I Actually Live Here

My very messy room - bathroom is behind me to the left

Shower, Sink, Me standing kinda in the Toilet

Despite the fact that I have to squat awkwardly behind my door to use the Internet because my Ethernet plug is much too short to reach anywhere useful (a problem now finally solved), and the fact that my shower head is just chilling in the corner of my bathroom (shower curtain and rod not included apparently – problem still not solved) and I have to hide my toilet paper and close the toilet lid to shower every morning (as the bathroom gets entirely drenched) my Kollegium, Raebeck Søpark , is pretty sweet. And some of the Danish students actually talk to me! The shared kitchen is a good place to meet them, and most of them are like “oh so are you the American student?” Yes, clearly as I didn’t understand the Danish you first said to me, I am.


There is of course a giant poster of Time Square above my desk, and a print of San Francisco above my bed. But then I find some sign containing an O with a slash through it or an A attached to an E and I remember that I am, in fact, quite far from home.


And don’t worry, in case SADS starts to get to me, there’s a sketchy tanning bed right next to the laundry room in the basement. At least this is one of the first things we were told on our tour of the building. So it’s okay guys. I’ll just penetrate my skin with powerful UV rays and then I’ll be all better…


Well sort of, I am severely allergic to my room, and, well, to Copenhagen. I’ve been downing Benadryl, my regular allergy pills and nasal spray and still no bloody relief. http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/05/09/copenhagen-worst-place-in-denmark-for-allergy-sufferers/


On a positive note, the trains here are soundless, from the inside anyway, and makes the trip from Rødouvre (my town – basically it sounds like someone drunkenly slurring “roll over,” while bypassing all the constantans) into the city, quite peaceful. It’s quite a miracle actually, after the hell of a summer with the SEPTA underground trolley, that a transportation system can make you not want to throw yourself onto the tracks.


And of course I do actually go to class too.

Besides being that kid constantly blowing their nose in the silence of the classroom on the first day, all my classes seem really hands on and interesting. They are:

• Gardens of the Gods: The history of paradise and religion
• Ancient Art and Archaeology: The Copenhagen Collections
• Danish Language and Culture
• European Culture and History: Memory and Identity in France
• Copenhagen: History and Contemporary Urban Issues

My two favorites are probably the Garden of the Gods, and the Urban History of Copenhagen. The Garden of the Gods looks at the history of religion and paradise through the gardens of basically every major civilization. From Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Mesopotamian to Native American, Islamic, Christian and Buddhism and everything in between. We learn about theology, the symbolism of each plant and the gods to which they were sacred, how to read a garden and what that says about a society's religion and culture.

In the Urban Studies class we basically use Copenhagen as our classroom. Our first assignment is literally a 15 stop tour of Copenhagen, in which we are armed with a giant packet of information, medieval maps and questions we have to answer at each stop... Of course we also have to memorize and be able to draw out on a blind map the different districts of Copenhagen (down to the exact streets!) and where all these monuments and old, (no longer standing) medieval ramparts and gates are. But our teacher promised us by the end of the class we would know Copenhagen better than the Danes, and I am so excited to explore every nook and cranny of the city!

And the Ancient Art and Archaeology class is great because basically all of our classes are held in the National Gallery, looking at Copenhagen’s collection of artifacts from Antiquity.

And then each class has a few field study trips on various Wednesdays (when we actually don’t have class!)


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In hindsight posting this, I guess I should add that my classes are not, in fact, all really great. The readings for some are so horrendously pointless that I, Anne Silk, hearby do declare that I haven’t done all of them! Skipped them on purpose even! And yeah, no consequences.

I mean here’s an example:

“Okay class, now can you guess what the word Neoclassical means? What do you think this style of architecture looks back to?”

dead silence. I pray quietly that the silence comes from our astonishment that we are actually going over this, but you never know…

“I’ll give you a hint, Neo is Greek for New.”

Silence.

Brave soul ventures: “The classical era.”

Exuberant praise from the teacher.

So besides a bit of a dumbed down curriculum and an extreme repetition in going over information (hey, I guess I’m not complaining) the classes can be stimulating, and definitely do give a lot of work, lots of papers and tests and readings.

But they are, on the whole, quite interesting, and I am learning a lot about Copenhagen and Scandinavia because apparently AP Euro never thought anything worthwhile ever happened up here.

But now that I actually live here I'd like to learn. Plus Vikings are cool.