Back to School

     Monday the fourth was my first day of Danish class, which will run through the 22nd. Class goes from 9:00am-12:30pm, Monday through Friday, so the term intensive is rather accurate. I figured it would be a good idea to at least learn some basic Danish to not look like a complete fool every time I order at a cafe or buy a metro ticket, plus it gave me an excuse to come over a whole month earlier than I otherwise would have. It turns out, though, that Danish is really hard. I mean reeelly hard. At least the spoken language is. Danes find it best to simply not pronounce most of the letters that are written while altering the pronunciation of the letters that are heard as frequently as possible, sometimes in the same word. At the same time, the written language bears a remarkable degree of similarity with German, Dutch, and English, making reading actually rather easy even without knowing much vocabulary at all.
     For example, if you were to hear someone say something sounding like "pash-ash-er", you may think it's a food item or perhaps an occupation; but if you saw the same word written as "passager", you may very well realize it means "passenger". One of my personal favorite words to try to pronounce is "selvfølgelig" which comes out roughly as "seh-foo-leh-lee" and means "of course". Another interesting aspect of Danish's similarity to English is that the two were most similar during the linguistic period known as Middle English, about 1100-1500 or the centuries following the Norman conquest of Britain. As such, some modern Danish words are very similar to Middle English words. "Hvorfor" (vare-for) sounds a lot like "wherefore" which in both languages means "why" (think Shakespeare: "wherefore art thou Romeo").
     The best part of the class so far, however, has been my classmates. We come from California, New York, Wisconsin, Canada, Australia, and Poland, and are as different as our places of origin, but we have become quick friends. After class everyday, most of us grab lunch at the campus cafeteria which has the best food of any school cafeteria anywhere. I regrettably don't have any pictures of my food (this will be changing, I just need to remember to snap a photo before digging in), but they have some incredible sandwiches, hummus and veggies, stir fries, rice dishes, and my word the soup! On top of how great it all tastes, a filling lunch will cost me between USD$3-7 depending on what I get.
     After a lunch break, everyday the international student office with the university has a "cultural activity" that has ranged from film screenings and lectures to a free coffee hour and ice skating. They have been great opportunities to get to know my classmates and meet students in other classes as well. After these activities wrap up, students who don't have plans tend to find something to do together before night falls. We have wandered the anarchist art commune known as Christiania, hung out at the cafe/bar that is run by the university similar to a student union, walked into the first bodega (a classic Danish pub) we see, and more. The city has been great so far and we have had a blast exploring it together. Additionally these new friends, along with the folks on the ship I'm staying with, helped me celebrate my birthday on the boat yesterday with cards, wine, and good conversation.

     I don't have too much else to report yet as class has been occupying most of the daylight hours and I really have been bad at taking pictures so far. The best I can do for now is these pictures of Frederiksberg Slot (palace or castle) in Frederiksberg Have (gardens):

A collection of ducks, cranes, and a swan with the backside of Frederiksberg Slot in the background.

A better shot of the birds. There were so many birds.

Setting Sail

     It's almost painfully fitting that I departed for my newest adventure on New Year's Day. Along with a brand spankin' new year in 2016, I will be starting a new chapter of my life in Copenhagen, Denmark as I study political science for the spring term at Kobenhavns Universitet (University of Copenhagen). The semester itself doesn't actually begin for another month; classes start February 8th. The month of January, then, will be filled with an intensive Danish language course, meeting new people, exploring my new home, and perhaps a bit of travelling.
     Arrival was not as flawless as it could've been, but I made it in one piece. A direct flight from Chicago to Copenhagen made logistics nice, but a dead phone and no internet made finding my place of residence, and the specifics of how to get there, a tad tricky. After talking with more airline employees than I thought should even be working in the airport, I figured out my metro stop and the direction of the harbor. Wait, the harbor?
     Yes, the harbor. You see, my university affiliated housing doesn't start until the week before the semester itself starts, meaning I was out of housing for the duration of my language course. So I began searching all over for short-term housing options until finally coming across the Hawila (pronounced Havila) on AirBnB. The Hawila is not some fancy hotel, nor a cheap motel, nor a room in someone's apartment; the Hawila is a 27 meter, two-masted, wooden shipping vessel built in 1935 in Sweden. It looks like this:

A shot of the Hawila from the dock, taken June 2015


A view of the deck from above, taken June 2015


The Hawila's stern (back) with Copenhagen in the background, taken June 2015

The current owners are a group of young people with a passion for environmental sustainability. You can read all about their history and goals here: http://www.hawilaproject.org/ but the short version is that they are seeking to create a prototype of a nearly 100% self-sustainable shipping vessel which can be reproduced for commercial use to limit the impact of global shipping on already vulnerable port cities.
     In order to fund this project, the owners decided to rent out the bunks and cabins on platforms such as AirBnB; this is where I come in. I will be renting one of the twenty bunks available for 30 nights, living on-and-off alongside some of the owners, a handful of volunteers, and other guests.

The galley where all twenty bunks are. The stairs come down from the kitchen and the doorway to the back of this picture leads to two cabins and the shower room.

Bunks toward the stern of the ship, I'm sleeping in the bottom left-most bunk with the curtain closed because it is the longest or as some crew-members call it: "American sized"

Kitchen viewed from the door, including a four burner gas stove behind those white half-walls.

Eating/gathering area, this is across from the right side of the above picture or about 90 degrees to the right.

Everyone I have met so far has been great and they each have an interesting story about their education, work, reasons for being in Denmark, and motivations for joining the Hawila Project. Once I was on the ship, I didn't really want to leave given the weather (more on this later) so I had tea and helped cook dinner with a few of the crew members and we talked until we were all too tired.
     For my first full day in Copenhagen I ran a few errands, grabbed coffee and a sandwich at a cafe, and went to find the building my Danish class will be in starting tomorrow. The metro and bus systems are great from what I've been told, but the best way to travel around is by bike. Rather than just some lines painted on the ground, nearly every street has a two-tiered curb/sidewalk system where there are essentially two sidewalk-like paths where one is exclusively for bikes. It's something like the eastbound bike lane on University Ave in Madison, except that the lanes here are elevated slightly rather than separated by a curb.
     Biking is great and I bike around Madison even in winter, so I'll be damned if I let the weather in Denmark stop me. At least, that's what I thought 48 hours ago. It turns out that the relatively mild temperature, hovering in the upper 20s, is coupled with winds that I assume are produced by massive jet engines over in Sweden somewhere. While walking toward the harbor from the metro stop, I was genuinely concerned that I was going to be blown over more than once. On top of that, the sun is only out for around seven hours a day, rising around 8:45 and setting around 3:50. You read that right, the sun sets before 4:00 in the afternoon, which I guess makes it 4:00 at night here. That means that the "warmest part of the day" lasts for maybe five minutes and realistically doesn't exist at all. The weather isn't all bad though. Getting out of the wind makes a very noticeable difference and I get to wear sweaters all of the time.
     I hope to update this blog much more regularly than my previous blog for Indonesia (which can be found here: ayearinyogya.blogspot.com in case you want to read the exact opposite weather report) so keep coming back, subscribe, and/or stalk my Facebook! I'll also be posting lots of pictures here so if words aren't really your thing, this blog can still be for you. Please feel free to message me if there is something you're curious about that I'm not posting about, something you want me to elaborate on, or just to say hello.