Day 1 in Denmark

Well, I’ve safely arrived in Denmark and had a good full-night’s sleep. It was great. I arrived in Copenhagen yesterday morning and had very detailed notes from Connie, the professor who invited me here, about the train system. Thanks to her, I bought a ticket for the right train, the one that would take me to Aarhus without requiring me to navigate a change of trains at the big station two stops down (thank goodness!). I was feeling fine but bleary, since I couldn’t really sleep on the plane. Tony and I had gotten up at 3 a.m. to go to the airport, and then I had a 4-hour, 20-minute flight to Atlanta, 5-hour layover, and 8-hour 30-minute flight to Copenhagen—all with no sleep.

I hopped the train and had a really beautiful 3-and-a-half hour ride to Aarhus. The trains are really comfortable, with cushy seats, overhead racks for big bags, and tables in front of you. I just stared out the big train windows for most of the ride. The Danish countryside is lovely, with lots of fields (though the only crop I recognized was corn), rolling hills, horses, isolated farm houses, and little towns with old-fashioned looking buildings. Most of the buildings I saw, including the farmhouses, had fairly steeply pitched roofs with red tile, grey tile, or wavy corrugated metal. One of the prettiest sites I saw was a field sloping up to a big hill with a building and a small brick lighthouse. I thought it was beautiful but weird in the middle of a field til I saw that it was the edge of a field. On the other side of that hill with the lighthouse was water as far as the eye could see. It was so pretty.

Once I got to Aarhus, Connie met me at the station, and we rode the bus to her house outside of the city proper. The bus system here is really great even compared to Seattle. I asked her if she ever had trouble getting out here, and she said that if it’s past 6 p.m., her choices of bus routes shrink, and she could be waiting as long as 20 minutes for the next bus. I thought, “wow, the bus that connects me to school only runs twice an hour until 6:45 when it stops altogether!” She and her husband have a lovely small house in a little collection of homes that are close together and connected by sidewalks instead of on a big street. Very few people can afford cars here, so it’s assumed that most people will get home on foot once they get to the housing group. Their house has has three bedrooms and one bath and is quite a bit bigger than our apartment in Seattle though would be considered very small for a three-bed house in the U.S. It’s lovely and very efficiently laid out with lots of cabinets and bins, wood floors and a really pretty wooden ceiling.

Once we got to the house, Connie showed me around and then we had a cup of tea with a slice of German plum cake that a friend of theirs from Germany had made for them the night before. It was really delicious. Her husband joined us, and we all chatted for a while, and then he suggested a walk. It was just the thing to keep me awake til dinner. The weather was gorgeous; they said Denmark was showing off for me because it’s not usually so warm and sunny, especially at the end of September. But it was all blue skies, bright sun, and short-sleeves weather when we took our long walk around the area. There is a walking trail and biking trail that leads through a little woods, some rolling fields with horses, some garden homes that people build themselves and live in only from April-October (by law, these homes can belong only to apartment dwellers from the city, which keeps costs down and provides a nice place to escape to in the country for city apartment dwellers), and a lake with ducks. It was a wonderful long walk, and the area where they live is really nice.

Connie and her husband told me a lot about living in Denmark, maneuvering the housing/rental market, what it’s like to teach here, etc. It was great to hear so much and get a better feel for life in Denmark. There are many wonderful things about this area. After our walk, we had dinner, and then I was done for. I called Tony, took a shower, and went to bed. I got just a few verses into Luke and put the Book away. I was out like a light.

So that’s day 1! I’ll let you know how the rest of the time goes and will take some pictures. I was stupid-tired yesterday but could have kicked myself for not taking the camera on the walk around the neighborhood! They said we could walk again, though, so it should be fine. More from me later!