So I’ve been in Copenhagen for a month already! Yesterday I went to a lecture at Copenhagen University; the class is a course in Danish culture. Yesterday’s lecture was about mythology and legends. It was pretty interesting! I am not enrolled in the class so it felt kind of funny to sit there, but it was a large lecture class and so people probably thought I was enrolled. The lecture hall was very stylish, by the way. If I go again I’ll try to take some pictures. It’s true that the Danish people seem to love well-designed and stylish buildings. At least,  it seems true from what I’ve seen so far in Copenhagen!

Well, on to the purpose of this entry. Here are some Danish words I’ve picked up from my first month of living in Copenhagen. It is far easier for me to read them than to pronounce them, though. I can get by with speaking English, but it is fun to try to understand the local language.

First, a little about Danish:

• The Danish alphabet – the Danish alphabet uses the same 26 letters that the English language does, plus 3 vowels that do not occur in English. These vowels are represented by Æ (with lowercase æ); Ø (with lowercase ø); and Å (lowercase å). They come at the end of the alphabet, after “Z”, in the order I’ve presented them.
• So, “æ” is pronounced close to “e” in English word “best”
• “ø” is pronounced close to the “i” sound in the English word “bird”
• “å” is prounounced like “o” in “coke” or “often.”

Some Danish words I picked up this past month (note – many of these words look similar to English but are pronounced totally different):

• Days of the week (in order): mandag, tirsdag, onsdag, torsdag, fredag, lørdag & søndag.
  • I’ve noticed that days of the week are not capitalized when used within a sentence.
• dag = day
• i dag = today
• og = and
• med = with
  • I’ve even seen “m/grøntsager” meaning “with vegetables”, the same way we would write “w/vegetables” in English!
• mod = against
• tryk = push (I’ve seen it on doors)
• udgang = exit
• adgang = entrance
• grøntsager = vegetables
• kort = card
• næste = next
• til = to (as in “going to some location”) or can also mean “until”
• klokken = “at …. o’clock”; for example, the time for my kitchen’s weekly dinner is written on the board as Kl.19:00, meaning 7:00 p.m.
• åben = open
• på = on; at; in
• parkering = parking
• øl = beer
• løg = onion
• have = garden
• hvidløg = garlic
• vask = washing
• vaskeri = laundry
• varm = hot or warm
• lufthavn = airport
• luft = air or sky
• frugt = fruit

This is just a short entry. I am happy because I managed to cook rice the other night, it wasn’t perfect but it came out well enough to eat. I bought some vegetables and there are many small ethnic markets that sell stir-fry sauces and oil, so I have made stir-fry 2 times so far. It’s not that bad and it’ll save a LOT of money.

Also I did my laundry for the second time a few nights ago, this time my clothes weren’t sopping wet and were mostly dry after coming out of the dryer. I glanced at the dryer settings when someone else’s clothes were in there; I decided to put my clothes on that setting when it was my turn. It was the opposite setting from what I had last time. Whatever it was, it worked, so I didn’t need to hang anything this time around.

Now I am going to a lecture on Danish culture at the nearby Copenhagen University. More later…

Here I am with another post! I attempted to do my laundry Sunday night. The laundry room for my building is located in the basement. I started it around 11 p.m. because all of the machines were free then. The nice thing is that the machines provide bleach. Too bad I didn’t realize that before I went out and bought some. I had my laundry card and stuck it into the washing machine. It kept saying 0.25. So I assumed that the balance on my card was 25 øre (100 øre = 1 Danish krone) left over from the previous person occupant of my room. I had no idea how much it cost to do a washing. I had no idea how to put more money on my card. There were no instructions anywhere on how to do this stuff.

I proceeded to load up the machine. It automatically sensed how many clothes were in there and adjusted some settings accordingly. There were some English instructions posted on the walls, but unfortunately the instructions only said things like, “choose X setting – A, B, C, D.” When I looked at the machine to find those settings, they were all in Danish. So I just guessed and hoped for the best!

Well the machine did not turn on after I loaded it, so I suspected that I needed more than 25 øre on my laundry card. Sure enough, the  washing machine flashed 12.25 kroner on its little LCD screen. I looked around the area for some kind of adding-money-to-your-card-machine and found none. So my next guess was to walk over to the Administration building. Voila! There was a machine located in the far right corner of the building! I proceeded to add money, and then headed back to my building’s laundry machine.

Read the rest of this entry »