So I'm clearly a failure at this blogging thing, sorry to those who were eagerly awaiting a new post last week. But I'm no Perez, I don't make a living off of updating, I wish though. Anyways last week I went to Copenhagen for a school trip. We all stayed in a hostel in the sketchiest part of town, but it really wasn't that sketchy, actually pretty tame for Canadian standards. (Although there were many shootings and stuff, I hardly heard a cop car and never saw a crime seen once last week, even though there was a shooting at a restaurant right before we were gonna eat there.)
Anyways it was a cool week, but most of it was all work. We had to act like foreign correspondents located in Copenhagen and each had to find stories about Copenhagen and relate it back to people back home (mine was a story about a closing sex museum of course.) It was really tough but fun, i only really got to see the city on the last two days (where Sunday me and my friend Tabitha did all the typical touristy stuff like see the little mermaid statue in the harbour and check out the royal palace). And if you thought i was slow with updating my blogs than i'm even slower with posting pics.
I don't know what else to say, because this week was all work too. It's been non-stop work that I go home tired and my power naps end up lasting till the morning. Plus i think I have a cold, so that doesn't really help my situation. Oh wait, I did skip class for the first time Friday morning to open a bank account and get a haircut. I don't know if I mentioned this before but everything closes so early, that by the time you get anywhere to do errands after school everything is pretty much getting ready to close up. So you actually have to skip school to get shit done. Even if you are there before the place closes, they will try to persuade you to leave because God forbid no one can stay late after closing. Customer service here is wack, they think your weird when you go up to a sales person/cashier/teller and ask: how are u? (the standard customer banter), even a smile is considered uncommon.
But whatevs, I found teaching non-native-English people North American slang to be really funny and amusing. Although they chose this program to improve their English, I'm pretty sure I'm not helping their cause. But what can you do, they want to learn how we speak back home, so I teach them slang. Tabitha had to explain what a dweeb meant once, it was really funny.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Frost/Nixon
So yesterday we all got to go to a special free screening of Frost/Nixon, it comes out to day in Denmark (so VIP Treatment Bitches!). Anyways, general consensus was that it was better than we all expected but would never go pay to see the movie. Its more of a watch it when it comes on tv kinda thing. So my buddy Yo stuck in some booze and us and the Dutch girls were boozing it up while watching, which is always fun. But subtitles are major distracting, the movie was in English but the subtitles were in Danish, so I ended up reading the movie in Danish for no reason. The do mention Cambodia in the movie, so big up Cambodia!
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The very first Assignment
So in order to get a feel for the school's equipment we were all asked to make a short video of what we found strange about Denmark and Aarhus. I just so happened to be the sole international student in my group, so the responsibility of the topic fell to me. I could already tell what some other groups were doing: beer in Denmark (it's so cheap, and so ready available everywhere, there even in our school vending machines), the bikes (there are so many bikes, and the bike paths are actually huge and separated from the main road), and the buses which no one did, cuz I don't think you can film on the bus, but anyways in Aarhus only, you get on at the back of the bus and get off at the front by the driver, and its pretty common for people not to pay even though they should).
Anyways, I chose to do it on tap water. Everyone drinks it here and people hardly buy bottled water, unlike in North America. I know in Ottawa our tap water is good enough to drink, but yet no one really does it, especially from there bathroom tap. Let me explain. So the school has no water fountatins at all, the journalism school or Journalisthøjskolen actually looks like a bunker, its all concrete and low into the ground. Since there are no water fountains, they have glass cups (pint glasses) that you can fill up at the washroom. Even in Canada, I rarely used the water fountain next to a bathroom because I somehow make the connection between the founatin and the bathroom in my head. You may think I'm weird, or not, but have you ever seen someone go into the public/school bathroom and fill up a glass/bottle and drink from it? I think not!
So here's the video my group made, I'm no actor so don't judge, but if you like my acting abilities than compliments are more than welcome.
