Home

I’ve been ‘home’ now for almost three weeks, back in Wellington enjoying some gorgeous summer days but figured it was about time to cap off the blog with one final post.

I remember a month or so ago when I went on a bit of a blogging rampage I said I wanted to describe what living in Denmark was like, and go over the kind of routine I got into during a normal week. The truth is I can’t, if there’s one thing I realised on exchange it is that there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ week on exchange and it is impossible to get into a routine, but what I can do is try and group my time abroad into several different types of week.

Class Week

By class week I mean a week where you had class at university and were expected to show up to lectures and study. If there was such a thing as a normal week on exchange, I guess this would be it … but, they were few and far between.

Of course, being on exchange, a target of showing up to around 75% of your classes is admirable. A ‘class week’ is not really organised around class at all, life on exchange is not about studying books and attending class it’s about interacting socially with people of all different nationalities and cultures, and maybe showing up to class if you wake up in time – most universities don’t actually credit exchange grades back, instead just giving students a pass or fail (in other words whether I got A or C on exchange, I just get a pass at Vic), university exchange departments emphasize that while you learn so much on exchange, relatively, very little is learnt in the classroom.

The strange thing is, I can’t really tell you what happened exactly in a class week – they all went so fast that it’s kind of a blur. Most days you’d probably sleep in till lunch time, before grabbing an apple for breakfast and biking to uni if you were up in time for class. I’d spend the afternoon on campus, trying to catch up on work in the library – if I wasn’t sitting in the cafeteria hanging out with other exchange students or chatting to people back home.

At around five or six Jord, Fraser and I would get contact one another and organise something for dinner, before picking up ingredients on the way home from one of the local supermarkets Føtex, Kvickly or Netto. Everybody cooked in groups, obviously it’s a lot cheaper that way – but also a lot more fun. Fraser, Jord and I always cooked together but sometimes the group got a lot larger out to as many as 15 people. We stayed up late pretty much every night (hence sleeping into lunchtime most days), some nights drinking and going out and some nights just chatting or watching movies on someone’s laptop.

Class weeks were the least hectic, and possibly the most ordinary weeks on exchange – not to say they were ‘ordinary’ by any stretch, it’s just they were the weeks that you weren’t on the London Eye, under the Eiffel Tower or drinking Champagne in a castle. Looking back now, I’m beginning to miss these ordinary weeks, I guess they epitomise what I will now think of as ‘the good ol’ days’. I guess the easiest comparison would be to 7th form in school. At the time, I couldn’t wait to to finish high school and start studying at uni, but a couple of years later you look back and realise that while at the time it all seemed so mundane, in hindsight they were ‘the good ol’ days’.

Travel Week

Travel weeks are pretty self explanatory, these were the weeks cut short by ditching Denmark for a gallivant through Europe. Because I only actually had scheduled classes on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, it was easy (almost too easy) for me to fly to a foreign country on a Thursday night and return on a Tuesday morning – just in time for a class – although just booking a flight home in time for class certainly does not guarantee attendance to said class, I always had the best of intentions at heart.

The absurdity of the travel weeks was how normal they became. At home, if myself or one of my friends is going to anywhere overseas you build up to it for weeks and slowly get more excited before you finally go. On exchange, you didn’t have time for the build up, generally only booking flights a week or two in advance and then having so much on before you left that you pretty much forgot you were going until the day you had to leave. It was scarily common to bump into someone from a courtyard to find they had just flown in from Poland or Spain or Switzerland or some other country around Europe. I packed for almost every trip I went on within half an hour of leaving Holger to get to the airport because I had been at uni trying to finish an assignment off.

I remember the day I was leaving for Spain I wanted to get a haircut so I biked around to a few different hairdressers. One told me he could fit me in at 9am the next morning, to which I responded ‘that won’t work, I have a flight to Spain in three hours’. As I walked outside I started laughing to myself because it just seemed so ridiculous to be riding around Copenhagen looking for a haircut, a mere three hours before getting on plane and flying to Barcelona, I can’t say I ever would’ve thought I’d be able to use “I’ve got a flight to Spain in three hours” as an excuse for not being able to get a haircut – the strangest bit was that it felt completely normal.

Study Week

I once read that you will never have more fun than on exchange, but you will also never work harder … they weren’t wrong. While at the time staying up late, sleeping in, skipping class and travelling seemed like great ideas (which they were) when exams rolled around I began to realise that putting in a bit more work during semester may have been advantageous. I truly never worked harder than the 3-4 weeks leading up to/surrounding exams.

The hardest bit was readjusting to a regular sleeping pattern. It took about a week to retrain my body to go to sleep at 11pm rather than 3 or 4am. Once the body clock issues were sorted, I pretty much began living at uni, I’d get up around 8am, get a yoghurt/apple for breakfast then head to uni around 9. Eating both Lunch and Dinner on campus at the cafeteria. There were some days I remember being at uni from 9am until the library closed at around 10pm – although it became a routine to take a break around 5pm for beer o’clock – when they sell beer at the cafe on campus, it was hard to avoid. And then of course with 3-4 pubs between uni and home, we’d often make a stop or two on the way home to keep hydrated.

Exams in Denmark come in three different formats; Term Paper – you are given an exam question and then a period of time to write a certain number of pages. My Language of Negotiations exam was a 5 page paper which we had a week to complete. Oral – Basically you go into an interview with 1 or 2 lecturers for a course and have to discuss specific topics relating to the course with them. My Danish language exam was a 15 minute conversation with the two lecturers for the course – in Danish. Written Examination: My European Union and Project Management courses were 4 hour open book, typed exams. I really enjoyed the longer open book format compared to the 3 hour exams back at Vic. You weren’t as pushed for time, and you didn’t have to memorise ridiculous amounts of information just to forget it all a week later – so long as you had a solid grasp of important concepts then you could refer to text-books and notes for the nitty gritty details.

Also, you could eat and drink in exams – the diet came down to a bit of a science. Starting out with Fruit and Crackers at the beginning before moving onto Lollies and Energy Drinks to give you an energy spike in the last hour to keep you going and then maybe a sneaky beer in the last 15 minutes, if you were that confident (or that despondent) in how you’d done.

First & Last Weeks

In total there was about four weeks during the semester in which as a group of exchange students, we went absolutely nuts. These were the first two weeks and the last two weeks.

The first two weeks revolved around introductory social activities set out by the university crafted to meet as many people as possible. Generally we’d have some kind of activity (Bowling, Danish Folk Dancing, Museum tour etc etc) before we’d all head out to bars or back to one of the residences and stay up till the wee hours of the morning.

The last two weeks were similar but different. By now we had already met so many people that the uni didn’t need to put on events for us, we just went out, hard, almost every night. In the 10 nights following my final exam (including the night of my final exam), I was out in bars/clubs until at least 6am 9 nights. This resulted in basically becoming nocturnal and there were days where I literally slept through the daylight (the sun was setting around 3:30pm by this stage).

Week by week …

At first five months seemed like such a long time to be away from everything and everyone I had ever known, but day by day, week by week as the sand slide through the hour glass it became apparent five months wasn’t long at all.

Living in Denmark was incredible, so similar but so different to New Zealand. Denmark is a small country, with similar population and landmass as New Zealand, it has a rich history and people who are proud of the land they come from. Denmark’s land is flat which has lead to Copenhagen becoming the most bike friendly city in the world, where in New Zealand we scoff at cyclists on the road, in Copenhagen you feel out of place if you aren’t on a bike – and in a city such as Copenhagen, even in the snow biking is a truly wonderful thing. The people of Denmark truly impressed me with their ability to speak English. Where in most of Europe my generation and maybe my parent’s could speak English, in Denmark grandparents spoke English completely destroying any language barrier that could have existed – making it that much easier to settle in and feel at home there. Denmark will be missed.

