My first week in Copenhagen...

It is official! It has been one week since I have been living in the exciting city of Copenhagen and, with my borrowed internet connection from our all too kind Danish neighbours, I am now able to start blogging about my experiences over here.

Ben, the reason I am being thrust into Europe, met myself, my three suitcases and our dog, Mr Quigley at the airport last Thursday afternoon. It had been 12 hours in a crate for Mr Quigley and I imagine he was itching for some water and a bathroom break - however, he seemed genuinely happy to see both of us (forgetting that I was the one that put him in his crate in the first place). After finding a cab that was large enough to fit us all, we ventured over to the apartment. Ben found a lovely, brand new, pet-friendly apartment in an area of Copenhagen called Norrebro. The apartment had everything that we could have asked for: dish washer, washing machine, park outside, near public transportation. The area of Norrebro, however, is known as one of the troubled neighbourhoods in Copenhagen. From what I can see so far it is a very diverse neighbourhood with a strong middle eastern makeup, which means an abundance of shawarma and falafel restaurants as well as small markets and halal slaughter shops. I cannot wait to explore these!

Ben's goal was to have me stay up until 10pm that night and I surprisingly almost made it! That afternoon/evening we ventured downtown for some beers at some sketchy bars in the tourist area followed by pizza from the local pizza joint 'Di Minutter'. Then bed. FINALLY!

My actual first week focused on getting our apartment set up (when I arrived we had no furniture, no kitchen supplies, etc) and getting all the necessary paperwork in order to be covered by Danish healthcare.

Day 1: It rained. Ben and I spent 8 hours at the local Ikea. After carefully picking out all the items we wanted, we were disheartened to find out that some of the major pieces we had picked out were not in stock! I check the Ikea website every day and still, one week later, the items have not arrived. Hopefully when we go back to Ikea we will not have to spend another 8 hours perusing the racks (although this did allow us to have two trips to the ikea cafeteria. mmmmm meatballs).

Day 2: It rained. I set up Ikea furniture. I am sure you can imagine how exciting this was.

Day 3: It rained. I continued setting up Ikea furniture. I bought a bike. There are bike stores on every block, a very close example of perfect competition I would guess. However, it was Sunday and the majority of the bike stores were closed. While I could have waited until Monday, I just wanted to get 'buying a bike' off my list and ended up purchasing my bike from a sketchy shop. It is a used red bike (pictures coming soon) and we will see how it holds up. I have named him Old Red after the 1990 Acura Integra I learned to drive on. Ben and I did take a quick bike ride to visit Hans Christian Andersen's grave that is conveniently located in a nearby graveyard/park. We are planning a picnic by his grave on a less rainy day.

Day 4: It rained. I set up Ikea furniture. I bought patio furniture. It rained a little more. Frustrated by the lack of internet, I ventured to a nearby internet cafe to check my email. The rain, however, must have been interfering with the signal and I could not get it to work, so I ventured to Ben's work where I was graciously allowed to check my emails and plan my next two days.

Day 5: It rained. I set up my final piece of Ikea furniture (until we make our next trip of course). My main task of the day was to get my danish permit inserted into the passport. The immigration office is open from 8:30am to 12:00pm - I only made it there at about 10:30am which was likely a mistake. I took my number from the ticketing device - #125. They immigration staff were currently serving number 54 (ugh). I jostled a seat from an old lady (joke) and made myself comfortable. I waited. and waited. One hour later they were serving number 62. Then a magical announcement was heard over the loud speaker saying that individuals who only required the insertion of their permit in their passport could come to Desk 9. That was me! All that time sitting there for nothing! I ran up to desk 9 and presented all of my paper work and was asked to give them the pictures I had brought. Pictures? Apparently the pictures I had submitted with my official application were somewhere else so I would have to run out and get pictures, in the half hour time slot prior to closing, for my permit to get processed that day. While I have not been training lately, I will say that I had a good run in flip flops to the local fotoshop and 100 Krona and another sprint later I was back in Immigration with 5 minutes to spare. All in all I did get my permit added today! I bought a shwarma as a reward and bussed home in the rain.

Day 6: Still raining. Now that my permit was complete I had to go down to the local Kommune to get my cpr number. Each resident of Denmark has a personal identification CPR number that is necessary to do almost anything here (including getting a haircut which I will have to find out later). Once I found the Kommune, it was fairly effortless to get the CPR number. I was also assigned a doctor for my time in Denmark. With all the trouble Canadians have in finding a family doctor, I found this system absolutely amazing. Better yet, her office is 800 meters from my apartment! Hopefully I will not have to see her too often though. I walked home from the kommune (it had stopped raining) and spent some time perusing the local clothing stores. Ben left for Paris at night and Mr Quigley and I spent a relaxing night at home.

All in all, my first week in Copenhagen has been wet and busy. At least Vancouver helped me prepare for both the rain and the business. I still have a lot to do before I leave for Italy and Greece in early September...so hopefully this couch arrives at Ikea ASAP!