Copenhagen Journeys

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2009-06-29T14:18:00.005+02:00

God is dead.
-Nietzsche

Nietzsche has just been expelled from Facebook.
-God

Summertime Madness

2009-06-28T13:32:00.006+02:00

These days, Copenhagen seems to turn into a city of total lunatics. It all started with the graduation party of Denmark's high school students. Some days ago a bunch of high school graduates woke me up - shouting, cheering and drinking beers on the back of a truck cruising around the city. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians along the road stop for a minute, ring their bells or simply shout their congratulations. I thought the party was going to last only a day, but as of now, three days later, trucks are still making their way around town.

Then there was the sudden news of Michael Jackson's death. Overnight, on a stage on Rådhuspladsen set up especially for the occasion, many fans gathered. A deejay playing Thriller, Billy Jean and Beat It over and over again. A 10 years old kid taking to the stage. Starting a session of moonwalking, he drove the public totally crazy.

And of course there's the preparation for Roskilde, the not-to-be-missed music festival, at least according to pretty much any Dane I met during my stay here. Everyone (really, everyone) keeps informing me on how much they have been looking forward, which selection of concerts they are going to attend, where their tent will be located, and, yes, of course how nice the weather will be. And some even seem to be offended by the fact that I don't really care to pay around 1800 DKK (or 240 EUR) to see bands like Kanye West, Coldplay or Oasis. But since I am keeping guard of the cafe (which is completely deserted in these tropical temperatures) during the next days, it's not like I had much of a choice.

Skagen

2009-06-24T13:42:00.003+02:00

Tuesday afternoon, 3PM. Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan on my mp3 player. Jylland's landscape, bathing in midsummer afternoon light, through the window. I am on the 13:59 train bound for Copenhagen.

After spending most of the week recovering/relaxing in and around Aalborg, Emin and I took a bus to Brovst, where we were invited to a (delicious) dinner by Amanda, another EVS volunteer we met during the on arrival training earlier this year.

And from there, I tried to make my way up to Skagen. Covering the relatively short distance eventually took me 4 hours. Due to a car accident on the railway line the service was interrupted. So at Hjørring station one of those dusty tourist buses was waiting to bring me further into the land.

Well, imagine the situation. To fit a hundred people (plus loads of luggage and three bicycles) into one bus isn't that easy. I prepared for a stuggle of the fittest-style boarding of the bus. But getting a place on the bus turned out to be much more civilized: to my absolute astonishment, people started queuing to get on (and the cyclists soon gave up the idea of joining the bus ride).

So far, so good. With all seats filled up and the bus reaching full capacity (at least from the legal point of view), the driver hesitated for a moment, but then allowed more people inside. A line of people formed in the corridor. I eventually was one of the last to be let onto the bus (I still don't know what happened to the passengers still outside when the door closed). In the front of the corridor, I had a perfect spot for overlooking the amazing landscape, but it also turned out to be a horrible location to keep my balance.

But eventually I arrived to Skagen, the idyllic village on the northernmost stretch of land of Jylland. Walking down the supposedly only-operating-in-high-season shopping street immediately gave me a holidays-for-the-working-class-hero feeling. Which I understood after the impulsive purchase of a cone with two scoops of ice cream (I don't even like ice cream).

So I walked all the way up to Grenen, the spot where the North Sea clashes with the Skagerrak (not sure if this is already the Baltic Sea, but must be a close call in any case). Passed by improvised nudist beaches, thousands of jellyfish in the (at least today) silent water, abandoned military installations, campings, lighthouses and kilometers of dunes.

And there, standing on one of the dunes, I saw a congregation of people in the distance. This must be the place I was looking for. I joined the crowd, sat down for a minute, smoked and contemplated in silence – mainly thinking why all those people around me attach so much symbolism to a stretch of beach which really isn't any better than other beaches around Denmark (similar reasoning: why nobody cares about art, but when they find themselves in an artist community such as Skagen, they are suddenly all ears).