Anyways, I chose to do it on tap water. Everyone drinks it here and people hardly buy bottled water, unlike in North America. I know in Ottawa our tap water is good enough to drink, but yet no one really does it, especially from there bathroom tap. Let me explain. So the school has no water fountatins at all, the journalism school or Journalisthøjskolen actually looks like a bunker, its all concrete and low into the ground. Since there are no water fountains, they have glass cups (pint glasses) that you can fill up at the washroom. Even in Canada, I rarely used the water fountain next to a bathroom because I somehow make the connection between the founatin and the bathroom in my head. You may think I'm weird, or not, but have you ever seen someone go into the public/school bathroom and fill up a glass/bottle and drink from it? I think not!
So here's the video my group made, I'm no actor so don't judge, but if you like my acting abilities than compliments are more than welcome.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Learning Danish
On Monday we had our very first day of school, this whole week is intro week, so nothing really major. But I would say the first day of classes was probably the most memorable. The last class of the day was a 3 hour crash course on survival Danish. Now some of you may already know that I like learning languages and stuff, and I knew that only one 3 hour class would not help anybody in mastering Danish. Boy was I right! They say that Danish is one of the hardest languages to learn, but I thought the Danes were just hyping it up, because learning Cambodian from scratch would be hard, maybe even Arabic or some other non-Western language would be even tougher. But let me tell you, Danish is some wack language (no offence to the Danes), but it is a language that isn't read as it is spelled. They have 3 new vowels and and have 3 ways of pronouncing the letter D. Sometimes half the word is said while the other half of the world is totally ommitted. It didn't help us either that the professor statred off the class making us sing a Danish song, and then only speaking in Danish, with little few English explanations. I can go on for a lot more but I won't. So if you ever want to learn Danish, I advise you take a little caution before you do, because it is all over the place.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Skype
I now have skype, I just got it because my parents really wanted me to call them, but I've had no time to find a phone card or even a public phone to do so. Plus everyone here has Skype, so I thought I would just download it for now. It seems really useful though, although I'm still figuring things out and have only made one call back home on it. But I now have unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones in Canada and the US. But I don't have an online number, so u can't call me, but if you guys download skype on your computers than we can talk online for free, skype-to-skype. So if you guys want to skype me, just leave a comment or just facebook me, but just remember i'm 6 hours ahead of you guys.
Hey even Oprah does it, and we should always listen to Oprah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfc9_kJN9CQ
Hey even Oprah does it, and we should always listen to Oprah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfc9_kJN9CQ
First party in Aarhus
So after we get back from our sad little trip to the grocery store, we all go back home to unpack and try to settle in. After unpacking, Alex's roommate Yo (yeah that's his real name) arrives from San Francisco, and him, Alex, and Mikkel are already off to do a beer run to get a bunch of 2-4's (remember beer is the cheapest drink here, even cheaper than coke, as in coca-cola). So once Alex and Yo return, me and Alex head over to their place to chill out and drink some our new Danish beers. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either because we went for the cheap ones. The biggest beer here is Carlsberg, which all Danes seem to be very proud of,
K sooner or later Monta arrives (the Latvian) and then my neighbour in 5A Asbjørn arrives to welcome us to the Grundtvig Hus Kollegiet complex and to Denmark. So he is our second Danish friend, after Mikel. Anyways after he tries to tell us all about Danish cuisine, he leaves and we decide to head over to a party held in Mikkel's dorm. It wasn't a bad walk over to Mikkel's, Alex and Monta both brought their maps, and they both seem naturally gifted with a sense of direction, which Andrew, Yo, and I would soon learn that we can't find our way around for shit.
So once we get to Mikkel's place, we are brought to the common room, where it seemed like all of these already drunk students were waiting to greet us. After introductions, we meet some our other fellow echange students, Darren (from Toronto), Kelly and Tabitha (also from San Francisco), two Holland girls, and one shit faced, wasted out of his mind kid from Japan. (he would later be seen hunched over in the garden puking his brains out). After my very first drinking game (the guys all have to drink when Sting sings Roxanne, and the girls when he sings put on your red light), I ask some very blonde local girls to teach some few Danish swear words. I don't know how to spell most of them except for baps (boob) and bapser (boobies). The night goes on pretty well, excpet for when the some of the Danish girls decided to start a limbo game, which only the Japanese kid was drunk enough to join. As the night winds down and people start to leave, Alex, Yo, and I all decide to call it a night, and since Yo hasn't slept once since he got to Denmark, it was very important for him to get some shut eye.
