Paco´s Life: Madrid

Copenhagen

Now is when I think this blog starts to make sense. From now on I will stop talking just about parties and I will start trying to provide some interesting or useful information about the places I am going to be. I believe this is the main utility of a blog, at least for me, it was very useful to read about Ivan (specially those posts named “Denmark, the great unknown”) and Leo experiences to get an idea about what I was going to find here. So I will try to give my personal view about this place for anyone who may be interested.

Let´s start then, I will try to make a summary of this first viking week. First impressions: driving from the ferry which brought me from Germany to Copenhagen. Danish people drive very carefully, they always respect the speed limit and, suprisingly, you must have your car lights on even during the day. So they are quite similar to british people in this. I arrived to the city and very quickly found my apartment thanks to a map I got from the first hotel I saw. Some of you already know this, my accommodation in Copenhage is going to be kind of peculiar. First 2 weeks I will be living with a Denmark woman and her daughters (one is 24 and the other 15), them the mother leaves and I live with the 24 years daugther for another 2 weeks. After that I will be alone in the apartment. The place is OK, 2 big rooms and a wide living room - kitchen, Internet connection, TV in my room, a very comfortable garden for doing barbecues and driking rum with the light of the candles but… there is no shower! Right folks, it is amazing that in this supposedly civilized country you find this. The shower is down in the basement, in a room with the washing machine and it is shared by all the people in the building, like a cheap youth hostel. Anyway, it will only be 2 months and a half and since the apartment is cute and well located I decided to accept the situation. You may be wondering how much this cost, well the figure is 4000 danish krons (arround 540 euros). I have been asking arround and is not too exagerated. The truth is that I did not want to complicate myself too much when I did the searching, I had heard Copenhagen was a very difficult place for finding accommodation and my dates were not too easy so I took it. I dont complain too much…

About the city, I like it very much, plently of parks where danish men and women are laying on the ground taking the sun, areas where you can even have a bath in the river… I even hanged arround in the alternative neibourghood: Christiana, kind of getho withouth law where people live independently, it is allowed to deal with soft drugas and the environment is quite peculiar. What suprised me about the place is that, althought there was many strange people arround, you dont have the feeling of been unsafe, is more like a hippie good vibrations place partially contaminated by the tourists. It is worthy to come over and have a look but you should not expect anything extraordinary. Anyway, I just arrived, there is still plenty too see..

I already got myself a bike which makes me feel a little bit danish. It is amazing how this city is prepared for this, most of the streets have bike lines, cyclists have the priority over cars (I almost killed a couple of them) and everywhere you can find places to park the bike. Whoever knows me a little knows that I am not exactly the best friend of the bike but wherever you go do what you see, so here I am, going everywhere with my bike. It was funny how I got it, it is said that there are 3 bikes per person in Copenhagen, I dont really know if this is 100% true. What happens then with the extra ones? Well, it seems that someone is in charge of controlling wheter a bike has been for a long time parked in the same place withouth anyone paying attention to it. When there are a few bikes in this situation they are grouped together and a piece of plastic is put in their wheels . That means that any non lucky guy like me lacking a bike can have a look to see if there is still something useful in the heap. Usually if people left them is cause they no longer work but oh suprise! yesterday I found a heap of these bycicles in my street and one of them was not locked and it worked. So I took it… However, later on in the afternoon, I found a better one in another heap. Unfortunately this one was locked.. no problem! I just took it home and spent 30 mins breaking the lock with a pliers. Conclussion: a greak bike in perfect condition for free

About the work, so far it looks very good. It seems that finally I will have something to do, in contrary to what happened in Cardiff, here I have a proper project well defined and plenty of people from who I can learn stuff. I still dont see how I can help them but it is sure that I will get a lot of material for that thesis I will write someday out of this. There is a very friendly greek guy in the department who also plays basketball. He is been living here for 4 years and the truth is that he does not look very happy. According to him, there is no way to deal with the danish guys and is even worse with women… Anyway, Iet’s wait to see how it goes, maybe I am more lucky.

Not much else happened this week appart from yesterday, when I met the current ICEX IT guy in Copenhage, a very friendly guy called Leo who took me for dinner to the cementery. Quiet plan for the night, we watched a movie in the place of an also very friendly finish girl who prepared delicious cocktails. Lot of good talking till late 3 and then I went home using my great new bike. Relax fellas, big parties coming soon…