Slightly disappointed I walked back into town. I had a quick dinner and took a train back. Overlooking the landscape, I understood it's not all about the obligatory ten square meters at the end of the land (or any other landmark not-to-be-missed). Once again I felt the prevalent traveller mindset – to enjoy the travel rather than to look forward to arriving to a destination – to be very much true. The prolonged train- and busride, the feeling of being on the road through unknown territories, made me enjoy the trip much more than actually arriving to Skagen.

Photoshoot by Emin

2009-06-21T15:49:00.002+02:00

The promised pictures, now online here.

In Aalborg

2009-06-21T00:28:00.007+02:00

With the decisive words, "a change of air will do you good," my Armenian neighbour finally made me hitting the road last Tuesday. There was no point in staying inside my dorm watching afternoon tv over and over again anyway.

Today matters seemed to get worse. My innocent cough of the last days evolving in bronchitis in the best case, or pneumonia in a worse scenario - a thing in which Danish weather is really cooperative. So I decided to see a doctor. While waiting for exactly 2 hours and 13 minutes to see the doctor-on-duty in Aalborgs sygehus, I was not so sure if the trip was a good decision after all.

The doctor, just returning from a coffee break, leaving a line of patients waiting for about 20 minutes, released me from the pneumonia idea at least. He prescribed me four more days of rest. Well, that could be arranged after the eight days I already had. So I joined Emin, the Turkish friend at who's place I am spending the days in Aalborg (and as I discover, one of the most hospitable guys in this world), to a relaxing Chill i Parken afternoon at the waterfront.

And there, it turned out that Emin is actually a really good photographer. The three pictures headlining this post are indeed his work, and I intend to upload some more to picasa soon. For now, my own - not so professional - pictures of a walk around the city two days ago, are already online.

Plans for the next days: relax, drink rivers of tea with honey, visit Skagen (the northernmost point of Denmark), relax again, visit an Irish EVS friend, relax even more and travel back to Copenhagen to celebrate the longest day of the year (which is called Sankt Hans aften here) on 23 June. And, yes, there is Jan-Sebastiaan, my neighbour from back home who will be visiting next week. Busy days.

Diary

2009-06-14T17:18:00.004+02:00

Being sick, day two. I watch the sunday afternoon tv series and surf around the internet (which made me discover that Andreas, one of my flatmates, is keeping a pretty entertaining online diary). I uploaded his most recent entry below.

Sociology

2009-06-13T18:50:00.004+02:00

I'm not too well (I catched a cold after the continuous rain of last week) and decide to postpone my travel plans for a day. I stay in bed, which gives me a lot of time for reading. In the most recent issue of Flanders Today (03/06/09, p.3) a small article draws my attention:

"Sociologist John Vincke, who did pioneering work in the field of gay studies, died last week at the age of 53. He had been suffering from cancer and elected to die by euthanasia. (...)"

During my first year at university, Prof. Vincke was the man trying to give us an introduction to sociology. I remember the friday afternoon sessions, the one hundred bags with luggage to take home for the weekend, the rushing out of the auditorium to catch a train home. But even more, I remember the introduction to the theories of Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Foucault. And the importance of these theories to understand the world around us.

Jylland

2009-06-12T17:47:00.003+02:00

Since I never really travelled any further in Denmark than Roskilde, and I have some free days to spend (as a compensation for the extra hours I will be working during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival), I will be travelling around Jutland (Jylland) for the next week. I buy a 3-days-travel-within-one-month interrail pass for 45€, which is even cheaper than the single fare from Copenhagen to Aalborg, my first stop.

In Aalborg, I will surf the couch of two EVS-colleagues/friends, and since I did not really have the time to read up on what's to be seen in Jylland, I'll decide on the spot where the other two days of train travel will take me.

Moving

2009-06-11T13:31:00.003+02:00

Somehow, I find myself in a period of moving rooms often. The corridor where I was living for the last half a year is currently under reconstruction, so in the beginning of June I had to move to a room in another corridor (the funny thing is that they forgot to tell me that, so I only got to know it 24 hours in advance, i.e. at the moment when I got suspicious because all the neighbours were moving out and asked me where I was moving to).

