New Year's Eve

Hej everyone,

I am writing a legit blog entry! Yay!

Jose and I left on the 30th and went to SFO, where we found out that our plane from Chicago to Copenhagen was delayed until the next day... which meant that we would have to be on that plane for New Year's. Ugh... Since there's only one flight a day from Chicago to Copenhagen, we'd have to do that... unless we figured out something else from SFO. Thankfully we had a really awesome airline assistant helping us out and after a bunch of calls she was able to put us on a plane to Frankfurt and then one to Copenhagen. She was so nice! She said that her parents were Jewish emigrants from Europe who went to Uruguay, where she was born. When she first went to Europe, Denmark was the first place she wanted to go, partly because when Jews were being forced to wear stars on them, the Danish king came out with a star on him and told all the other Danes to do the same! Anyway, she was really helpful. The next woman, who checked our bags at the international terminal, was great too. She let us check my extra bag for free! And she told Jose how to get his checked for free too (gate check-in). Everyone was really nice that day, and we had two really good flights. 

We were in United Express to Frankfurt which means we had extra legroom. I was at the window and Jose was in the middle, but since the flight was only half full (even with the second story, which I didn't get to see unfortunately :( ) the guy on the aisle moved and we had a whole row! Nice... There were only two problems... I was technically in a window seat but there was no window, haha. No idea why. And the light from the constantly-on TV a few rows in front of us kept me from sleeping too much. Even when I scrunched down to let the seat in front of me block it, I could still see all the flashing colors and stuff. It's so hard for me to sleep on planes... But it was a really good flight otherwise. The food was good, too. We had pasta, bread and salad and it was legitimately kind of delicious. Ooh, and a pretty amazing brownie for dessert. The next morning (sort of? I didn't really sleep) we had yogurt (no gelatin! I haven't found gelatin in yogurt of any country except the USA so that just proves how cheap our food industry is) and juice and a pastry and a cookie. Once the flight was over, that was the end of our time in a primarily English-speaking bubble...

We got off the plane in Frankfurt and actually walked down to the tarmac, which means we've officially been in Germany, haha. It was cold and beautiful and snowing really softly and everything was really quiet and peaceful. We caught a bus that took us to the terminal. After waiting a bit we got on our plane and headed off to Copenhagen!

That plane was a little less comfortable but it was really short. And I had a window this time... I actually fell asleep for about an hour and when I woke up, I looked at how much time we had left to see 12 minutes! We had to go through a lot of fog and pretty much as soon as it cleared, we were touching down!

It took awhile to find our bags just because Jose's guitar was oddly-shaped and was in a different place. There were two options for customs and we went through the "nothing to declare" door, passports in hand, to find that it simply led outside. So, that was easy enough haha. We had to haul our giant bags to a taxi but it wasn't far (the metro is much cheaper from there but you should have seen our bags - I had William, a messenger bag, a gigantic rolly bag, a bag with my bedding stuff and my umbrella and big coat... and Jose had a laptop bag, his backpack, his guitar, a suitcase bulging against the limits of the carryon girth and a gigantic duffel that I could have fit in). Anyway, the taxi ride was pretty short and I took some pictures. 

Here's what we saw as soon as we left the airport! The outside of the airport... (I uploaded this one a different way so it's small and awkward... :/ sorry)(actually, as an afterthought, I probably should have uploaded them all this way so it's not as hard to work with. Next time!)(after-afterthought: the other ones shrunk as well. Oh well haha)

We got to our hotel and slept. A lottttt. We woke up at like 11:30 pm hahaha. So we took a walk around our neighborhood and looked at the fireworks that everyone was setting off. I didn't see any official, city-sponsored fireworks shows but seriously, someone on EVERY corner had fireworks. I think Danes are really into fireworks... at least from what I've seen. They started setting them off on New Year's as soon as it got dark, and they were still going on around 3 in the morning and probably longer. I thought it would have stopped then but almost every day I hear or see them still... it's already the 7th! What's going on? Haha. Anyway, I didn't get very good pictures of the fireworks but here's some from looking around and stuff... Sorry about the sideways ones. I'll figure it out eventually!

