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!