Summary of week 1: Oh. Everything is in Danish.
Of course I knew that this was the case before I left. I knew that signs, instructions, and directions would all be in the official language of Denmark. It's a no-brainer. You see it all when you get off the plane, arrive at your dorm (called kollegium here), and settle in.
But then you get lost for the first time.
I wandered with my roommate for about an hour suppressing this subtle urge to panic in my stomach. The local danes didn't understand our butchered pronunciations of their streets and neighborhoods, and we didn't understand the signs and maps posted at the sole bus stop we encountered. Neither of us had any cellular data to call our friends, nor google where in the expansive city of Copenhagen we were.
This is when it really hit me. I wasn't just lost - I was lost in Denmark. And everything was in DANISH.
While somewhat hopelessly walking in a straight line waiting to recognize a street name or landmark, a sign caught my eye. In the middle of somewhere, we found Café Miao, a cat café. We peered into the windows and admired the cats strewn across the floor and furniture, calmly existing amongst the patrons. The cats didn't so much care about the café goers, nor my excitement of actually finding a cat café. They just inhaled, exhaled, and flicked their tails.
Inhale. Exhale. We're okay. "Let's take a right."
We ended up finding our way back to Nørreport station, one of the three metro stops we knew, and took the metro back to our kollegium (which we still can't pronounce). We survived being lost, and found a new place to eat a cheap meal and make a furry friend. Maybe everything is in a language I will probably never speak, but hey - neither will the cats.
No comments:
Post a Comment