Life in Europe is completely different, I never quite grasped how far New Zealand was from the world until I realised how close Denmark was to it. The affordability and ease of travel through Europe is quite remarkable and something that makes visiting Europe that much more enjoyable. Europe is home to so many ancient and incredibly famous monuments which, worldwide everybody has seen pictures of. But only ever seeing it on tv or in photos makes these places feel distant and almost fake, so to actually stand next to the Berlin Wall, watch a Champions League game, sit in the House of Lords or stand under the Eiffel Tower and realise, this place actually exists and I’m here, right now in a spot where Napoleon stood, Hitler spoke or Churchill rallied his troops, standing in spots where the world was literally changed. It’s truly an amazing feeling. Europe will be missed.

Quiz time: Which country in the world is furthest away from Denmark?

Answer: New Zealand (or at least that’s what a Dane told me).

So sitting on a plane for over 30 hours, with nothing in your mind but the realisation that you are moving away from everything you have ever known. Moving to somewhere which is quite literally on the other side of a planet. Moving to somewhere thousands of kilmeters from anybody you know. Moving to somewhere where English is not the first language and you don’t even nearly know what to expect. It’s truly the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. But from my very first afternoon in Copenhagen, I began meeting people and making friendships that will last a lifetime. Exchange gave me the opportunity to become great friends with the best people from literally every corner of the globe. Friends whom I travelled all over Europe and had the experiences of a lifetime with. The people will be missed.

Beer, Waffles, Chips, Beer, New Years Eve, Beer, Beer

And back on yet another train, this ones a slow one though. On my way from Munich to Prague … about six hours hopefully I’ll have enough time to get through Brussels, Paris and Munich in this post, I’ll be current on the blog for the first time in … well… ever.

So, after Christmas with Jord’s wonderful family, I boarded a train from Amsterdam to Brussels and began my final trip – solo. I was in Brussels for about two days, probably the unhealthiest two days of my life. Surviving on Chips, Belgian Waffles and Belgian Beer.

Brussels was a really nice city, with an interesting mix of ornate old buildings and new modern ones. The city itself is both the capital of Belgium and the Capital of Europe with the European Commission and part of the European Parliament housed in Brussels as well as several other institutions of the EU.

As I was only in Brussels for about two days, I didn’t really get the chance to see as much as I have in other cities, but it was really nice to wander around the old cobble stone streets. And I really enjoyed a walk around all of the buildings that house the bureaucracy that is the European Union.

Cheap Waffles!

Flags outside the European Commission Building

The European Commission Building

Brussels City Park

Atomium

Next stop was Paris, one of the few cities I’d desperately wanted to visit all semester, but hadn’t had the opportunity to see. Paris is a gorgeous city, obviously with a lot of history.

French Flag

I thought that with it being winter there might not be as many tourists around in Paris. I was wrong. Apparently the days either side of the New Year are some of the busiest days of the year in Paris, and with only four days in such an incredible city, I really didn’t have the time to wait in lines all day.

Queues to get into the Notre Dame

I did however get to visit the Louvre, while there was a huge line (well over an hour of waiting) for the main entrance, there is actually a small side entrance that I walked straight through, no queue at all. The Louvre is an incredible museum, I never knew how incredibly big it is … it’s enormous. A tour guide told me that if you look at each piece in the Louvre for 10 seconds, it would take you over 3 months to see everything and that doesn’t include walking time.

Musée du Louvre

For New Years Eve, I went with a group of guys from the Hostel I was staying at to the Eiffel tower. I figured, seeing as I couldn’t be at home with friends, or at a festival in NZ, there really wasn’t a better place to move into the New Year than under the Eiffel Tower, it certainly isn’t an experience I’ll be forgetting anytime soon. Supposedly there were hundreds of thousands of people in the area around the tower at midnight, it was really cool to bring in the New Year with so, so, so many people.

Eiffel Tower @ New Years

Unfortunately I didn’t get to go up the Eiffel tower, as I said, there were very large lines but it is an incredible structure … I can’t believe that it was supposed to be temporary and they were going to pull it down after 20 years!

Me under the Eiffel Tower

Since Paris, I made my way to Munich for two quick nights. I did the walking tour of Munich yesterday, which was really interesting, and once again I was in awe of the history of the city, to actually see the places where Hitler gave speeches and rallied troops, after all Munich was the home of the Nazi Party.

I met an Australian on the walking tour, who is just about to start a semester abroad, coincidentally at CBS, where I’ve just finished. So we got along really well, and ended up going to Hofbräuhaus together for a few steins. We got there at about 3pm and I’m not quite sure when we left, I remember the beer was good. The beer halls are really cool, very social places. The idea is you just sit down wherever there is a seat, and then you talk with everyone else on your table. We met a lovely older German couple, and then two guys from Johannesburg who decided they needed a beer while their wives were shopping. It was a bit tough at times sitting next to someone from South Africa after what happened in the cricket, but I got through ok.  One thing I found hilarious is that in the bathrooms at Hoffbrau, they have a ‘Vomitorium’ which is basically a big metal vat dedicated for people needing to throw up … handles and all.

Drinking from a Stein

I’m now on my way to Prague although I’m not sure when we will arrive, our train keeps stopping on the track apparently we have ‘technical problems’. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get their eventually … so long as there’s a beer waiting for me in Prague, I’m happy.

I apologise if there’s a few mistakes in this post, like I said I was at Hoffbrau yesterday drinking steins all afternoon so I’m not feeling the greatest today. Hopefully it’s less painful to read than it was to write.

See you soon!

Southern Europe continued … and Christmas

Happy New Year! Hopefully everyone is well, and has fully recovered from New Years Eve festivities. I managed to get to the Eiffel Tower for New Years with a couple of hundred thousand other people, it was pretty special and a great night out – even though the metro stopped working and we had to walk about 5km back to the hostel through the pouring rain … my shoes are still wet.

Eiffel Tower @ New Years

I’m back on board a train – a new type again and to my surprise, even faster than the last one. I’m on a TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse/Train of Great Speed) racing through the rolling French Countryside toward Germany at about 320km/h. I’m on my way to Munich, but have to change trains at Stuttgart which is about two hours away.

So, I believe I’ve been over Barcelona … next stop Portugal. We had a 3pm easyJet flight from Barcelona straight to Lisbon, on arrival at Barcelona airport we were told that our flight was delayed for ‘an unknown period of time’. It turned out that the plane we were supposed to be on hadn’t left Lisbon to come to Barcelona yet. An engineer had stuck his finger into the engine and lost the finger meaning the plane was grounded until they found the finger and checked the engine. In the end another plane got diverted to pick us up, albeit about 5 hours late.

The five hours was surprisingly entertaining however, we were flying in on a Monday and the Celtic vs. Benfica Champions League match was on the Tuesday night, meaning that half of the people on our flight were crazy, chanting Scotsman. What do you think Scotsman do when they get locked in an airport for five hours … they hit duty free, and they hit it hard. By the time our flight finally got off the ground, a couple of them had passed out and missed the flight, but the rest of them were all in good spirits.

We didn’t know this before we left Copenhagen, but Portugal is renowned for having the best hostels in the world, and they didn’t let us down. More like a hotel than a hostel – even had breakfast (pancakes) included in the room price. Not only are the hostels there amazing but they’re cheaper than pretty much anywhere else in Europe I’ve been. Simply awesome.

Lisbon Destination Hostel

Our hostel was literally inside the central station and about 100m from Rossio Square which is the center of town and for the 48 hours surrounding the champions league match, it housed thousands of Celtic fans.

Celtic Fans taking over Rossio Square

The Celtic fans were really good value, before I met them I had half expected to see a few fights, both with Benfica fans and amongst themselves. But they were all in good spirits and incredibly friendly. We had a late dinner the night we arrived (as our flight was so late) and on our way back to the hostel bumped into a group of Celtic fans who dragged us out to a bar until about 3am in the morning really cool guys.

The next day we got up to do a walking tour of the city, which was really interesting and gave some great views of the city.

Lisboa, Portugal

And then in the evening we went to the Champions League match. The atmosphere was incredible with each group of fans at opposite ends of the stadium going absolutely nuts for 90 minutes. We had slightly better seats at this game as well.

