It started yesterday afternoon, when Dara and I headed over to Rådhuspladsen (the big square by City Hall) for a sort of after-the-fact pep rally in celebration of the Danish men's handball (a super-intense quasi-hybrid of basketball and soccer) victory over Croatia to win the European championship and a big gold plate. The crowd was huge but not very mob-like; if we'd been in the U.S., something like this would have been an utter madhouse. It was pretty exciting, but not wild-- just a lot of really happy Danes waving flags and cheering like crazy every time a different team member came out onto the steps or the balcony of City Hall to hold the trophy-plate aloft. Then there was a great fireworks show, followed by more cheering and flags and handball player worship and flag-waving. Neither of us knew anything about handball, or what people were yelling, but it was very fun! It almost felt like we were a part of things...though that spell lifted briefly when a guy next to me asked me something in very, very fast Danish about his text message, and I blanked on the Danish I'd been practicing just that morning to tell him I'd be of no use (retroactively, it's "jeg taler ikke dansk").
Last night, Jackie (roommate from Cornell) and a few guys from our building went out for a bit. We ended up meeting a bunch of other DIS kids who were celebrating one girl's birthday; the group included two girls from Bowdoin who were both really enthusiastic about knowing Ben Freedman (my cousin there). It was almost like sleep-away camp all over again. While we were there, a quartet of really not-sober Danes were (still) celebrating the handball victory, complete with jumping and dancing and singing, alternately, Danish nationalist songs and American pop hits from the 90's. And once they found out that it was the one girl's birthday, they got even happier and jumpier.
Meanwhile, Jackie and I struck up a conversation, about sports of all things, with a random Danish guy who was quite enthusiastic about San Francisco and American football. This was great, particularly because numerous people have made the point that we'll have to go out of our way to interact with Danes, as we live in a building where all the residents are on DIS.
Today, I tucked my jeans into my boots. This sounds very minor, but it was actually quite the conversation-starter among Americans today for the following reason: it's possible that every single Danish woman in the København area owns a pair of skinny jeans and really gorgeous zip-up boots. And every girl I've met has wanted to be that fashionable, particularly because all the stores are in January sale mode ("udsalg"), so the high-fashion shoes are marked way down for another few days. So the fact that my jeans fit into the lovely brown boots I got prior to my departure was fairly exciting, and I felt oh-so-hip all day today.
Also, I realized that I really, really like being in this city. I had a very long-running debate for the better part of a year and a half of college regarding whether or not I wanted to go abroad at all. By the end of the summer, I was thinking I wanted to travel abroad more than I wanted to live abroad. Coming here was incredibly last minute-- I met with the Brown Office of International Programs about two weeks before everything was due to DIS, and I didn't get my plane ticket until winter break. But, language barriers and eerily high prices on everything aside, København became very a comfortable fit very quickly. I was talking about this with my friend Jen, who agreed-- we sort of forget we're in this whole 'foreign' place a lot of the time, because we're just settled and happy about it. I'm still super-psyched to travel-- I'll definitely be in Russia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France, and at least a couple of others before I hit the States again-- but I'm really happy that I'm living in a place, instead of just swinging through. And there's a whole four months to get to know the place!
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