Going to Svanholm

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I'm just sitting at the bed and breakfast in Roskilde and I thought I would write this message mainly to let my parents know that everything is going just fine since I forgot to call last night. The family has been so nice to me here I didn't think it would be right to bug them to use their telephone to make an international call. I'll call you next Sunday once the people at Svanholm start to know me.

The past week has been a little on the dry side but it did have its moments. When people in Germany said that Danes were pretty friendly, I didn't assume that they were comparing them to the rest of Scandinavia. Scandinavian's as a whole like to keep to themselves. When they go for breakfast in the morning, they say 'hello' and that's about it. If you step on their foot, they might say 'ouch' but only if you do it hard enough. Suffice to say, they are quite a quiet people. So how does this pertain to my week? Well, suffice to say most of the work that I did was done in complete silence.

But the whole week wasn't all just grey and rainy. On my way to the ecovillage I met two girls who had invited me to a 50's party at the gymnastics school so I decided to go. I bought a red plad shirt and some old blue jeans with some plain brown shoes and decided to be a lumberjack. I figured if a Brazilian gymnast and a Latvian dancer invite you somewhere, you better have a pretty good reason why you SHOULDN'T show up. It was a great evening all in all and I met 2 French Canadians at the college and everybody kinda looked at us funny when we spoke French. I managed to bike ride home at about 2:30 in the morning and was back up at 8:00 am. One of the girls gave me some advice on a different direction to the train station and my 4km walking journey soon became an 8km walking journey. Keep in mind that Denmark during the fall is not quiet and chilly. It's grey, rainy and windy. I'm looking out the window right now and I'm shivering at the thought of going out. Luckily I have my rain jacket with me and only about 1km to walk today.

The more I learn about this work permit business the less of a chance I think I have at getting one. The Danish Government is very conservative and has been very restrictive on foreigners over the past 8 years. I'll try and talk to the people at Svanholm but we'll see. They do have a bakery in Svanholm so Dad's dreams of me learning to make real Danish pastry just might come to fruition!

Until next time!

Skål,
Nicholas

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