KOBENHAVN! (aka Copenhagen!)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

So I have finally settled in for my semester abroad in Copenhagen! The Danes are tall, blonde, and beautiful, the cappuccinos are the best I have ever had, and the city is beautiful. Near my classes all of the streets are windy pedestrian cobblestones roads that have cute boutiques and cafes and basically feel like you are walking through a giant Diagon Alley (HP reference). My first homework assignment was to read The Emperor's New Clothes and the Ugly Duckling because I am taking a class on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales!

My housing situation has been off to a bumpy start, most of my friends have awesome apartments right in the middle of the city right next to all our classes and all the best bars. I live in a kollegium, which is like a Danish dorm slash apartment complex with all international students, and it is in a suburb about twenty minutes out of the city by train. The second night we were here a girl in my program walked into her room to find two men holding computers, cameras, wallets, ipods, and passports, and when she started asking what they were doing they pushed her down and jumped out the window! Turns out an Armenian gang had thrown a rock through one of the American students' windows and stole things from three different people! Apparently this suburb has immigrant problems which has escalated into a gang culture, and the program director called all of the kollegium students to a meeting. Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world, with an average of only 20 homicides a year, and it is even illegal to carry pepper spray (which seems crazy to many of the American girls on my program). The director said nothing like this had ever happened before in his thirty years of working with the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, and we all have the option to move to a different type of housing. I have not decided what to do yet, but in the meantime, have a look at Kobenhavn!