Problem was that we couldn't find Andrew, I saw that his jacket was still around, but we all couldn't find the dude. So we decide to leave, thinking that he might just be getting lucky already and didn't want to ruin his game. So the three of us walk back, but once we get to the main road our house is on, I decided to head back to the party and get Andrew. Now that I knew where to go back home and knew I would be able to find my way back no problem. And I really didn't want to ditch my roommate on the very first night, so I thought it would be best to get him. Problem was I forgot where the party was, so I ended up walking two blocks too far, and had to back track my way back until I found the party. Once I found the place, no one seemed to acknowledge my questions as to where my roommate was, there were all too gone to notice or had no idea who Andrew was in the first place. So when I notice his jacket was gone, I decide to head back and wonder if he managed to start walking back home. So I endure the friggin mission back home one more time, all alone in the srteets of Aarhus at like 4 o'clock in the morning. You think you would be freaked out, but the city seems crazy safe, and it seems like I looked more like the scoundrel than anyone else.
So when I finally get back, I set my key stuck in my door for like five minutes, struggling like crazy. But once I figure out how to get my key out, I notice Andrew is still not home, so all my effort to help my roommate were wasted. So I just crash on my bed.
About an hour later, Andrew stumbles in and wakes me up. Apparently some girl tried to show him the dorm bar at Mikkel's, and was pretty much just stalling him from getting back to the party. But once he got back to the party, he realised we had left and then left on his own. But Andrew ended up going in the completely wrong direction from our house, and ended up getting lost himself, thus resorting to finding a random taxi (taxa in Denmark) to get back home.
The next day Andrew and I woke up at like 3pm, and decided to go to Netto the nearby grocery store, because we really needed food, and had to go before it might close. So we successfully find our way there and back (but as we would later find out that we took the long way) and had another interesting time at a Danish grocery store. Now I don't want to generalize about all grocery stores because Kvickly seemed to have its shit together, even though a little pricy, but Netto was just all over the place. We couldn't find anything, no seriously anything. They already had a small selection because it was a small store, but still nothing seemed to be organized by any type of system at all. And it was pretty obvious that we both looked like tourists, gawking at everything, cruising the aisles back and forth, and had a constant look of confusion on our faces.
But after we survived Netto, we make our meals, and Andrew is informed that Monta and Tabitha are heading over. But Alex and Yo stop by first, in hopes of wanting to check out our own common room/building. Monta arrives soon after with all her various types of green teas, and decides to make us all a big batch of tea. I'm not a fan of green tea, never liked it, but the tea she brought was really good, and won me over. I will now know never to buy green tea from Tim Horton's ever again, and only buy it from Latvia. After our tea, Tabitha calls telling us that she got lost and couldn't find our place, but she was actually really close all along. So once Tabitha arrives and gets warmed up by Monta's tea, the discussion soon turns to television.
I thought I watched a lot of TV, but they kept talking about shows that I never watched. So I guess I just watch a lot of crappy TV shows, which I'm not afraid to admit. But Tabitha suddenly mentions Skins, and then I finally get to jump in and get a little too excited talking about it. Apparantly no one else knew what we were talking about, so I knew from that point on that Tabitha was cool, cuz whoever watches Skins is clearly automatically cool. (It like the law). Anyways we all head to the Common room/building/bar, at the centre of our complex. It was cool, nice and big, a bar area, a kitchen, a ping pong table, fooseball tables, a pool table, and a movie/tv/Wii room. We all hung out there for the night, drank some of our beers, got my ass handed to me in pool, but totally killed the fooseball table. Slowly we end up hanging out with Danish social committee at the bar, have a few more drinks, and end up staying up even later. So when everyone of us had left, except for me and Andrew, I decide to head back and try to get some sleep.
