Chasing Danes

After flying across the ocean, three nights with hardly any sleep and a day of walking around the city, I am thoroughly exhausted.  It was so difficult to sleep last night. I was so tired but my mind just would not shut up. After hours of tossing and turning, Izabel and I woke up at 6 this morning, got ready and biked to the train station. Even though we had to take two trains and the metro to get to the Royal Danish Academy of Music, we somehow managed not to get lost. Actually, it was surprisingly easy. After being in Japan and seeing the ginormous and complex train system, I was expecting something just as confusing here in Copenhagen. Nope! Something really cool about the trains here is that, with a special ticket, you can bring your bike on the train. So convenient! And not surprising because the Danes bike everywhere. We did learn an important lesson about the trains though. Copenhagen Survival Lesson One: Do not wait to get on the train until everyone with bikes has gotten on. If you do, you will not make it on the train before the doors close.

Our opening ceremony was nice but not really that informative. The DIS staff and a few people who works at the U.S. embassy here welcomed us to the city. Afterwards we walked to another event where we were supposed to learn about the Danes. This part was super confusing. First of all, there are a couple of DIS buildings throughout the city so at first we struggled to figure out where we were even supposed to be going. Secondly, it was a struggle to find the street signs. In the U.S. street signs are (for the most part) clearly visible on posts on the corners of intersections. Not so in Copenhagen. Here, street signs aren't really street signs. Instead, they put the name of the street on the corner of the buildings. This is nice because the signs don't clutter up the street but it also means that streets aren't always clearly labeled.

Despite our initial trouble navigating the city, Izabel and I managed quite well later on during the day. We walked around for about two hours total. We just walked around where ever we felt like going. It was amazing. Everything was so beautiful. 

 

Houses/apartments 

 

This is primarily a pedestrian street with the occasional truck

 

 

Beautiful street by the harbor!

 

Boats on the harbor. Interesting fact, Britta (my host mom) is the first woman in Denmark to be educated in ship building. 

 

 

These apartments are really interesting because they have a much more modern design than some of the other buildings I've seen so far. Though the Danes are known for their modern design.

 

As I said before, bikes are everywhere in Copenhagen. And a fair number of people have awesome bikes like this one for children to sit in.  

When I first arrived I had the idea in my head that Danes are primarily tall, blonde and thin. Boy was I wrong. Okay, not entirely wrong. There are definitely a lot of people like that here but Copenhagen is actually much more diverse than I was expecting. Both where I'm living (about 20-30 minutes outside of the city) and in the city center there seem to be people from a lot of different ethnic backgrounds. 

I also learned some interesting things about the Danes today. And while not all Danes are like this, they're definitely things to be aware of when interacting with them.
1) They are very straightforward and will just say things how they are
2) They tend to love American TV shows from the 90's
3) They hate small talk
4) They are usually fairly quite and see loud Americans as a major turnoff
5) They view overly friendly people as fake
and
6) They are a bit more withdrawn and it can take multiple attempts and a lot of effort to engage with them and become friends. As we were told by a young Dane herself,  "you have to chase after them".

So let the chasing commence.