And from July 1st, I have to take Pierre's room at Cafe Retro (he's finishing the project), an evolution with which I am not too happy (remembering the first weeks of my stay here). The interesting thing, though, was that when I walked into the house yesterday, I met one of the former flatmates. Her story of the last months seems to be pretty similar as mine: after being very sick during the winter, she went to Portugal and in less then a week she felt healthy again. So perhaps my vitamine D3 story isn't that strange after all.

And then, after the summer months (which I plan to spend touring around Copenhagen, Jylland and then three weeks in Portugal), it is still undecided where I'm moving to. But that's a story for later.

Big city life

2009-06-11T02:14:00.006+02:00

Running for the metro with two friends-of-friends from Aalborg who were in CPH for a two days visit (we were kind of in a hurry but apparantly someone still had time enough to take a picture).

Christmas Present

2009-06-10T14:27:00.004+02:00

Last Christmas, I received a 150kr. gift card for budget music store TP Music from Cafe Retro. Strange enough (usually I enjoy checking out music stores), the gavekort stayed on my desk for about half a year. Yesterday, I impulsively walked into the TP store on my way to work. The discoveries (which are now a huge success at Retro):

Four reasons why I am not particularily happy today

2009-06-07T21:28:00.010+02:00

Gains for Christian democrats and nationalists (BelgiumNL - Separatist and regionalist parties become scaringly large
SF og DF kan feste i aftenen (Denmark - The Danske Folkeparti, with punchline Give us Denmark back, has good reasons to party. Small light: the left wing SF is still slightly bigger)
PVV naar het 'vreselijke' europarlement (The Netherlands - eurosceptic Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom has been voted into the EP, not sure if they really mind)
Szykuje się wyborczy dramat (Poland - at 18:00 only 18% of the Poles went to vote)

EP elections

2009-06-06T17:13:00.004+02:00

With the European Parliament elections coming up tomorrow, I start to be slightly nervous. Voting in the Belgian embassy seemed to be impossible (I did have the choice to register on the Danish list and vote for a Danish party, though), so the documents to let the family back home vote instead of me are finally sent. Taking part in the elections is mandatory in Belgium, so it's not like I had much of a chance anyway (not voting could result in a fine of 55 euro). Vote casted. So far so good.

The nervosity actually stems more from the foresight to the election evening, which I usually spend stuck to a TV, waiting for results to come in. With my limited knowledge of Danish, I wasn't really looking forward to watch the election show on the Danish TV. But just in time, so it seems, I discovered that the European Parliament is (for the first time ever) broadcasting the results from all over Europe through their EuroParl TV.

Laptop. Coffee. Beer. Political friends. Check.

19.00 Opening & presentation of the evening on europarltv
19.15 Debates:
- 19.15-20.00 The economic and financial crisis (France 24 and Radio France International)
- 20.00-20.30 Social aspects of the crisis. Relaunching the economy. (Euronews)
- 20.40-21.30 Democracy and citizenship in the EU. Quo Vadis Europa? (Canal 24H/TVE)

21.35 Turnout: analysis and reactions

21.40 The elections seen by first-time voters

21.50 Focus on the European elections in Ireland and Germany

22.00 National results: analysis and reactions

22.10 Challenges ahead: social & economic Europe, environment

From 22.30 Shape of the next Parliament --- timing TBC

22.40 Zoom on the European elections in Poland and Italy

23.00 Press conference

23.45 New Parliament: reactions from across the EU and press review

Dannebrog

2009-06-06T14:11:00.011+02:00

A quite interesting issue that appears when one finds himself in a country for longer than a one week sightseeing tour, is the nuance that lays hidden in a population's nationalist feelings and the use of its nationalist symbols (of which the Danish flag, or Dannebrog in Danish, is the quintessential example).

The Use-it Copenhagen guide, for example, gives a to the point description of what I experienced in many situations over the last six months: "In our Christmas tree, we put the normal stars and balls, but also Danish flags. On a birthday cake, we put a Danish flag. On a holiday, we raise Danish flags on our houses. But when you ask [the Danes], we will say that this has nothing to do with nationalism."

