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.