 Fireworks a block down our street!

 More fireworks!

 Smoke after the fireworks

 More on our street

 A little further away this time; that blue thing is from Tivoli Gardens and so those fireworks are closer to the town square.

 Yay for right side up pictures! Looking towards Tivoli

The rest of these aren't actually fireworks pictures, just other ones that I took that night:

Man on a sidestreet 

 Moster Olga

 Just in case it didn't look cold enough... Flash tells you the truth.

Street name on the side of a building 

Sticker on a light post (Jose's favorite) 

Our hotel 

This one's sort of a fireworks picture. That light in the sky is a dying ember from a firework that didn't go out in the sky for some reason (don't ask me - it's cold enough). It was drifting towards that building 

There's the ember again, only in a super artsy manner of course. 

Hotel sign in the window across the street. We had to go around because it was too icy 

Haha. So I tried to get on Facebook but it was all "we don't recognize your location" i.e. a bank account or something, and it made me type in words so it knew I wasn't some European robot or something. And, of course, the words it chose were perfect for Denmark...

As my mom would say, the Danish really know how to use their space! Unfortunately... we didn't fit very well into it... :/

Impressions of Denmark: one of my first thoughts was that it was like a postcard. It's so pretty here. It's like some place you don't really think exists in real life. Even the freeway is prettier here than at home. There's snow and trees right along the side of it, and people just go along living life normally and stuff. Haha. I don't know, it's just so different that I want to keep telling people, "Excuse me, do you know that you're living in the most beautiful place ever?" But they all seem more impressed by warm places. I can understand that, of course (my feet can too, after nearly getting frostbite today... no storm drains plus lots of snowmelt plus apparently not very good quality rain boots means freeeezing feet). Jose and I just keep telling each other, "We're in Copenhagen!" because it's still hard to believe that we're here for a half a year. It's like a dream come true. I guess most people wouldn't think so because hot weather is so popular, so they'd want to go study abroad at the beach or something. But I've never lived in the snow before and it's a lot of fun! Haha. It seriously feels like the complete opposite of the Dominican Republic in a lot of ways... but similar in other ones as well. I think that the D.R.'s history as the first European colony in the Americas makes it a lot more Europeanized than the U.S. Of course, I'm used to the west coast. In places like Boston it does seem a lot older and more European. Anyway! If I could sum it all up, I feel like I'm living in the Christmas village at my mom's house. If it had a metro.

I didn't go to Danish class today because my phone's alarm stopped working (thanks Lebara!), but I was also feeling sick. Hopefully I won't get much worse if I rest up this weekend... :/ So instead of going out and getting anything for dinner I went to Jose's and we ordered pizza, yay! I have so many pizza reviews, seriously. They will come soon. We ordered the pizza online, so we had to navigate through all the Danish there (even using Google translate it doesn't make that much sense... for example, Danish translated into "expedition" means delivery and all the syntax is mulched up). So here are your new Danish words to learn:

levering: not actually having to do with levers. I hope.

"Officially" means: delivery

Really (according to me) means: pizza kommer til mig!

ost: as in "most important part of a pizza" (this does not express the opinions of the Copenblogger and is merely used as an explanatory device as the Copenblogger could not possibly attempt to make such judgments)

"Officially" means: cheese

Really (according to me) means: a very unappetizing word that possibly explains why I haven't seen much cheese usage here.

hej: because I keep using it.

"Officially" means: hi (it's pronounced like that, too). Well, one "hej" means "hi;" two "hej"s means "bye."

Really (according to me) means: I can never tell if someone knows English or not at first.

Of course, your previous vocab word of skinke was extremely popular when trying to find a pizza choice online...

That's all for now. More later, and I eventually will catch up to real life time! Haha.

Hej hej!