Great Danes

Ok! Copenhagen so far has been a whirlwind of architecture, people, cafe's, shops and traffic!! By traffic I mean bike traffic, which really is the main way everyone gets around.  I saw parents on a bike pulling an open trailer with their kids in it, old people, young, everyone.  Pedestrians not only have to keep out of the way of cars, but at the same time have to dodge the angry bikers ringing their bells at anyone who gets in their way.  I get my bike tomorrow and am so excited to be able to explore at a faster pace and be the one ringing the bell!  There is so much to do here!  I hear of one awesome event after another and trying to keep a list in my head of all the things I want to do has become a very challenging task!  This week I will hopefully get around to visiting Tivoli gardens, Christiania and possibly Rosenborg Castle.  We have had orientation the last two days, so far consisting of brief overviews and power points followed by scavenger hunts or self-led tours/getting lost for about five hours attempting these things.  I think it's somehow working though because the impossible-to-pronounce street names are beginning to become familiar as are the large landmarks.  Amager where I live is nothing what it looks like.  Some crazy Dane decided to put the ger on the end simply for the hell of it because the word is pronounced Ama, Vestamager is Vestama, Gronjords is gron-yords and don't even get me started on the O with a slash through it.

In the first two days of experiencing Danish culture, I have simultaneously gained insight into American culture by viewing my peers through the Danish eyes.  We are obnoxiously loud and extremely terrifying in groups of five or more.  Today we got a debriefing on the inner-workings of a Dane's mind and I have to say, I think I belong here.  They seem to revolve around being in calm situations where they can just talk and chill and be cozy, which is the basis behind their word hygge (pronounced hooga).  I learned that Tivoli Gardens has a concert every Friday and the Copenhagen Art Festival is coming up.  Nørrebro and the meat packing district are the cool, non-high-school-kid places to go out.  You should answer the phone by saying your name, and emoticons in a text are necessary because the Danes like to know how you actually feel instead of guessing.  You MUST be on, must EXACTLY be on time exactly when you say you will be.  Facebook events your invited to have to be responded to, and the maybe attending option is not a real option.  Your either going or your not.  The Danish people tend to be under exuberant and use inside voices even when outside, and never on the metro/bus/train.  If you try to small talk with them on public transportation or are too over-friendly, they think your extremely creepy and will get scared, but they hate small talk in any situation, they are extremely efficient and frank and only see the point in talking about things that actually mean something.  That said, come with fun facts and interesting conversation topics because they like intelligence.  All this information was loaded onto us by a Dane in under an hour.  My decision was to stay quiet for a little and observe, and it was all so true!  I also agree with these practices.  Some of my fellow Americans do have a tendency to talk to loud and I have been asked the same questions so many times that I have started introducing myself as "Hi I'mMorganIgototheUniversityofVermontI'mfromBuffaloNewYorkandimstudyingarchitecture."  All things said were obviously generalizations and have to be taken in simply with an air of curiosity because people are all still individuals within a culture and will not always fit this cookie cutout image.

Today we had the Architecture and Design orientation and there are over a hundred kids!  We were given a run down of the history of Copenhagen and how it has evolved over the decades, and an overview of what we were going to study this semester.  I'm really excited to see the amazing buildings here and on my study tour to Finland and Sweden!