Traveling to Copenhagen/My first day

I began my traveling to Copenhagen on Saturday with a flight from SFO to Seattle and then a flight from Seattle to Copenhagen. My first flight to Seattle was really interesting because it flew over the mountains in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. On the trip I got a good ariel view of the East Bay and then the mountains. I saw Mt. Shasta, various volcano mountains, Crater Lake and Mt. St. Helens. It was a very pretty trip, especially because everything was covered with snow. The flight to Copenhagen was relatively good and uneventful. There were probably around 20 other DIS students on the plane. It seems like most students from the west coast flew from Seattle. The flight time for this leg was only around 10 hours since we flew the polar route up by greenland. Unfortunaly, it was a night flight so I couldn't see any of the northern canada or greenland which would have been cool.

Once I arrived in Copenhagen I went through customs (all they did was stamp my passport) and then took a DIS bus to the housing orientation. I was then met my two Danish roommates, a young married couple, Fadia and Thomas and they took me back to their apartment where I'm staying. The apartment is located several blocks from the most central part of the Copenhagen and a block from a series of 4 lakes that are located in the middle of the city. However, since the lakes are all contained in thin aligning rectangles, they look more like a river than a series of lakes. Around these lakes are nice gravel/sand paths which are great for running and walking on. The apartment itself is pretty small, just two small rooms, a bathroom, kitchen and living room. I have my own room and it is pretty small, but it works. The apartment's furnishings are very Danish, are modern and sleek and are very well designed.

In the 30 hours that I've been in Copenhagen I've seen lots of interesting designs, from neat modern buildings to appliance fixtures and desks in a college. You can tell Denmark is a center for modern design when the floor at customs in the airport is made out of a beautiful red/brown wood and when the bathrooms are the most stylish you've ever seen.

Sunday night I just had dinner with Fadia and Thomas and then we talked for a while about various things.

Today (Monday) orientation for DIS (Danish Institute for Study Abroad) began. For those of you who don't know, DIS is a program that only does study abroad and while it is affiliated with the University of Copenhagen, it has its own buildings and professors. DIS is subsidized by the Danish government and it is pretty large, there are 600 students at DIS this semester. While studying at DIS, you enroll in a specific program, of which there are around a dozen. I'm in the Architecture and Design program, and am taking a pre-Architecture studio class which is designed for students who are interested in architecture but attend a liberal arts studio. Besides the studio class, I'm taking Danish language, Danish Design and Danish Politics and Society.

Orientation today consisted of the opening ceremony held at the Carlsberg Glyptothek, which I think is an art musuem. The ceremony was kind of boring and mostly consisted of the head of DIS talking about how great an opportunity studying abroad is which is true but a little tiresome to hear over and over. After that we had a 45 minute break for lunch. I met up with a girl I know from Haverford and several other girls. We ended up walking to a nearby area where all the streets are pedestrian only and where there is a lot of shopping and some restaurants. We ended up going to one of the many schwarma ( I think I spelled that right) places. They had falafel sandwiches and scharwama (beef) and Kylling (chicken) sandwiches. These are made from cuts of meat taken from a rotating hunk of the meat, put in a pita with lettuce tomato and tzatki sauce. It was pretty good and fairly cheap, the chicken sandwich only cost 32 kk which is about 7 dollars.

After lunch we had a talk about living with danish people and living in Denmark and the cultural differences. Most were expected and fairly obvious. Some that I found interesting: Danish doesn't really have a work for sorry or excuse me, so when a Dane wants to get around someone who is in his/her way, they don't say "excuse me," but kind of just push on by. Also, it is normal for Danish parents to let their teenage children have their boy/girlfriends stay over night in the same room.

After orientation, Fadia and Thomas met me outside and then we walked back to the apartment and they showed me some grocery stores and other places I would need.

So far I haven't seen much of Copenhagen but what I've seen so far I like. The contrast between the old buildings and some of the newer, modern buildings and design is really interesting and the buildings are also a lot different from those that I saw last summer in Paris. One last interesting thing: 7-11s are all over the place. In the main shopping area there is one on almost every block.