Champions League – Celtic FC vs. SL Benfica

The next morning we had an early start because we’d decided to do one of the funnest things I’ve done yet on exchange – hire a car and do a road trip. We had heard really good things about Porto, which was about 4-5 hours drive north of Lisbon. Instead of heading directly there however we wanted to make a few stops along the way.

Driving in Portugal was … challenging. First of all, they drive on the right hand side of the road, which means you’re on the left hand side of the car with pretty much everything on the wrong side. Secondly, Lisbon is a city of some 2 million people, that’s slightly bigger than Wellington and consequently much bigger than anywhere I had drive before. Fortunately Portugal does have road rules, unfortunately they are intermittently followed and rarely enforced. So leaving Lisbon was challenging, and a wee bit stressful, once we got out of the city and onto the highway things were a little easier. The top speed limit is 120/h, but as I said it’s not really enforced so I’d estimate people around me were going up to around 200km/h. The little Citroen and I topped out at about 140km/h … downhill.

First stop was Sintra, a small town about 45 minutes out of Lisbon, with incredibly picturesque castles and landscapes and marvelous views back toward Lisbon.

Artsy Photo at Sintra

Well at Sintra

View back toward Lisbon

Next top was a small surf town called Nazaré. In 2011, a world record was set there for the largest wave ever surfed, we had hoped to see some big waves, but unfortunately there were none to be found the day we were there. We had lunch in a small café, and talked to some really nice locals who even tried to teach Portuguese … although we weren’t very good.

Panoramic shot on Nazaré beach

View of Nazaré town

View of Nazaré Beach

Me and Fraser with the Citroen

We were only in Porto for one night, but got to spend most of the next day there before we returned to Lisbon. Porto was a really pretty city, and it was sad to only have 20 hours there, but it’s definitely somewhere I’d like to return to one day.

Porto Artsy View

Porto – Red topped houses

We drove back to Lisbon the next night, but were very close to running out of fuel. On the outskirts of Lisbon the car dropped from 20km worth of Petrol to 0km, and then the GPS sent us to a Petrol station which didn’t actually exist … suffice as to say it was stressful for a little while.

We had one final day in Lisbon before we returned to Copenhagen to face the dread of exams. We just wandered the city and saw some more sights. Lisbon has a bridge made by the same company as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco – it looks surprisingly similar. They were also gifted a replica statue from the Brazilian government of a statue in Rio de Janeiro called Christ the Redeemer.

Golden Gate Bridge + Christ the Redeemer

Tram in Lisbon

It was a Friday night, so we decided to head out for a drink, having an 8am flight meant we had decided to make it an early one and be back at the hostel by around midnight or one in the morning. Unfortunately things did not turn out quite as well as we had planned. I was in a bar having just ordered a drink and the alarm on my phone went off, but it wasn’t an alarm telling me to go back to the hostel and sleep, instead this was the 4:30am wake up and go to the airport alarm. So we ran back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and made it to the airport in time … leaving our beds unslept in. But we made it back to Copenhagen without too much hassle after that and had a healthy amount of sleep that afternoon of course.

University assessment in Denmark is a bit different to NZ, in New Zealand we will generally have maybe 2 assignments during the semester, which contribute 30ish% each to your grade, and then a final three-hour closed book written exam which makes up the final 40%. In Denmark, there is only one assessment, the final exam worth 100% of the course, this can be either a take home assignment (10ish Pages), a 4 hour, open book, typed exam or an Oral Exam.

Two of my courses were four-hour exams, and then I had one Oral and one take-home for the other two courses. As I had been travelling so much, I hadn’t done quite as much work during the semester as what I possibly should have which meant a busy and studious 10 or so days during the examination period. The Danish grading system is also strange and confusing but so far I have two marks back, a 10 (roughly A-/A) and a 12 (Maximum Mark; A+), I’m obviously really pleased with these and quite surprised to have done quite so well given my lack of study during the semester. I think speaking English as a first language made it a lot easier when half of the students speak English as a second or third language.

The most stressful exam would have to have been my Danish Language exam, which was the Oral exam. It was a 12 minute conversation with the two lecturers – entirely in Danish, I thought I made quite a few mistakes but it mustn’t have been too bad.

Once exams were over though, it kicked into party mode … big time. I went out 9 of the 10 nights following my last exam, not getting home before 6am every night, and even the night I did stay home, I was up at Holger until about 4:30am. In Copenhagen they have bars where you pay a larger door charge, but once inside you drink for free. Most are around $20 on the door and then free drinks all night … being business students, profit and loss are always at the forefront of our minds, so we made sure we got our moneys worth and then some every night.

The only downside was that by staying up till at least 6 every morning, you generally slept till around 2 or 3 and then only got half an hour of sunlight before the sun set again. The weather was really cold all through December as well not really getting above 5 and getting down past -5.

Photo of CBS Campus – Week 1

Same Spot – Final week

It was a really fun 10 days, although it was sad to see the number of people with us slowly dwindle as people left to go home for Christmas. Initially I was supposed to be home in NZ on the 17th of December, but decided to push my flights back so I could stay in Europe a bit longer until the 10^th of January. I was planning on staying in Copenhagen for Christmas but in the end was invited to Jord’s house in Kampen a small city in the Netherlands to celebrate Christmas with his family.

Kampen Station

It was really good to spend Christmas with family rather than in a nearly empty student dorm, although I guess it didn’t feel overly much like Christmas without the sun, back yard cricket or my family. Having said this, I felt very at home with Jord’s family, there were some scary similarities – the big difference was really that they spoke Dutch, although I was really impressed they all also spoke English very well also.

Alright, we’re just about to pull into Munich Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) so I’d better finish up here. I’ve just realized how long this post has become, apologies for that, hopefully it’s not too painful!  Next train is to Prague in a couple of days so I’ll try get a post on Brussels, Paris and maybe Munich done then!

Once again, I hope everybody had a fabulous New Years and you’re all enjoying summer back home!

See you soon!

Southern European Adventures…

Alright, so I’m back on board a train, so I guess it’s time to write again. This time I’m on the way to Paris from Brussels and the train is a Thalys. The Thalys is even faster than the Fyra which I had on the way to Brussels, topping out at 300km/h where as the Fyra was only 250km/h. All that speed means I’ve got just over an hour before we pull into Paris Gare du Nord.

Hopefully by the end of the journey I will have had time to tell you all about my trip with Fraser to Spain and Portugal (including Scooters, Cars and Segways) as well as Christmas in the Netherlands, although it is a short train ride so we’ll have to see. If all goes according to plan, and I get those three knocked off today, then the plan is to blog about Brussels and Paris on my way to Munich in about 5 days.

So, at the end of October, Fraser (my bathroom mate in Copenhagen, from Perth) and I realized we were both, coincidentally enrolled in courses that finished very early (around the 14^th of November) even though our exams didn’t start until around the 9^th of December. Now … I hear you thinking “Wow, that’s a long time to study, I’m sure they’ll do well in their exams”, but that is certainly not what we were thinking. The thoughts going through our heads were more like “Awesome we can fit in at least one trip in before exams start”. Denmark had begun to descend into a horrible, harsh winter so we thought where better to go than Spain or Portugal to see some sun and get some warmth before exams kicked in. We could even do some ‘study’ at the beach!

In the end, we couldn’t make up our minds … Spain … Portugal … BOTH.

PAUSE: Alright I just have to mention how impressed I am with Europeans and there ability to speak languages. The ticket collector has just entered my carriage, in the space of 8 passengers he has comfortably, conversed in English, French, Dutch and German – I thought that was pretty impressive. I show him my ticket (which has my Danish Residency details) and he starts speaking to me in Danish – a language only 5 or 6 million people (or roughly 0.1%) in the world speak. Well played ticket collector, well played.

Anyway, back on track … we decided we’d do 10 days in the south of Europe and wanted to fit in Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto. In the end we had to drop Madrid and only got 1 night in Porto but we figured 3 cities in 10 days isn’t too bad – and it turned out that Madrid was locked down the day we would have flown in and all flights were cancelled due to Spain’s biggest austerity protests/strikes yet, luck was on our side. Oh, and we’d managed to pick dates where we could watch FC Barcelona play at the Nou Camp and Celtic vs. SL Benfica at Estádio da Luz in Lisbon.

