I finally saw Tåsingegade, one of the other DIS apartment buildings where Jen and my new friend Ilana live. It's much more of a 'normal' building than mine is; actually, it looks kind of like a dorm. The rooms are all identical doubles along one long hallway (DIS only owns one floor of the building), plus there's a common room with a television and a bigger kitchen than the ones in each room. While I'm over the moon about my location, it'd be kind of nice to have that dorm-style setup, just in terms of meeting people. We do have a common room here, fortunately, complete with a foosball table and some couches, if no television, but people don't use it much because it's kind of tucked away in the back behind the courtyard.
Skindergade's layout, on the other hand, is just downright bizarre. Each floor is the same size and shape, but they're all laid out totally differently. The front room that's a huge double on the first floor is two smallish doubles on the second, and it's a living room with a small single on the third. The middle room on each floor is a double, but it's size and orientation varies, and do the kitchens on each floor. The back rooms on the other floors are like ours-- a bathroom and two walk-through bedrooms-- but we got lucky enough to have our little downstairs space with the kitchen and dining table, whereas the other floors have 8-10 people sharing one kitchen. And then on the ground floor in the front is an apartment for the guys who serve as our RAs (ignoring for now that Morten is only 18), and nestled in the back of the ground floor is another tiny little double with its own kitchen.
I'm still counting myself lucky, despite the quad thing. The girls I'm living with are really great and we've been doing a lot of food and touring together, though I'm of course trying to meet new people. We're talking about a day trip to Sweden (specifically to Malmö, which is something like half an hour by train from Sjælland and apparently very fun to visit) and more København sight-seeing this weekend. The following weekend is a short study tour with our respective academic programs (the European Politics & Society track goes to Jylland (mainland Denmark) and northern Germany to see local government in action), and the weekend after that I'm off to Cambridge to visit Andy. So, we need to pack in some good activities! Fortunately, we're keeping a running to-do list.
Today was my first field study, with my European Union class. We don't have Wednesday classes here; the day is reserved for field studies with your various classes, and if you happen not to have a field study, it's a free day to wander around the city! I managed to do a bit of both today. My class went to the Folketing, which is the Danish Parliament, which is within easy walking distance of home. We didn't really see Parliament itself (disappointing), but we did get to sit and talk for an hour and a half with the chairman of the European Affairs Committee (which controls Denmark's EU policy) in the committee room, which was interesting and very, very cool. He and our teacher apparently led an effort to get Denmark into the Eurozone when said teacher was in Parliament himself, but that (obviously) failed, and Denmark is still on the kroner, which exchanges at about 5 to the dollar. Of course, everything is way more expensive here, so it always feels more uneven. He also seemed pretty okay with the controversial idea of adding Turkey to the EU, which was surprising.
Afterwards, a couple girls from the class and I wandered to the Nationalmuseet, which was on the way back. It's basically a big history museum, charting Denmark's saga from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as, inexplicably, ancient Greek and Egyptian history. We got a bit lost trying to get out of the drinking horn display room, and a couple of guards grumbled at us for not checking our schoolbags (we didn't know! we swear!), but it was otherwise very interesting. Why don't European history classes at home cover Scandinavia at all? I feel like I could explain a lot of the stuff to see in Paris or even maybe Germany, but I hadn't a clue what went on up here before I arrived. I've also come to realize that recounting Danish history is just a little bit funny-sad, because the short version of it is that the Danes ruled a huge chunk of Scandinavia, including Sweden and Norway, and now Denmark is just this cute, charming little country that looks on a map like it's being eaten by Sweden and Norway.
Tomorrow is my roommate Jackie's 21st birthday, so we're going to the pastry shop La Glace, out to dinner at a place in Nørrebro called Pussy Galore's Flying Circus (?), and for drinks at the Absolut Ice Bar. The latter is clearly a gimmick but involves a bar that is actually made out of ice, so we're falling for it.
Vi ses i weekenden!
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