As I head home, I run into Asbjørn, my neighbour, who is totally drunk, and he asks me to come over and have a sandwhich. I was starving, and was not gonna deny any free food of any kind, cuz it is so damn expensive here. So he makes me a pretty standard sandwhich, but then he wants me to try a typical Danish food that he mentioned the day earlier. It was rye bread, with a liver pate, with remoulade, and fried onions. It was actually good. Anyways he offers me candy, which I accept, but then unfortunately spit out because it was black licorice. I hate black licorice, with a passion. But apparantly the Danes love it, and have many different kinds of black licorice, and the majority of the candy here is some sort of black licorice type thing. I am now dissapointed. I tell him that black licorice is not very popular in Canada, and that I and many toher people prefer the red licorice (Twizzlers). He quickly shoots me down, and tells me that red licorice is not even considered licorice in Denmark. (My world clearly turned upside down at that moment).
Anyways he cheers me up, by telling me about his adventures polar bear swimming. I think its crazy, but apparantly its really good for you (it helps your immune sytem or something). Anyways we soon talk about schools, and in Denmark students are actually paid to go to school, about 5,000 kronner a month. I tell him that Canadians fight their governments to lower tuition back at home, but he tells me they fight for more money here in Denmark. Weird!!!! So we end up calling it a night and I head back over to my place, it's around 5;30am at this point, and Andrew is still not even back from the coomon room/building/bar. But I try and fall asleep.
K so I know I'm just rambling on, and I might be giving too much info about every little thing I do. But I thought I would just like to highlight the first coulpe of days for you guys. k
K sooner or later Monta arrives (the Latvian) and then my neighbour in 5A Asbjørn arrives to welcome us to the Grundtvig Hus Kollegiet complex and to Denmark. So he is our second Danish friend, after Mikel. Anyways after he tries to tell us all about Danish cuisine, he leaves and we decide to head over to a party held in Mikkel's dorm. It wasn't a bad walk over to Mikkel's, Alex and Monta both brought their maps, and they both seem naturally gifted with a sense of direction, which Andrew, Yo, and I would soon learn that we can't find our way around for shit.
So once we get to Mikkel's place, we are brought to the common room, where it seemed like all of these already drunk students were waiting to greet us. After introductions, we meet some our other fellow echange students, Darren (from Toronto), Kelly and Tabitha (also from San Francisco), two Holland girls, and one shit faced, wasted out of his mind kid from Japan. (he would later be seen hunched over in the garden puking his brains out). After my very first drinking game (the guys all have to drink when Sting sings Roxanne, and the girls when he sings put on your red light), I ask some very blonde local girls to teach some few Danish swear words. I don't know how to spell most of them except for baps (boob) and bapser (boobies). The night goes on pretty well, excpet for when the some of the Danish girls decided to start a limbo game, which only the Japanese kid was drunk enough to join. As the night winds down and people start to leave, Alex, Yo, and I all decide to call it a night, and since Yo hasn't slept once since he got to Denmark, it was very important for him to get some shut eye.
Problem was that we couldn't find Andrew, I saw that his jacket was still around, but we all couldn't find the dude. So we decide to leave, thinking that he might just be getting lucky already and didn't want to ruin his game. So the three of us walk back, but once we get to the main road our house is on, I decided to head back to the party and get Andrew. Now that I knew where to go back home and knew I would be able to find my way back no problem. And I really didn't want to ditch my roommate on the very first night, so I thought it would be best to get him. Problem was I forgot where the party was, so I ended up walking two blocks too far, and had to back track my way back until I found the party. Once I found the place, no one seemed to acknowledge my questions as to where my roommate was, there were all too gone to notice or had no idea who Andrew was in the first place. So when I notice his jacket was gone, I decide to head back and wonder if he managed to start walking back home. So I endure the friggin mission back home one more time, all alone in the srteets of Aarhus at like 4 o'clock in the morning. You think you would be freaked out, but the city seems crazy safe, and it seems like I looked more like the scoundrel than anyone else.
So when I finally get back, I set my key stuck in my door for like five minutes, struggling like crazy. But once I figure out how to get my key out, I notice Andrew is still not home, so all my effort to help my roommate were wasted. So I just crash on my bed.