Temperature in Barcelona

So we flew into Barcelona on a Thursday night, it was a three hour flight which is easily the longest since I got to Europe – we were lucky enough to get a whole row of seats each on the flight too. The next morning, the sun was out and so were our shorts and jandals, although we got a lot of stares from locals like we were crazy as if it was cold … but we’d just flown from Copenhagen where it was about 5C so it was warm for us.

When I got up on Friday morning, I noticed a post from the Exchange department at Vic Uni on Facebook, which essentially amounted to “it’s Friday night here in Wellington, and our semester has just finished, so wherever you are in the world it’s time for a beer”. I’m not one to turn down such well phrased, polite requests … so it was time for a beer with breakfast in Barcelona.

Beer with Breakfast in Barcelona

We spent most of the day just wandering around the city checking things out. Although the sign said 24C, I doubt it was actually that warm but it was certainly warmer than Copenhagen.

Barcelona City Beach

In the afternoon we decided to make out way up to probably the most coveted stadium in the footballing world – the Nou Camp. We had already sorted our tickets for the game the next night, but it couldn’t hurt to get a sneak peak and do a tour. Camp Nou was really cool, the tour took us right through the media areas, away changing rooms, pitch side as well as a museum with all of the club’s history and trophies.

FC Barcelona – ‘More than just a Club’

Barcelona Dugout

We got back to the hostel just in time for Sangria night and a pub crawl. There was about 15-20 people from our hostel involved, which we thought was pretty good. What we didn’t realize was that our hostel was part of a chain and at the first bar our numbers swelled from 15-20 to well over a hundred, eventually all of us took to the metro to head downtown … we piled into one carriage and just started partying on the train, Fraser even managed to get everybody chanting “Heeeeey, Hey Baby! Oooh Aaah, I wanna knoooow if you’ll be my girl?”. This is the only photo I have from the night but I think it sums it up well.

Barcelona Pub Crawl

The next night, was the big one though. FC Barcelona playing FC Zaragoza in La Liga at the Nou Camp which has a capacity of over 99,000 people. Barcelona cruised home to a 3-1 win with Messi scoring a double, a pretty good night in my books.

 

Flags at Camp Nou

Me at Camp Nou

Panormaic shot inside Camp Nou

Crowd at Camp Nou

Our final full day in Barcelona, we decided we should hire some scooters to whiz around the city on. The scooters were a huge amount of fun and allowed us to see a lot of the city in the short amount of time we had, and even goof around a wee bit.

Beach in Barcelona

Gerkin thing in Barcelona

I’d really recommend anybody going to Barcelona – or anywhere in Spain – to hire scooters, it’s really reasonable price was, they’re a lot of fun and actually a really good way to see the city.

Our Scooters

Alright, my train is just pulling into Gare du Nord now, so it would appear I haven’t typed nearly fast enough … the train to Munich is about 6 hours, so that should give me a bit more time.

Bonsoir Tout le Monde!

Favourite City in the world

Four months have come and gone, and exchange is coming to an end, but even though I’ve finished exams, and said goodbyes to so many of my friends, I’m not quite done yet.

Before I go too far, firstly I really must send my sincere apologies to everybody for a complete and utter lack of communication in the last couple of months. Since my last post, I have been to Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto (and a few places in between), studied for three exams, sat three exams, consumed more beer than I ever thought I could, said good bye to many friends, packed and moved out of Holger and finally travelled to Holland for a Dutch Christmas, suffice as to say I’ve been pretty busy.

Today I farewelled Jord and his incredibly kind family, after a magical Dutch Christmas and as I write this post, I’m sitting on a high-speed Fyra Train, racing through the Dutch countryside towards Belgium. One last gallivant through Europe, the last couple of legs of what has been an incredible Eurotrip.

In the last four months I have been to Denmark, Sweden, Germany (Twice), Hungary, the UK, the Netherlands (also twice), Spain and Portugal. It has been awesome journey and it’s still going. I arrive in Brussels in about an hour, I stay in Belgium for two nights before I move onto Paris for New Years eve, and then Munich (yes, Germany again), Prague and Vienna before I make my way back to Copenhagen for my flight home to New Zealand on the 9^th. I’ve got a feeling the next two weeks will fly by just like the last four months but the memories will stay forever.

For this last trip I’ve armed myself with a RailPass and will be catching trains right across Europe, hopefully that will give me the time to blog about my time in Berlin, London, Derby, Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto. I’d also like to tell you all what an average week was like in Copenhagen, it has occurred to me that I have lived in Copenhagen for the last four months but all I seem to tell you all about is my trips abroad.

But for now, let’s start with Berlin, London and Derby. It’s now two months ago since this trip, so I’ll just stick to the highlights of what I remember.

Brandenburg Gate Group Shot

We went to Berlin as part of a trip organised by Copenhagen Business School for exchange students. We had to be up earlier than I think I’ve ever been up on exchange (6am), it’s been more common to go to bed around that time.

Berliner Dom – Berlin Cathedral

Being the capital of Germany, Berlin obviously has a lot of history which made the walking tour extremely exciting. Learning about Berlin’s history through the World Wars was really good. The difference between learning about World War II from NZ, and learning about it in Berlin is that you can literally look around and see where everything happened. Where Hitler gave speeches, the bunker Hitler died in, the German Parliament, the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie were just a few of the many infamous sights we saw.

Me at Berlin Wall – East Side Gallery

The most moving thing we saw in Berlin had to be the Holocaust Memorial. It’s a full city block right in the middle of the city, and is essentially a collection of 100’s of concrete blocks at different heights and ground which slopes into the middle. I forget the name of the guy who designed it, but he deliberately didn’t give any description of what it represented, instead he wanted visitors to just take the time about what the holocaust meant to them and look for ways in which the memorial could represent it.

Holocaust Memorial

The last thing we did on this trip to Germany was a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp, about 45 minutes out of Berlin. Others in the group had already visited concentration camps such as Auschwitz or Dachau, which are bigger and more known. But I don’t think it matters how many you’ve been to or how prepared you are, they are truly horrible places and the things which took place there are even more disgusting.

Barbed Wire at Sachsenhausen

I went to Berlin with a large group obviously, after Berlin however I flew directly to London with Amelia – an Australian girl from Holger, we were meeting up with Sarah (another Aussie from Holger) there.

Sarah, Amy and Me at Trafalgar Square

When I say ‘directly to London’, I should say directly to London Luton Airport which is definitely not in London – to our surprise, instead it is about an hour and a half north by train. But eventually we did make it to London and check into our Hostel around 1 or 2 in the avo, Sarah wasn’t due until 4 or 5, so we decided we’d go for a walk.

I’m not sure exactly what it is that made me fall in love with London, but I did. Maybe it was people speaking English for the first time in 2 months – finally being able to share a bit of banter with the barista again, certainly made me feel at home or it could’ve been the outrageously famous sight that seemed to be around every corner in London. On our walk we weren’t really using a map or going anywhere in particular but we managed to find Waterloo station, Tate Modern, Millennium Bridge, St Paul’s, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, the London Eye, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Covent Gardens and a whole lot more. Every corner we turned, something famous appeared before us.

Me in front of Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Even simple things like catching public transport felt that much more special on the tube, in a red double decker or even the back of the black cab, London is just special.

The Tube – London Underground

I was in London for about 5 days, the longest I’ve been anywhere in Europe (other than Denmark), and it wasn’t nearly enough. We did so much in the time we had, I simply couldn’t write it all down.

I went to three shows on London’s West End, first up was Jersey Boys and it was more very much a spur of the moment decision. We got cheap tickets from a ticket office on Leicester Square for the night show and off we went. It was a lot of fun, and really cool especially for my first musical.

My favourite show however, was Les Misérables. It was truly incredible to watch and hard to believe how talented the performers on the West End, if you ever get the opportunity to see Les Mis anywhere in the world, just do it.

Les Misérables

The final show was on my last night before heading to the airport, I went and saw ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ live, and it was utterly hilarious, although completely different to the two musicals.

