The First Week in København

Original Post Date: May 26, 2019

Original Post Location: VED MØNTEN, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

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As you probably learned from the title, this was my first week in Copenhagen. I still find myself in awe to think that I will be living in Denmark for the next couple of months.

I am living in a housing community called Ved Mønten. When translated to English this roughly means “by the coin.” It is called this because it used to be a mint where they made the coins for their currency. This also explains why, from the outside, the complex does not look very inviting. The interior of my apartment resembles the classic minimalist style that is popular in Scandinavia. With just enough space and furniture that is needed. The space that has quickly became my favorite is the small balcony we have overlooking the interior courtyard of the Kollegium. It is approximately a 10-minute bike ride away from the city center and my classrooms.

5.20.19

This was the big travel day. Our flight finally left New York at 12:30 AM, 2 hours later than it was supposed to. After the hassle that I had in the airport I was ready to settle in for a nice overnight flight, fit with free movies and a comfy chair. Although, thanks to Apple, I was not able to watch any of the free movies Norwegian Air had to offer because the jack on my headphones was not compatible with the one built into the plane. Then, when I finally was able to try and sleep, sadly it was to no avail. Of course, I was in the seat that would not stay reclined. I would push the button and lean it back as far as it would go, but within a few minutes it would be back in the upright position. Which is almost impossible to sleep in when you are trying not to lean on your neighbor. This flight finally ended, after what felt like an unnecessarily long time, when we landed in Copenhagen at 1:30 PM (6:30 AM in Kansas). Following the frustrations I had at the JFK airport I was nervous for what customs would be like. Turns out, I had nothing to worry about, it was about as simple as it could be. They stamped my passport, I got my bags, and exited the airport. Thankfully DIS (the school I am taking my classes through) was well prepared with signs and assistants to lead us to where we needed to be in order to be picked up by the bus and taken to our housing. Once we arrived at our new home for the summer, we got a short tour of the complex and the surrounding neighborhood and then ate a community dinner with all the new DIS Summer Students living in this apartment building.

5.21.19

We started this day bright and early with summer orientation and the first day of classes for Session 1. For Session 1 I will be taking, Storytelling through Photography. As soon as the orientation was over we were sent off to find our classes. DIS is not a normal campus in the sense that all the buildings are next to each other and they all belong to the school. Instead all the classrooms and apartments are spread throughout the city. The classrooms and academic buildings are all in the city center and the apartments are in the surrounding neighborhoods. On top of that, DIS doesn’t own the entirety of the buildings that they occupy. For example, my class is on the second floor and the other levels are all owned by different businesses. When taking all this into consideration, it is not easy to figure out where you are going. Although, with Google Maps you would still think it should be simple to find where you are going because you just plug the address in, right? Wrong. As I quickly learned, often times they use an abbreviation of a street name for the address and the location of my class is ST3-22. When you type that into Google, it has no idea what you are talking about. It tried giving me directions to London. Eventually, after searching for street abbreviations I learned that ST stood for Studiestræde, the 3 was the street number and the 22 was the room number, meaning it was on the second floor. Once I was able to find my classroom, everything went smoothly from there, I was even successful at navigating the bus system.

5.22.19

Due to jetlag still getting the best of me, I was almost late to my second day of class. But I knew where I was going this time and I made it right on time. For class our professor took us to a park nearby called the HC Ørstedsparken to take photographs using the settings that she discussed in class. After lunch, we met back up with our professor and she took us on a field study to see the National Press Photography Awards Exhibit located at the Royal Danish Library. This was a collection of the winning photos submitted by photojournalists all over Denmark. After this field study I went to the bike rental company to finally rent my bike for the summer. I was thankfully that this company was used to working with students because the process went very smooth, and they even adjusted the bike to fit me. Although, not even 5 minutes after I rode away from the store, my bike almost caused me to wreck. I was riding through an intersection and hit a small pothole which caused my bike to randomly shift gears and stop in the middle of the intersection, with a biker coming straight at me. They quickly swerved out of the way, but not without a little side eye in my direction as if to say “Crazy American!” Later that evening DIS provided a picnic for all of the students at the same park I was at earlier for my class. We ate hot dogs, played Kubb (a Viking yard game), and sort of made smores. The generous Danes who were providing us with the dinner knew that smores were an American thing, but they were not sure how to make them. They thought that we could cook them over charcoals and had forgotten the graham crackers and chocolate. We ended up just slowly melting marshmallows over the coals and then eating them off the stick. Which in my opinion, is still a pretty good way to eat a marshmallow.

