’t know exactly what it was. They had been there and said it was awesome to see. Christiania is a freetown in Copenhagen that hippies took over some years ago. The place is autonomous and even has its own law. What makes it so special and attractive for tourists and others, is that soft drugs are tolerated for trade and use here, despite recent governmental actions to forbid it. We thanked the Belgians for giving us this tip, and immediately planned a visit to this town in our itinerary for the next day..

So on Tuesday, and the last day of Rowan’s visit, we started by visiting Carlsberg’s visitors centre. A place I would recommend everyone visiting Copenhagen to go to. For 70 Danish Krones each (around 10 Euros), you get a tour and 2 beers. We could walk around the premises ourselves, since it’s not a busy period right now and therefore inconvenient for guided tours. But the place was build up really nice. You start walking through the stables (everyday a carriage with horses makes its traditional rounds through the city), then the oldest breweries, and see how the beer traditions and processes work. Subsequently, you get to see the world’s largest collection of beers; glass showcases full of all kinds of beer bottles from all over the world are preserved here. Finally, you can see the current process of the Carlsberg beer production, including a view into the running factory, and you end up in the bar with a strong scent of beer, where you can taste 2 beers you like. Or soda, in case you dislike beer.

In the afternoon we went to Christiania indeed. The place was amazing. You enter through an arch, and shortly after, the rules you have to obey there are listed; NO photos, NO running around (‘it causes panic’), and NO hard drugs. Okay.. Well, the town looked quite nice actually; colored houses and beautifully colored art paintings on the walls. The streets were full of tents and stands, and looking underneath the sheds, you could see what they sold there. Tenfold types of weed; stacked in large buckets, and blocks of hashish in sizes of whole cakes. It was unbelievable, seeing the amounts each ‘shop’ there offers. Holland is really nothing compared to this. Walking around there actually didn’t feel unsafe or anything. People there are calm – of course, haha – and wouldn’t cause any trouble at all, knowing that any commotion there could mean the end of their free existence. The community there is actually working like any other; they have a school for their kids to go to, which opens at 11 am, of course, and several ‘normal’ bars, restaurants etc. In summer, even small concerts or festivals are organized there. After walking around there for a bit, we decided to leave the place since it was so cold. When walking through the arch again to leave Christiania, you see the text painted on it: ‘you are now entering the EU’.

On Wednesday morning, it was time to say goodbye. I brought Rowan to the airport, and he left, after we had spent some really great days. Now it was just me again, back to living my new life here. And here I am again, it’s Friday and I’m bravely joining my classes. I was able to write this blog in class though, since we are being taught things here I had last year.. which is really nice J

Well, class is almost over, so I’ll guess I have to wrap this up! I’ll add something about the upcoming weekend and then post this blog again!



Monday, 18^th February – weekend update

Okay, just a quick weekend update before having to go to class today! So, on Friday afternoon I went to Sophie’s place and we cooked a lovely dinner; pasta carbonara with lots of mushrooms and red wine. Later that night, we went into town and had some drinks first at the studenterhuset, since we weren’t quite sure where to go to. After an hour or so, the other girls from our study back in Maastricht coincidentally also showed up there. However, we didn’t feel like hanging around there the whole night so Sophie and me ended up in the pub again. The atmosphere there was amazing; there was a live band and everyone in the place was singing along, enjoying their drinks and dancing. We felt as if we ended up in a scene from ‘P.S. I love you’, one of my favorite movies.

On Saturday, we both didn’t want to waste our day with being tired and being brackish. So I met up with Sophie again in the city centre and we got touristic; we visited 2 beautiful churches in the city centre and had a nice walk full of fresh air. Then we got to my place, did some groceries and cooked full pans of dinner for 5 people. Three of the other Dutch girls living in the same building as I came for dinner. Afterwards, we went to the bar under our building for the ‘valentine’s party’. However, there weren’t many people there, so when a Danish friend of the girls told us about a party he and a bigger group were going to, we decided to join them. We thought, from what we heard, that it would be a club-like thing, with several floors, rooms and types of music. So we got all dressed up and went there. Turns out we were wrong about that. The ‘club’ was more like an old, smelly big house. And we felt way overdressed. The people over there were practically hippies, more than half of them had dreadlocks, piercings and tattoos all over the place, and were smoking funny things outside. The only thing you could drink there was beer or some vodka mix, all very cheap though. We thought we would soon be out of there, and find a nicer place in another part of town. However, the music was quite nice; all night reggae and latin music, so we stayed for a bit and later more people from our residence joined as well. Normal people 😉. We ended up having a really fun night, laughing our asses off too.

So, that was my weekend! Now, on Sunday I’m recovering from it and doing some stuff around my room. Okay, I promised this second blog to be shorter, but I notice I didn’t really manage. I won’t even try next time 😉

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment! xoxo

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