Cultural Immersion

After living in Copenhagen for a week and a half I can say I am enjoying the Danish culture. While some may be experiencing culture shock, I haven’t really experienced much. Some of the main things I have experienced that may have caused me a little culture shock is having to squeegee my bathroom floor after showering, the clouds of cigarette smoke in all bars, getting used to limited light in my room, rarely seeing the sun, and the big one…everything being in Danish and everyone speaking Danish. As time continues here, I’m sure people speaking Danish will just become background noise. Sadly, my ability to learn Danish will be limited since the language is so difficult to understand. Of course there are the ridiculously beautiful Danes. A group of us were on the bus this morning and just couldn’t believe how good looking this couple was with their blonde hair and perfectly sculpted faces. All we could think was how it wasn’t fair.  Aside from these few things, I am loving my time here.

One of my really interesting Danish immersions was going to a bar full of Danes instead of American DIS (Danish Institute for Study Abroad) students. When my floor and I go to bars we tend to go to the bars where there is nothing but DIS students. Similar to other nights, we decided to go to a Scottish bar filled with American students. A small group of us decided this isn’t what we wanted so our SRA decided to take us to a really cool and typical Danish bar. On our adventure to the bar we got a little lost and went in a large circle, but when we got to the bar it was worth is. The front doors were covered in stickers. When we walked in the walls were covered with graffiti. We went to the lower level where all the couches, foosball table and pool tables were. Two of the boys we were with got approached by 2 Danish girls to play foosball…needless to say they were a little hustled for beer since these girls were awesome at foosball. Two of the other boys went to play pool with Danish guys. It was so nice to be around Danish people rather than all Americans. Although at the bar it was different seeing things I wouldn’t see in an American bar, such as people rolling joints in the open and couples on top of each other hardcore making out in the wide open. Although our group made our way home reeking like cigarette smoke, got lost, and had to walk for 25 minutes in the freezing rain, I had an awesome time.

Another major immersion was my chance to go to one of my professor’s house for dinner. My International Marketing and Branding professor invited our whole class (about 25 students) to his house last night for dinner. After class ended at 5:45pm on Thursday, 16 of us met with our student director and headed to our professor’s house. After a short train ride and walk through cute Danish neighborhoods (ones that would remind you of something you would see in Harry Potter…and yes I just made a Harry Potter reference…oh well) we made it to our professor’s house. His house was so nice and cute. We walked in and there was a nice mud room and off to the right was the main part of his house. The inside was so modern. All the floors were a light wood, the walls were white but decorated with colorful fixtures and painting, and so open. We met his daughter, 2 sons and wife. The family was so nice. For a while the class stood around, drank, and talked. After a while him and his wife served us a Danish meal made my them. We had frikadeller, potato salad and homemade pizza. The food was DELICIOUS!! A little after dinner we all left so grateful for a home-cooked meal and the fact our professor invited us to his house. I wish more of my professors would do something like this since it was such a great way to experience Danish culture and for the class to bond. 

                                  frikadellar

With only being a week and a half through, I look forward to the many more chances to immerse myself in the Danish culture. While I am mistaken every once and a while for being a Dane, I hope I can have as much knowledge about the city as some of the Danes do.