5.23.19

After a crazy first couple of days, this was finally a more relaxed day. I rode my bike to class with the morning rush hour commuters and in class I learned that my professor is an award-winning photographer. During our break for class we found a little café called “The Living Room.” It was very eclectic in design and had multiple spaces and floors. I would recommend this place to anyone in Copenhagen looking for a good quiet place to hang out or do some work. After class I walked around the city center with my roommate Natalie and we found a cute store called “Flying Tiger” which is similar to a fancy 5 Below. After riding our bikes back home we decided that we should probably go grocery shopping and found an Aldi near by with hopes that they would have a larger selection compared to the tiny grocery store across the street from us. We spent at least an hour in this store just trying to read all the Danish labels to make sure we were buying the right things. There was not a single thing in English. For reference, I bought food for a week for 150,00 kroner ($23 USD). Getting used to a new currency has probably been one of the hardest parts about living in a new country so far. When we got home from shopping we grabbed our cameras and went outside to work on one of my photography assignments. While doing this we also walked along the canal that separates where we live from the city center. This canal is not the famous one, but it is still lined with beautifully colored buildings, outdoor cafés, and house boats. After wandering around for an hour or so we decided to head home for dinner. This was the first real meal I cooked since being in Denmark.

5.24.19

This weekend Copenhagen was having its “3 Days of Design” event, which is similar to NeoCon in Chicago. Except instead of being in one giant building, all the furniture showrooms and design studios throughout the city open to the public to show off their new furniture and design ideas. The best part was, it was completely free. I appreciated this because it allowed me to explore new parts of the city as well as amazing showrooms that I probably would not have been able to tour on my own. I started the day with a group of people, but they quickly got bored and left as I was nerding out about furniture and discussing the joints, the wood used, and upholstery options you could do for each piece with an Industrial Design student from Purdue who is also a big fan of Scandinavian Design. In one of the showrooms we met a designer named Claudio Guarino who is the owner of møbel. He was really interested in our design careers as students and gave us his card to contact him in the future if we have any questions about furniture design. I also got to tour the Muuto showroom, which is a company that I learned about while at Hollis + Miller.

Later, all the students that I live with decided that they wanted to have a community dinner. So, we all got together to cook and eat spaghetti. Yes, in Denmark we Americans made spaghetti. The main reasoning behind this though was that pasta is the cheapest thing at the grocery stores here, you can buy a box for $0.45, and it is easy to make for 40+ people.

This was the first day that I walked around by myself and I learned that when I am not with a group of my friends, the locals think I am a Dane and will come up to me and start a conversation, in Danish. Which is awesome, but then I have to awkwardly say “No Danish” or “Just English.” Sadly, this often changes their tone towards me and they typically end up walking away. Although it is still fun to think that I look like a local and could fit in if I only knew the language.

5.25.19

Since this was the last day for “3 Days of Design” I was able to talk my roommate into going with me. We ended up visiting a lot more places than I thought we would and exploring more of the city that we hadn’t seen yet. A few of the locations for the design event were located in Embassies. We were able to enter the Swedish Embassy as well as the Poland Embassy. We tried to go into the French Embassy as well to see their exhibits, but they were not as friendly or willing to let us in. Once we went to all the places we had wanted to visit, we decided to hang out along the famous canal to take in the views. On the walk back to our bikes we ended up in the middle of a march for climate change. Denmark is having a huge election (Sunday, May 26, 2019) for the European Parliament, and the number one topic of the election is Climate Change. Before we rode our bikes home, we stopped at a hot dog cart to get a Copenhagen Street Dog. While the vendor was cooking our food, he started up a random conversation with us about the guy behind us in line. He was saying that in Denmark you can drink an open container of alcohol in the streets and you can also drink and drive. He said that you can have up to two beers and still drive, and you can also be drinking a beer while driving. He also thought it was crazy that America has no tolerance for drinking and driving. I also learned this week that I was 1 of 5 people selected to be a Student Photographer for DIS.

5.26.19

This Sunday was a pretty uneventful day. I started the day by meeting Maura at Emmery’s, a local café and bakery, for our weekly Bible study of the book of James. Following our study, we walked to the new church that we are trying out together. It is called Hillsong Church and is located in an old theater. It was a very contemporary service with good songs and a great thought-provoking sermon. I felt welcomed at this church and am excited to try it again next week. After I got home from church, I went to the mall with my roommate to finally by full sized Shampoo and Conditioner. This was one of the biggest malls I have ever been to. It even had a full grocery store in it. Once we got home from the mall, due to the continuous rain all day, I choose to stay inside and work on upcoming homework.

Weekly Overview – Copenhagen Week 1:

1. Places Visited

• The Black Diamond – Royal Danish Library

• The Embassy of Sweden

• The Embassy of Poland

• Countless Furniture and Design Studios

• Nyhavn

• Sankt Annæ Plads

2. Favorite Moment

Riding my bike around the city. It makes me feel like a true resident of Copenhagen.

3. The Best Food I Ate

A Chocolate Croissant from Emmery’s.

4. A Helpful Tip

When shopping, at any store, bring your own bags. Otherwise you will have to purchase a plastic one. None of the stores offer free bags to carry out your items.

5. The Best View

Watching the sunset along the narrow streets of the city center.