Finally arrived in beautiful Copenhagen! We left home at 6pm July 23rd and somehow it is now 11:00pm July 24th? Time is already flying. For those of you who don't know, my family came with me on a home
exchange for the first month of this experience. This is our third home
exchange, the first in Huntington Beach, California in 2007, and the
second in Portland, Oregon last Summer. House swapping is such a great
idea - free accommodation and transportation in exchange for mutual trust and
new friendships. So yesterday we met the awesome family we swapped with. They arrived at our house a few hours before the limo came to take us to the airport, so we showed them around and now our house and cars are theirs for a few weeks. Our first flight was delayed from JFK to Frankfurt, but that meant our layover was shorter and we got to Copenhagen in no time. Both flights were with a German airline company Lufthansa. My first view of Denmark out the plane window included an offshore wind farm which was so cool because that's exactly what I'm here to study - sustainability in Europe.
A few struggles with the cash machine and public transportation slowed us down a bit (I'll have to work on the metro/train situation) but we found the train and bus to take us to our new home. While walking down the street with all our luggage, we hear this really faint voice say "hello?" He had to say this a few times for us to finally find where the voice came from - the top of a cherry tree. He then said, "you must be the Americans." Yup that's us! Our new neighbor kindly greeted us with some fresh picked cherries and assured us he would be around if we need any help during our stay. My first impression of Danes is starting on a good note. Now we're here in this gorgeous farm house in a town called Karlebo, about a 20-30 minute train ride outside of the city. This house is so quaint and homey and has a huge back yard with a tire swing, hammock, vegetable garden, and chicken coupe. Fresh eggs every morning! Oh and we have a new pet cat named Disco to take care of.
A few struggles with the cash machine and public transportation slowed us down a bit (I'll have to work on the metro/train situation) but we found the train and bus to take us to our new home. While walking down the street with all our luggage, we hear this really faint voice say "hello?" He had to say this a few times for us to finally find where the voice came from - the top of a cherry tree. He then said, "you must be the Americans." Yup that's us! Our new neighbor kindly greeted us with some fresh picked cherries and assured us he would be around if we need any help during our stay. My first impression of Danes is starting on a good note. Now we're here in this gorgeous farm house in a town called Karlebo, about a 20-30 minute train ride outside of the city. This house is so quaint and homey and has a huge back yard with a tire swing, hammock, vegetable garden, and chicken coupe. Fresh eggs every morning! Oh and we have a new pet cat named Disco to take care of.
We also took our first trip to the Føtex grocery store for some essentials to last a couple days. I have to get used to the exchange rate of (approximately) 1 USD = 6 DKK. Everything looks super expensive at first glance but you have to divide by 6. At the checkout line I got my first "she's never been here before" look because I was fascinated that they do not swipe credit cards, they place it in a slot and use chip technology. Cool right? Clearly we were placed in the tourist category after that.
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