About an hour later, Andrew stumbles in and wakes me up. Apparently some girl tried to show him the dorm bar at Mikkel's, and was pretty much just stalling him from getting back to the party. But once he got back to the party, he realised we had left and then left on his own. But Andrew ended up going in the completely wrong direction from our house, and ended up getting lost himself, thus resorting to finding a random taxi (taxa in Denmark) to get back home.
The next day Andrew and I woke up at like 3pm, and decided to go to Netto the nearby grocery store, because we really needed food, and had to go before it might close. So we successfully find our way there and back (but as we would later find out that we took the long way) and had another interesting time at a Danish grocery store. Now I don't want to generalize about all grocery stores because Kvickly seemed to have its shit together, even though a little pricy, but Netto was just all over the place. We couldn't find anything, no seriously anything. They already had a small selection because it was a small store, but still nothing seemed to be organized by any type of system at all. And it was pretty obvious that we both looked like tourists, gawking at everything, cruising the aisles back and forth, and had a constant look of confusion on our faces.
But after we survived Netto, we make our meals, and Andrew is informed that Monta and Tabitha are heading over. But Alex and Yo stop by first, in hopes of wanting to check out our own common room/building. Monta arrives soon after with all her various types of green teas, and decides to make us all a big batch of tea. I'm not a fan of green tea, never liked it, but the tea she brought was really good, and won me over. I will now know never to buy green tea from Tim Horton's ever again, and only buy it from Latvia. After our tea, Tabitha calls telling us that she got lost and couldn't find our place, but she was actually really close all along. So once Tabitha arrives and gets warmed up by Monta's tea, the discussion soon turns to television.
I thought I watched a lot of TV, but they kept talking about shows that I never watched. So I guess I just watch a lot of crappy TV shows, which I'm not afraid to admit. But Tabitha suddenly mentions Skins, and then I finally get to jump in and get a little too excited talking about it. Apparantly no one else knew what we were talking about, so I knew from that point on that Tabitha was cool, cuz whoever watches Skins is clearly automatically cool. (It like the law). Anyways we all head to the Common room/building/bar, at the centre of our complex. It was cool, nice and big, a bar area, a kitchen, a ping pong table, fooseball tables, a pool table, and a movie/tv/Wii room. We all hung out there for the night, drank some of our beers, got my ass handed to me in pool, but totally killed the fooseball table. Slowly we end up hanging out with Danish social committee at the bar, have a few more drinks, and end up staying up even later. So when everyone of us had left, except for me and Andrew, I decide to head back and try to get some sleep.
As I head home, I run into Asbjørn, my neighbour, who is totally drunk, and he asks me to come over and have a sandwhich. I was starving, and was not gonna deny any free food of any kind, cuz it is so damn expensive here. So he makes me a pretty standard sandwhich, but then he wants me to try a typical Danish food that he mentioned the day earlier. It was rye bread, with a liver pate, with remoulade, and fried onions. It was actually good. Anyways he offers me candy, which I accept, but then unfortunately spit out because it was black licorice. I hate black licorice, with a passion. But apparantly the Danes love it, and have many different kinds of black licorice, and the majority of the candy here is some sort of black licorice type thing. I am now dissapointed. I tell him that black licorice is not very popular in Canada, and that I and many toher people prefer the red licorice (Twizzlers). He quickly shoots me down, and tells me that red licorice is not even considered licorice in Denmark. (My world clearly turned upside down at that moment).
Anyways he cheers me up, by telling me about his adventures polar bear swimming. I think its crazy, but apparantly its really good for you (it helps your immune sytem or something). Anyways we soon talk about schools, and in Denmark students are actually paid to go to school, about 5,000 kronner a month. I tell him that Canadians fight their governments to lower tuition back at home, but he tells me they fight for more money here in Denmark. Weird!!!! So we end up calling it a night and I head back over to my place, it's around 5;30am at this point, and Andrew is still not even back from the coomon room/building/bar. But I try and fall asleep.