While in the UK, I also popped up to Derby for a weekend to visit Barry, who had visited New Zealand earlier this year. It was a great weekend, and really nice to sleep in an actual bed, in an actual house again – rather than a crappy beds in noisy hostels. Bazz took me to a Derby football game, against Blackburn – my first and only taste so far of English football. Unfortunately the mighty Rams went down to Blackburn, but it was still a good time.

Bazz and I at Pride Park

My flight was leaving Heathrow at 6am, meaning I had to be at the airport by 4am, the tube stops running around 1am so I either had to catch four different night busses meaning get up at around 2am, or catch a cab which would have cost far too much for a student. In the end, I went for option C. I slept on the floor at Heathrow. It was cold and hard as you’d expect. But more sleep and a lot cheaper than the other options.

My train will be pulling into Brussels any second now (delayed after some kind of problem at Antwerp) so I’d better sign off, don’t forget to check out Facebook for more photos. Just click this link.

I hope everybody has had a very Merry Christmas indeed, and all the best for the New Year. Be in touch soon.

The aftermath of a few beers, laptops and credit cards at 4am

Beautiful Budapest

This story starts at around midnight on a mild summers night 6 or 7 weeks ago… I was just making my way back to my room to go to bed when a friendly Dutchman offered me a beer and of course I could not say no. Jord (The Dutchman) and I attracted Fraser in to sit with us for a while and eventually we were joined by Kieran (who had just arrived back from Poland). To cut a long story short, 4 short hours (and a few more quiet beers) later we had booked flights – although there was some confusion as to whether we were going to Bucharest in Romania or Budapest in Hungary … we eventually established it was the latter. None of us really knew much of anything about Budapest or Hungary, let alone how a quiet nightcap developed into a 5 night boys trip to Eastern Europe.

A couple of short weeks later, and the temperatures were starting to drop in Copenhagen – no more shorts and tee-shirts with wind and rain most days. Which made us ever more grateful when we arrived in Budapest where the Sun was shining and warm all day. We’d done a little bit of research on Budapest and found a sausage and Palinka (fruit liqueur drink) festival on in Budapest the weekend we were there so we would at least have something to do.

Budapest Airport

Leaving Copenhagen at around 7pm we got to Budapest at about 11pm after a short stop in Berlin. Sándor, who runs the hostel we stayed at picked us up from the airport, and was explaining to us what was around the hostel:

“There’s a Thai take away restaurant 4 meters from your door, across the road is a Restaurant run entirely by 3 young Hungarian chefs who cook, serve and clean, next to that is a pub where I like to drink, then there is a Kebab shop next to that. 20 meters down the road is Szimpla, which is a ‘Ruin Pub’ … oh and it got voted the third best bar in the world by Lonely Planet last year. Across the road from Szimpla is another two smaller bars, within three blocks there are 11 Ruin Pubs and about 15 other bars…”

Kazinczy Street, the street our Hostel was on.

Szimpla Ruin Pub

Our hostel was right in the heart of the old Jewish quarters in Budapest. Ruin Pubs were literally pubs that had been created in the Ruins of old buildings that had been partially destroyed in wars and left to decay, and are quite frankly the most amazing drinking venues I have ever visited. We got to our Hostel at around midnight and went for a quick kebab for dinner, and decided we’d drop into the third best bar in the world for a casual beer. The price of beer in Budapest ranged from about 200 Hungarian Forint (about $1NZ) in Super markets to 750 Hungarian Forint about $4NZ) in the casino/five star boat restaurant. At Szimpla beer was about 500 HUF so around $2.50NZ or approximately half the price of the cheapest beer in a bar in Denmark. We had arrived on a Wednesday and wanted to do a walking tour at 10:00 the next morning so decided to have a relatively quiet night and save ourselves for the weekend so we made the massive 29 pace trek back to our hostel at around 3am – easily the earliest we would get to bed all trip.

We accidentally overslept our alarms and missed the walking tour the next morning, but we visited the Terror Museum the next day, which taught us a lot about Hungary’s history with regard to the world wars. Hungary had been occupied by the Nazis and then the Soviet Union and gone through a significant amount of trauma as a nation during these times. Hungary were also a communist state until as recently as 1989, and still today as much as 80% of their politicians were part of the communist regime.

Terror Museum

Thursday night rolled around, and we decided to do a bar crawl through some ruin bars and hopefully finish at a bar called Instant which we had heard good things about. We had a great night, and didn’t get home till about 7am, which wasn’t too bad … except we’d all pledged to make it to the walking tour at 10am – We did make it, albeit a man down, not entirely sober and on only 2 hours sleep

Disco Hog in Instant

The walking tour was infinitely interesting and took us to some amazing places, the entire time in Budapest we were in awe of the amazing views and beautiful old buildings, the scenery made for some really good photography.

One of 8 Bridges across the River Danube linking Buda (the western banks of the river) with Pest (the eastern banks of the river)

Hungary’s Houses of Parliament, designed by the same architect as Houses of Parliament in London, but supposedly 1 meter longer.

View from Castle hill across the river Danube to Houses of Parliament and beyond

The Royal Palace across the Danube just after sunset

Royal Palace above the Chain Bridge across the river

After managing to get up in time for the walking tour, we realised how many amazing things the city had to offer and decided we had to get up on time everyday so we could fit as much as possible in. One of the best things we did was visiting the World Press Photo display at a gallery and reflecting on everything that happened in the previous year. Another thing that Budapest is known for is it’s thermal baths, there are almost 50 baths across the city, we visited two while we were there – the biggest (Széchenyi) and the oldest (Kiraly) which was first built between 1550 and 1600.

We didn’t get home from a night out before 6:30am on either Friday or Saturday and were up by 11am the mornings after so we could get out and enjoy the days. Our flight home was at 6:30am on Monday morning, so we had to be at the airport for 4:30am. On Sunday night, we had some forint (money) left, and decided as it wouldn’t be of any use anywhere else in the world, we should really find a way to use it up.

Nek minnit…

‘Suited-up’: Jord, Kieran, Me and Fraser in Suits ready for the final night in Budapest

We made our way through the city looking for a restaurant that satisfied our extremely high standards, but struggled to find much as it was about 10pm on a Sunday night … eventually we reached the River Danube and a beautiful boat caught our eye.

We all indulged and consumed three courses – accompanied with Champagne of course. The food was incredible, I had traditional Hungarian Goulash Soup to start, followed by Duck and finally a Trio of Deserts.

Trio of Deserts

Our suits must have made a good impression when we first arrived, and somehow we were given what was the best table in the restaurant looking out over the Danube and across the beautiful Buda side banks. The only thing better than our food and champagne was the view.

View from our table on the boat

The only issue we had, was the price … after paying, we still hadn’t managed to use all of our Forint – luckily enough the Casino was just across the road. So we got off the boat at around midnight and wandered up to the Casino (putting enough money for a taxi to the airport into our pockets so we wouldn’t spend it).

We managed to spend about 2 hours at the casino, Jord and I almost ran out of Forint after about 45 minutes on the Blackjack table – which wasn’t so bad because we didn’t really want to win more Forint. Anyway, we managed to scrape together 500HUF (NZ$2.50, the minimum bet) between us and decided we could play one more hand, we win, so we just leave our winnings on the table, we win again, and again, and again, and again leaving our winnings on the table every time turning our measly 500HUF into 16,000HUF ($NZ90).

Fraser had also done alright and had about 10,000HUF himself. Clearly we were too good at BlackJack and it wasn’t helping us get rid of our forint so we made our way down to the roulette tables. We were doing much better at getting rid of our money here, and Jord and I soon ran out. Fraser, for whom it was his first time in a casino was having a bit of beginners luck betting on one third of the board and had one about four times in a row, so we wind him up and he puts most of his now 15,000 on one third of the board and scattered a few other chips around the table. The ball rolled around and we all stood around anxiously, and it dropped on 8, which was not in our third, there was an awkward silence for a couple of moments before we here a nice chime the dealer placed the glass marker on the board … Fraser’s lucky number is 8 and he’d put a cheeky 1,000 down on it and forgotten about it. So while we’d lost 15,000 at one end of the table we all burst into hysterical laughter as we realised we’d won about 35,000 at the other end of the table.

