Thursday, February 28, 2013


Back to the blog. After months of being here in Copenhagen with no record of my experience except the smiling Facebook photos countered directly by records of frustrated, depressing emails to family and friends, I finally realize I should record some of this in a productive manner so I don't reflect back and wonder why I didn't realize that I had a split personality. But I do...have a split personality. I am both positive about my decision to come here and think it was really stupid. I like working in an exotic location and I wish I had my family and friends around to interrupt me from my work. I am a cosmopolitan international traveler getting places on my bike, muddling through Danish, winning the hearts of young Scandinavian students, and completely an American in a way I never knew before, a screw-you-stop-taking-all-my-money-with-your-taxes kind of way. This has been one big lesson in the failure of self-expectations (and of the futility of setting ridiculous self-expectations. But more on that later, for now I have to try to enjoy the perks of being in Copenhagen- and since I have to work all the time and I have not yet made friends- I have brilliantly combined engaging in a tourist activity with work by sitting in a Copenhagen cafe drinking a latte with one hand, surfing my Mac with the other. Funds are limited so I enjoy one of the best work places in town, Nutid, a cafe located across from Sankt Petri Kirke right near the central University in town. The coffee is incredibly cheap, the Wifi consistent (very unusual here since there is only a small group of us cafe goers who work- most seem to prefer social interaction), everyone is young and good looking since it is right near University of Copenhagen, and it is also one of those non-profits with pictures of laughing Africans on the walls of the bathroom. It has the best view of bustling university cyclists (and the occasional cycling granny because there is always an a cycling granny. I heard somewhere that the Danish state hires them to cycle around smiling all day to improve the city's moral. It works.