K so I know I'm just rambling on, and I might be giving too much info about every little thing I do. But I thought I would just like to highlight the first coulpe of days for you guys. k
Saturday, January 31, 2009
First few days in Denmark
So let the story begin..... So my flight was from Ottawa to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Copenhagen, then to here. Let me just tell you, if you ever want to see a nicer looking airport, check out the Copenhagen one, it totally reflects Danish culture in every way. The Danes are really big on design and architecture, and are very relaxed and chill people, so it was like the perfect combo of both modern and classic, add some high end stores like Gucci, and next level technology, u got some crazy ass beautiful airport. I didn't take any pictures because I was too afraid it might be some threat to security or something, plus I didn't want to be the one person taking pictures at an airport all by myself, but I will when I get back.
K by the time I get to my last flight to Aarhus, I was like dead tired. But the flight wass so short (a half hour) that by the time I got a chance to fall asleep, the plane has already landed. The Aarhus airport is like some hole in the wall, totally random, old and small. It was 6 o'clock at night when I arrived so everything was pretty much closed and everyone had gone home. (Most places closes around 7pm on weekdays, 3 or 5 pm on Saturday, and everything is closed except the small mom & pop shops on Sundays, so that they can get a competetive advantage, remember this is a very socialist country. I was in fact invited to attend the country's socialist party's party tonight, but that's a later story) . So anyways, I get to Aarhus and its already dark, and there was no customs people to check me in or something, cuz they left for the night. So there really wasn't much security.
I then have to take a bus from the airport to the train station that's in the central part of the city. The bust cost 90 kronner, which divided by 4, means roughly 22.5 CAD dollars. (It is hella expensive here, the only thing that is cheap here is beer, which I have pretty much been drinking, the whole time i was here, beer = 5 kronner, which is like 1 something CAD). Anyways I meet up with my greeter/tour guide, Mikkel, but it's too late and too dark 7pm by now), and he has to pick up another girl from Latvia, that all he has time to do is show me my dorm/apartment type thing (I'll upload the pictures soon I swear). So i'm the first one to arrive, my roomate Andrew is supposed to be in the next morning. But thank God I brought sheets, because the students in my place before me left some sketchy ass duvets, pillows and blankets. So all I had time for and had the energy to do was make my bed quickly as possible, so I could crash. But that wasn't before I had to steal a lamp from Andrew's room because the hanging light in my room was non-existent.
Well anyways, next morning I wake up shivering because there is no central heating but a radiator in each room (which I had no idea how to work) and meet up with my friend Alex, a fellow Canadian from the T-DOT attending Ryerson) who lives down the lane in 8B (I'm in 5B). While chilling with Alex, Mikkel brings over Andrew, another Canadian (from Vancouver studying at Concordia) and decides that we should get are social security number at City hall right away, but first we have to pick up the girl from Latvia, Monta, and bring her to some place to get her a special Euro thing or whatever. Once we all get downtown in Mikkel's Avis rental, me and Andrew apply for our social security number (CPR number in Denmark) at the city hall, where we have to pick out a doctor/GP out of a book, because once we get our number, we are automatically coverd by the Danish health care system, which is pretty sick (sorry Canada, but I like my health care free and extensive). After Monta's errands, we get to go downtown and shop and eat, we got to some really cool bokstore/cafe (way coller than Chapters/starbucks) and get maps of the city and get some java.
After being all Euro in the cafe for like an hour, Mikkel brings us back to the train station, because it also acts like a mall as well, and we all needed to go grocery shopping too. So the mall had a grocery store called Kvickly, and that is when we all pretty much found out how expensive shit in Denmark is, I don't remeber the prices because I have mentally blocked them from my mind, but it was gross. So all I end up buying is bread, milk, tomatoes, apples, mayo, and cereal, cuz I had no idea what to get and was told there was a cheaper place to buy groceries anyways. But the worst part was when me and Andrew paid for our things, and got to the end of the conveyor belt thing to bag our stuff and couldn't find any bags. Which I cleary ended up looking like a big ignorant tool, cuz I was like :"Where the fuck are the bags?". In Denmark you have to buy the plastic bags first at the front of the cash, so me and Andrew had to go back in line and buy some plastic bags.