It was about 2am, and we had to be back at our hostel, bags packed by 4am for our taxi to the airport, it was clear that we were too good at gambling to use up our forint. We made our way out of the casino and down to the corner store where we acquired a few bottles of champagne before hailing a cab and having him take us to ‘that castle, over there up on the hill’, the castle was one of the highest points in the city and overlooked the whole city – what better place to spray champagne, sing and celebrate Fraser’s winnings.

Fraser and I looking out at the city of Budapest from the Castle – Winnings and Champagne in hand

By the time we finished the champagne it was about 3am, so we wandered up to the Hilton Hotel and had them call us a taxi to take us back to our Hostel to get our bags before we made our way to the airport to check-in for our 6:30am flight.

We walked back into Holger (our residence) at about 11am, without having slept, still in our suits from what was one of the better nights of our lives. We cooked some pasta for breakfast and made our way to bed at about 1pm and I didn’t wake up until 8am the next morning, 19 hours later – I genuinely didn’t realise it was possible to sleep for so long.

A few days later we did the maths and worked out that we averaged less than three hours sleep a night while we were in Budapest.

We had an incredible time, one I’m sure none of us will ever forget – although there are parts we will never remember. Oh and we never did make it to that Sausage and Palinka festival.

All four boys on the steps at the National Gallery with Heroes Square in the background.

If you come to Europe, go to Budapest, there is something for everyone – whether it is sports, arts, booze, anything at all Budapest has it all.

Anyone going on an OE or Uni Exchange needs to go on at least one random trip, booked in a haze of confusion at 4 in the morning.

HAMBURGers, Tennis, Beer, Fish and Chips

Alright, after an extended trip away I’m putting some serious time aside to catch up on blog  posts so hopefully in the next few days I can get posts/pics up for all of my trips away so far (Hamburg, Budapest, Berlin and London/Derby).

So, my first weekend away trip was to Hamburg in Germany, I went with 7 others (5 Australians, 2 Canadians) for four nights (13th September – 17th September). We left Holger at around 5pm on Thursday the 13th and caught the train all the way to Hamburg, the journey was about 5 hours in total and included about an hour on a ferry across the Baltic Sea.

Ferry Departing Denmark

Immediately on arrival to Germany we all noticed a substantial difference between Germany and Denmark. Very few people spoke good English and many didn’t speak English at all. In Denmark everybody begins learning English as a second language in primary school and subsequently 99% of Danes speak extremely good English most Danes speak 3 or four languages (Danish, English, French/German/Spanish). We had assumed that this would be similar across most of Europe and almost everybody would speak very good english, alas this was not the case as most Germans simply spoke German.

Hamburg Hauptbahnhof

The main reason for our excursion to Hamburg was to watch a Davis Cup Tennis round between Australia and Germany. This began on Friday morning so we headed out to the tennis stadium. Going to this game posed an interesting issue for me, who do I support? Having grown up in New Zealand it felt unnatural to support Australia, but at the same time being a minority supporter is always a lot of fun and it’s hard to pass over our neighbours in favour of Germany. In the end, I must admit I supported Australia but I can assure you that the flag wrapped around me below is my New Zealand flag. I was only at the tennis for the first day and saw two matches Bernard Tomic (AUS) vs Cedrik-Marcel Stebe (GER) and Lleyton Hewitt (AUS) vs. Florian Mayer (GER). Tomic was able to get up for the win (6-2 3-6 4-6 6-7(4)but Lleyton crumbled to a straight sets lost. In the tournament which continued over the weekend Australia eventually lost 3 matches to two. 

Group photo of the group outside the Tennis Stadium in Hamburg

Lleyton Hewitt serving

After the tennis we made our way to a restaurant called Old Macdonald’s as they claim on their website that they have the best Hamburgers in Hamburg … they were pretty good as well and in the 4 nights we were there we didn’t have any better.

Hamburg has a world famous street named the Reeperbahn which is the centre of its night life. It is a lot like Courtenay Place back in Wellington … but longer and seedier. I really enjoyed going out in Germany as it was the first time since arrival in Europe that drinks actually seemed affordable, with beers generally being around €2 (NZ$3) in bars compared to DKK45 (NZ$10) in Denmark, it was also really good to drink some nice German beers which are quite expensive back in New Zealand, my favourite so far is definitely a Wheat Beer called Erdinger.

Another thing I loved about German nightlife was what happened when the night ended. Every Sunday morning a big fish market starts at about 4am on the water front. So everybody starts piling out of bars and flowing down the street toward the water front to get a feed before heading home. We literally walked out of a bar and followed a stream of people down these markets which were full of fresh fruit, seafood, flowers as well as an abundance of other stuff not to mention the live band (at 5am). We all got fish, calamari and chips before buying a bucket of fruit to eat on the way home. It was quite an odd crowd at the market as you had all the young people who had come from the bars and clubs and then you also had a lot of older 60+ years olds who had got up at the crack of dawn. We got into bed at about 7:30am and managed to meet for breakfast at 10:30am.

Hamburg was a great first trip away, and I really enjoyed travelling by train. Trains are a lot more comfortable than planes and when you have a group you get to sit around a table and talk/play cards which is really cool.

a short train ride to … Sweden!

Goddag (Good Day),

Once again, trying to catch up on posts! We went to Sweden on a Saturday about 3 weeks ago now, but I’ll start the post the day before.

A few of the German’s from Holger organised a trip to Sweden earlier in the week and about 20-30 people had responded and were keen to go … but then we all went out on the Friday night. There was a student party at possibly the most impressive venue I could think of. Known locally as the Black Diamond, the Danish Royal Library is one of the more impressive buildings in Copenhagen. It is five or six stories high and centers around an open space which you can view from balconies on all levels in the middle of the space their is a bridge between two of the balconies where the band was located, looking directly at the band you looked through a massive window out onto the harbour. I couldn’t believe that they were willing to host a party their dedicated just for students, but they did and it was an extremely impressive thing to see with students partying on balconies and bridges on all of the levels.

Black Diamond at night from the water

So after an amazing night out at the black diamond, our Sweden Travel group had dwindled down to only 10 people, probably because most people had only got home 3 or 4 hours before our 8am departure time. We biked to Copenhagen’s central station and got on a train to the small student town of Lund.

Lund

Lund is a small university town which is the oldest City in Sweden, with a classic European feel and it’s only 40 minutes from Copenhagen by train. Coming from New Zealand, international travel has always meant two sets of immigration, airport security, customs and a plane ride in excess of 3 hours, therefore it was really strange to be able to travel to another country, in such a short amount of time with no passport checks or customs. Lund had lots of tiny, winding cobblestoned streets and small squares with Markets it was a really cool place to be and was my first real taste of what I had expected a historic european town to look like (most of the streets in Copenhagen are now sealed with ash-felt and at this stage I hadn’t seen much of Copenhagen).

Small cobble stoned street in Lund

One thing exchange students learnt really quickly when they arrived in Denmark (before we had data on our phones) is that Maccas has free Wifi all over the world. So generally when we are in a group, and a foreign country where we don’t have data everyone keeps an eye out for MacDonalds. So, after an obligatory stop at Maccas to ‘check-in’ on Facebook we went to a supermarket and picked up some supplies for a Picnic in the park.

Picnic in the Park at Lund

Following picnic in the park, we made our way by train ten minutes down the road to Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden. Malmö is quite small with a population of around 300,000 people but was another cool place in Sweden to check out. We got off the train and walked around the water front (getting the group photo looking out toward the harbour that is the banner picture above), we went right around the outskirts of the city and saw the Twisting Torso, a famous building in Sweden and these cool (and supposedly famous) statues in the middle of the city.

Twisting Torso

Statues in Malmö

Sweden was a really interesting experience as it was simply so close to Denmark and so easy to travel too, but I’m sure I’ll get used to that with all the travel I have planned for the next month (Budapest, Berlin and London).

That’s all for Sweden, hopefully I can get a post up about my trip to Hamburg before I leave for Budapest on Wednesday, but no promises as I have a lot of work to do for uni.

Hope everyone is well and having a great time back at home! Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

‘O’ Week

Alright, so it’s been quite some time since I posted last, so this could be long … but I’ll try rush through.

Starting with Saturday 26/8. Me, and a few other Holgerians (people who live at Holger) went to the last night of the Strøm electronic festival which had been in Copenhagen all week. It was quite incredible they had a stage set up in the middle of a park with some well known acts and it was only 20kr ($4.50) to get in. We biked all the way there and had to go through some of the more historic parts of Copenhagen, including the area where Carlsberg Brewery is.

Strøm – Electronic Music Festival

After Strøm we biked to the Sukkerbageren (Translation: Sugar Baker) Bar in the middle of the city. It cost 200kr or about $45 to get in but once inside beers and cocktails were free, so if you stay long enough it’s pretty good value. It was a pretty good night out as we had a lot of Holgerians there, but the best bit was at about 5am when they closed. As they are the ‘Sugar Baker’ bar, they gave everyone Sweet Pastries as we left which everyone agreed was perfect and exactly what we needed before we commenced our bike home.

Having Jensen has made things a lot easier, biking around Copenhagen is so easy, a lot of fun and much cheaper than a taxi. Although Jensen was beginning to show more signs of illness with his gears slipping more and more regularly.

On Sunday we went to Christiania, which is a essentially a suburb within the city of Copenhagen which is left to govern itself (for the most part). I would have loved to have got pictures, but because there is an open cannabis trade there (which is illegal in Denmark but generally (but not always) overlooked in Christiania) Photos are strictly forbidden. Essentially Christiania is a small autonomous town which has been shrouded in controversy since it was established in 1971. I’d really recommend reading the Wiki article you can get to by clicking the ‘Christiania’ link at the start of this paragraph it’s an interesting place.

Every Sunday evening in summer, there is a concert at Nemoland (a stage in Christiania) last Sunday was the last in Summer so we got to see the final concert, Nemoland is around the corner from the cannabis market so I managed to get a few pictures.

Nemoland Stage

Nemoland Crowd

After Christiania, we went back to another dorm called Tietgen, it was my first choice residence when I applied because it is quite frankly amazing. It’s really new and modern with amazing architecture and facilities.

Tietgen Kollegiet

Monday night was also the first night of the Introduction Week Social Programme which was a meet and mingle event most people at Holger had been around for the social programme for the week before so we were pretty sick of mingling but went along anyway. It was pretty boring, but we managed to talk a few people into coming back to Holger for a few drinks after the event. Another successful night at Holger ensued, but surprisingly we didn’t wake up to a complaint email #win. UPDATE 4/9: We have a mandatory disciplinary meeting on Wednesday 5th September to discuss “complaints from neighbors and fellow residents about noise and unacceptable behavior.”

On Tuesday we went on the Canal Tour again and this time I remembered my camera. The canal tour is a really cool way to see the city as you get to see a really wide variety of different things from all over the city as well as learn a bit of Danish History.

Copenhagen Opera House – Built for the Royal Family by the head of Maersk Shipping

Copenhagen Sand Castle for the Sand Sculpture Competition

Copenhagen Marina

After the Canal Tour we went to one of Copenhagen’s most famous night clubs Søpavillonen, it is situated on a bridge over one of the canals. It was another big night with the Holgerians staying out partying until the wee hours of the morning.

Wednesday night was Danish Folk dancing, which – although everyone was apprehensive of at first – was a lot of fun. I left early with a couple of others to go to a little pub on the otherside of the city. FC Koebenhavn were playing French team Lille OSC in the Champions league qualifiers so we went to this football pub to watch. We didn’t have long to get to the pub before kick off so it was a dash up the canals on our bikes and we got there a couple of minutes into the game. Unfortunately FCK lost and therefore progress to the Europa league rather than champions league.

The final event of the introduction week was the Formal Dinner on Friday night. It was ’70s themed and a lot of fun with everyone dressing up in suits and suspenders.

The Holger boys lining up on the steps before the formal dinner

That’s all I for now, I’ll try get another post up asap so that we are up to real live time!

Tak for reading!

Week 1

This week has been very very busy. I’ve had Danish Language Crash Course Classes every afternoon for 3 and a half hours. Danish is an extremely hard language to learn, essentially the written language and spoken language don’t line up most of the time as the pronunciation is completely different to English with so many letters. I managed to go to every class (many opted out after attending the first one), so I got my certificate but I wouldn’t say I could speak much if any Danish because it is just so hard! I’m doing a course during the semester so maybe by the end of the year I’ll know a bit.

Danish Crash Course Certificate

As well as the Crash Course everyday, we have also had the Exchange Social Programme, which is basically a whole bunch of events to supplement the language course and allow exchange students to meet each other. On Monday we had ‘Hygge’, which has no literal translation into English, but is similar to the feeling of ‘cosiness’ and is experienced when you are somewhere nice with good people and generally drinking and eating. So at the Hygge event we had a comedy show followed by drinks and dinner at the student bar ‘Nexus’. The comedy show was pretty good, but a bit awkward at times as the Danish comedian kept forgetting his lines and looking at his notes. The Canadian Commedian (Joe Eagen) was much better and did a hilarious set using Microsoft Powerpoint.

Unfortunately the student bar closes at 11pm on Mondays, so we got shipped out pretty early. Fortunately however, our hall is only 10 minutes away and has a great courtyard for entertaining guests (so long as they promise to wear shoes and sign a waver for any harm caused by the glass all over the ground), so everybody came back to Holger and we hosted the first exchange student party of the semester finishing at around 4am. All of our guests assured us they had a great time before stumbling home, apparently however, neighbours and other students staying at our hall weren’t so fond of the gathering at least that is what the email from the CBS housing department the next day said … oops.

On Tuesday morning I got up early and went to the bike shop just around the corner from our residence and bought a bike! He was second hand cost 1000kr (or about NZ$220). I’ve taken to calling him Jensen because, well, that’s what’s written on him. However, his chain came off on my way home from class on Tuesday afternoon, and it was too tight for me to get back on, so I took it back to the bike shop, where they kindly, completely replaced the chain, now he’s good as new! (almost).

Jensen – 1000kr second hand bike

After class on Tuesday afternoon we visited Assistens Cemetery which is home to some of Denmark’s famous historical figures such as Niels Bohr (an atomic physicist). We did a whole tour of the cemetery and actors appeared at some of the most famous grave sites to tell the story of the person who lived there. It was a bit weird wondering around a grave site, but at the same time it was a really impressive place. After Assistens we went to Grock, a bar near campus, but I headed home pretty early as I was still recovering from all the travel.

Assistens Cemetery

On Wednesday we visited the National Art Gallery, which was a bit boring. But the Buildings architecture was quite cool (a mesh of a really old building with a really modern one). I even found horse art which I’m sure dad will enjoy.

National Gallery Buildings

Horse Art

The gallery tour finished reasonably early, so we made our way back to our residence for a few quiet drinks and an early night. Next thing I know, people from other residences are turning up and Holger are hosting another party! 4:30am roles around we make our way to bed, and wake up to another (not so friendly) email from the housing office.

Thursday was bowling night, but a few of us left pretty early because it was 75kr (or about $15) for a pint, we went to a dingy little pub around the corner where they sold 30kr pints … much better. After about three hours there, and a nasty dice drinking game a Dane taught us, I attempted to ride Jensen home (only a 10 minute bike ride). This didn’t go so well, and I soon acquainted myself with the concrete – funnily enough, it’s just as hard here in Denmark as it is back home. So now I’ve got a bunch of bruises and grazes down my right side, a hole in my nice jeans and I cracked the back of my iPhone to top it all off. Fantastic night out.

Last night (Friday) was an International Buffet, everybody had to bring a plate of food from their country, I was gonna stay home as I really needed an early night after all of the late nights and jet lag, but ended up taking along a few plates of fairy bread – apparently it’s something that only New Zealanders and Australians know about, no one else had it at their birthday parties growing up. I ended up getting home around 9pm and stayed up with everyone else till about 11pm, before dragging myself to bed (for a relatively early night), knowing there was a big night planned for tonight (Saturday). I managed to sleep for about 12 hours overnight so hopefully that will catch up some of my sleep debt.