It makes sense in the whole trying to reduce plastic bags kinda thing, cuz they are bad for the environment, but still, it just seems so obvious for us that the bags are at the end of the conveyor and are generally free, where here in Denmark it is the complete opposite. But whatevs, cutural mistakes are obviously bound to happen and I will post more when they do. but i'm gonna call it a day, or morning I mean, cuz I'm still on Ottawa time and really should readjust my internal clock, till next time.
-Soph
K by the time I get to my last flight to Aarhus, I was like dead tired. But the flight wass so short (a half hour) that by the time I got a chance to fall asleep, the plane has already landed. The Aarhus airport is like some hole in the wall, totally random, old and small. It was 6 o'clock at night when I arrived so everything was pretty much closed and everyone had gone home. (Most places closes around 7pm on weekdays, 3 or 5 pm on Saturday, and everything is closed except the small mom & pop shops on Sundays, so that they can get a competetive advantage, remember this is a very socialist country. I was in fact invited to attend the country's socialist party's party tonight, but that's a later story) . So anyways, I get to Aarhus and its already dark, and there was no customs people to check me in or something, cuz they left for the night. So there really wasn't much security.
I then have to take a bus from the airport to the train station that's in the central part of the city. The bust cost 90 kronner, which divided by 4, means roughly 22.5 CAD dollars. (It is hella expensive here, the only thing that is cheap here is beer, which I have pretty much been drinking, the whole time i was here, beer = 5 kronner, which is like 1 something CAD). Anyways I meet up with my greeter/tour guide, Mikkel, but it's too late and too dark 7pm by now), and he has to pick up another girl from Latvia, that all he has time to do is show me my dorm/apartment type thing (I'll upload the pictures soon I swear). So i'm the first one to arrive, my roomate Andrew is supposed to be in the next morning. But thank God I brought sheets, because the students in my place before me left some sketchy ass duvets, pillows and blankets. So all I had time for and had the energy to do was make my bed quickly as possible, so I could crash. But that wasn't before I had to steal a lamp from Andrew's room because the hanging light in my room was non-existent.
Well anyways, next morning I wake up shivering because there is no central heating but a radiator in each room (which I had no idea how to work) and meet up with my friend Alex, a fellow Canadian from the T-DOT attending Ryerson) who lives down the lane in 8B (I'm in 5B). While chilling with Alex, Mikkel brings over Andrew, another Canadian (from Vancouver studying at Concordia) and decides that we should get are social security number at City hall right away, but first we have to pick up the girl from Latvia, Monta, and bring her to some place to get her a special Euro thing or whatever. Once we all get downtown in Mikkel's Avis rental, me and Andrew apply for our social security number (CPR number in Denmark) at the city hall, where we have to pick out a doctor/GP out of a book, because once we get our number, we are automatically coverd by the Danish health care system, which is pretty sick (sorry Canada, but I like my health care free and extensive). After Monta's errands, we get to go downtown and shop and eat, we got to some really cool bokstore/cafe (way coller than Chapters/starbucks) and get maps of the city and get some java.
After being all Euro in the cafe for like an hour, Mikkel brings us back to the train station, because it also acts like a mall as well, and we all needed to go grocery shopping too. So the mall had a grocery store called Kvickly, and that is when we all pretty much found out how expensive shit in Denmark is, I don't remeber the prices because I have mentally blocked them from my mind, but it was gross. So all I end up buying is bread, milk, tomatoes, apples, mayo, and cereal, cuz I had no idea what to get and was told there was a cheaper place to buy groceries anyways. But the worst part was when me and Andrew paid for our things, and got to the end of the conveyor belt thing to bag our stuff and couldn't find any bags. Which I cleary ended up looking like a big ignorant tool, cuz I was like :"Where the fuck are the bags?". In Denmark you have to buy the plastic bags first at the front of the cash, so me and Andrew had to go back in line and buy some plastic bags.
It makes sense in the whole trying to reduce plastic bags kinda thing, cuz they are bad for the environment, but still, it just seems so obvious for us that the bags are at the end of the conveyor and are generally free, where here in Denmark it is the complete opposite. But whatevs, cutural mistakes are obviously bound to happen and I will post more when they do. but i'm gonna call it a day, or morning I mean, cuz I'm still on Ottawa time and really should readjust my internal clock, till next time.
-Soph
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