 

It’s a lot colder in Copenhagen now, I think we just happened to arrive in the middle of a heat wave as it barely gets over 20 degrees now and most days this week it has rained 😦 . I also opened a bank account here yesterday, I had to sign a bunch of Danish contracts which was kind of stupid – I don’t quite understand how they expect a contract that I can’t understand to be a binding contract. I got a sim card this week, it was provided by university, but the company its with doesn’t offer great data rates so I’m going to try and swap to a new company this week, so I will let everyone know my number once that happens.

We’ve found a bar which has a 140kr cover charge, but free beer once inside, so it sounds like we’re heading their tonight to see if we can’t put them out of business 😉 . I’m sure it’ll be a late one, but most stuff is closed on Sundays over here so there’s not much to do tomorrow anyway.

I’d also like to get across to Malmo to go to an Ikea in its home country (Sweden). Being from NZ where there is no Ikea, I am very excited to finally go, and given that trains leave every 20 minutes over to Sweden and only cost around 50kr for the half an hour journey, I figure why not just pop over to Sweden for the day! I think I might try head over on Monday if I can round a group up to come with me, as we don’t have anything on until Tuesday when CBS’s compulsory international introduction programme kicks off.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and feel free to ask any questions 🙂

Have a great day!

Arrival

Good Morning Everyone!

Firstly, I’d just like to apologise for the lack of pictures so far, I haven’t been taking my camera with me so haven’t really got any to share. … but I will start taking it with me so I will have some later in the week!

So, it’s about 11am here in Denmark on Sunday morning (time for church? … nah). I left Wellington about 85 hours ago and arrived in Denmark about 48 hours ago. The flights were very long, the two back to back 12 hours flights from Auckland – Hong Kong – Helsinki were extremely hard work. When I first got to Hong Kong, I went and found Gate 19 where my flight to Helsinki was going to leave from then I managed to check into a lounge and have a shower and a massage . I decided to leave the lounge about 45 minutes before my flight was due to leave so I had ample time to get back to the gate (HK airport is quite big), and it was lucky I did! When I got back to Gate 19 FinnAir was no where to be seen, when I checked the boards it appeared my flight had been moved down to gate 36. I followed the signs and it took me almost 20 minutes (including 4 travelators, 3 escalators and a train ride) to get to the gate, I was glad I allowed myself the extra time. The food on my Cathay Flight from Auckland was atrocious, almost inedible but the FinnAir flight to Helsinki was a bit better.

Friday

So I’ve been here about two days now, arriving at around 8 am on Friday morning. My local buddy (Kerstin) picked me up from the airport and we caught the metro out to Frederiksberg where I’m living/studying. The metro system here is really efficient, although I worked that out the hard way at the airport … I had my two bags, and was getting on the train with Kerstin, put one bag on but before I could get on with my second bag, the automated doors closed and the train was gone. I was left on the platform with no money and no passport because that was all in my other bag … and after 30+ hours of travel and very little sleep, the only thing I could do was laugh. Luckily I had Kerstin’s mobile number in my phone so we were able to meet up at the next station.

It was about 9am when we arrived in Frederiksberg, and I wasn’t allowed to move into my room at Holger until midday so Kerstin showed me around a few of the CBS buildings, went and organised my CPR number (kinda like social security) and applied to open a bank account (which takes about a week). Finally midday rolled around and I dragged my two suitcases up to Holger, (about a 15-20 minute walk from the heart of Frederiksberg). I was pretty tired by now (it was about 10pm back in NZ and I had very little sleep on my flights), so I just crashed on bed and napped for a couple of hours.

At Holger, I have a room to myself, but share a bathroom with one other. When I woke up at around 3pm, my bathroom mate arrived. Fraser’s from Perth and studies at the University of Western Australia, we get along really well and ended up talking away the rest of the afternoon. That night we went out for dinner with his buddy Daniel and few other students, we went to a Danish cafe and got a variety of different food but by about 8pm I was getting quite tired again so we made our way back to Holger and tried to get some sleep … although I only managed a few hours before waking up at about 4am.

Saturday

Fraser had a mate from Aussie who was here last Semester leave him a bike so we had to go and find it yesterday. It proved a bit of a challenge, we had to catch the metro, then a proper train to Central Station before walking a few blocks to find the person he’d left it with. It took us over an hour but we made it eventually. Then we headed into the city to the Southern Cross Australian bar and managed to catch the last 20 minutes of the All Blacks Wallabies test … a good win for the All Blacks (which was lucky given that I’m the only Kiwi at Holger with 4 or so Aussies here). For lunch we got a Hot Dog from a stall on the side of the road it wasn’t too bad and was reasonably priced, then we met up with Fraser’s buddy Daniel again as well as a few other exchange students and went on a canal tour through Copenhagen. The tour was really interesting and we got to see a lot of different places – there is a real mix between extremely old and extremely modern buildings here. I should’ve really taken my camera with me but I didn’t … luckily I think we are doing this tour again next week with the wider university group, so I should get some photos then.

We made our way back to Holger at around 5pm, did some groceries and made some dinner. A group of guys went into town for a few drinks around 9 but I went to bed because I was still really tired after all the travelling – it looks like my 30+ hours of travel trumps everyone else by quite a lot … the Americans thought they had it tough with an 8 hour flight across the atlantic they were horrified when I told them about my back to back 12 hour flights.

 

We’re heading out to the beach today – it’s really hot here at the moment getting up to nearly 30 degrees most days. I need to get a bike in the next couple of days … they are pretty much the main form of transportation over here.

That’s about all I have to share for now, I think I have quite a lot on this week so should get some interesting photos and will hopefully have them up along with some interesting tales later in the week.

See ya!

First Post

Hey Everybody!

What only two weeks left before I go, it must be about time to actually start posting on the blog!

I’m going to study at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark for a semester. The semester begins at the start of September and runs through to around Christmas time and fortunately the school I am studying at runs almost entirely in English rather than the local Danish. I’m gonna try post as often as I can here with updates so feel free to subscribe through social media/email if you want to keep up to date.

Copenhagen Business School

I am staying at a student residence called Holger Danskes Vej, this was organised through CBS. It looks like it will be a cross between flatting and halls of residence back here in NZ, I’m looking forward to it! Best of all, my residence is only a couple of blocks from where all of my classes are!

While I’m there I’ll be doing courses on the Danish Language, Project Management, Business Speaking and Negotiations (mainly courses that you just can’t do at Vic!), I managed to choose my courses carefully based on the timetables and subsequently I have no classes before 11:30am everyday, and no class at all on Mondays and Fridays – four day weekend #win.

Course timetable for Denmark

So, I leave from Wellington Airport on the morning of Thursday the 16th of August. I am flying the following route:

Wellington —-(Air NZ)—-> Auckland —-(Cathay Pacific)—-> Hong Kong —-(FinnAir)—-> Helsinki —-(FinnAir)—-> Copenhagen.

All going according to plan I should arrive in Copenhagen just after 8am (local time) on the 17th (just after 6pm NZ Time). CBS have given me a Danish buddy who will pick me up from the airport and get me to my residence and show me around which I’m sure will be really handy, from the sounds of things I am one of the first students to arrive for the semester so it might be a bit quiet at my residence for the first few days.

I’ll have two weeks or so to settle in and adjust before the semester begins, however in this time I am taking a Danish Language ‘Crash Course’ to help adjust as well as getting involved in events CBS run for incoming exchange students at the start of the semester to get to know everyone.

I bought a fancy new DSLR camera a month or so ago and have been trying to learn to use it – so hopefully at some stage I’ll have some half decent photos of Europe to share :). Here’s an early attempt:

Titahi Bay

That’s all I can really think of for now! If there’s anything else then I’ll post again before I go 🙂 Otherwise my next update will probably be from the other side of the world … exciting.

Jake