Also with expats, the use of the Dannebrog is omnipresent. A walk along my new corridor (where no-one is a Danish national) on a random and unsuspicious moment brought me along quite many flags (pictures below).

Nothing much to worry about, so it seems. The flag just has a nice and distinct pattern, suitable to cheer up any party and clear enough to remind people that they're having holidays. Or is it?

The roots of the Danish flag are clearly covered in a nationalist narrative. According to wikipedia, "[t]he legend says that during the Battle of Lyndanisse (...) in Estonia, on June 15, 1219, the flag fell from the sky during a critical stage, resulting in Danish victory. Another legend says that Valdemar and his army saw the sky being blood red except for a white cross just before the battle."

When looking deeper, the Dannebrog is a symbol that is to be treated with the highest degree of respect. During the seminar in Gilleleje, for example, the raising and taking down of the flag (the one on the picture headlining this post, exactly) was a big thing. One evening around sunset, the organizer ran out of a meeting to take down the flag, explaining afterwards that a raised flag during nighttime is a serious exposure of disrespect.

And there lays, so it appears to me, one of the main contradictions in Danish culture. On the one hand there is an obvious fear to be called conservative and nationalist. But when it comes to practice, many Danes seem to defend their country to a quite high degree, bringing up that the social model is in fact one of the best in the world. Which is true. If you are born in the right place, at least.

Coffee time

2009-06-03T14:03:00.002+02:00

Photo taken by Pieter-Paul, sitting on the sidewalk terrace of Christianshavn Beboerhuset, enjoying a 5 kr., økologisk coffee.

Free day

2009-05-22T01:35:00.003+02:00

Ascension day with my mother and sister in Copenhagen means:

A coffee on the sidewalk terrace of Vester Vov Vov cinema
A walk through the Latiner Kvarter, up to Kgs. Nytorv, where the longest photo in the world is currently exhibited
A metro ride to Amager Strand
Sunset and oksestek med pommes frites in Tivoli
Re-new, the Digital Art Festival (a really strange experience) at Husets Café
Making summer plans more concrete (i.e. booking a ticket to Lisbon for july)

Racism

2009-05-14T23:54:00.002+02:00

Today around 2PM, in front of Cafe Retro. The man collecting the plastic bags filled with re-use glass bottles, pointing at a couple of plastic soda bottles which apparently slipped inside:

"Maybe in your country this is supposed to be glass, but here in Denmark we know it as plastic."

Guests

2009-05-14T22:29:00.008+02:00

An impression from the terrace where I spent last evening, saying goodbye to my Belgian guests (much more pictures are here). Last two weeks, in which I welcomed five guests to Copenhagen, made me realize that everyone makes me discover different parts of the city.

Pieter-Paul was much looking forward to take a walk around the sociology deparment at the university, whereas my father was more interested in climbing the stairs to the highest floor of Den Sorte Diamant (where we discovered that we both have a slight form of acrophobia), Leen took me inside the Radisson SAS hotel (where everything, from the building to the smallest spoon is designed by architect Arne Jacobsen) and my uncle and aunt made me discover the interior of the Folketinget (Denmark's parliament) and the romantic atmosphere of Tivoli around sunset.

Cafe Retro på Fransk

2009-05-06T00:41:00.009+02:00

The music of the day at Cafe Retro (Pierre being the disk jockey, most music is in French these days):

Massilia Sound System - Ma ville est malade

Good music to pass the day, and it sounds like a strong message, just before the upcoming elections.

Louise Attacque - Je t' emmène au vent
A song I remember from my student time in Ghent, where it used to be a regular on dormitory parties.

Serge Gainsbourg - Je suis venu te dire que je m' en vais
Both being romantic though lonely souls, we throw in a little Gainsbourg every now and then.

Jacques Brel - Le Plat Pays
Obviously Belgium's best musician in history, eventhough Pierre still likes to make innocent customers believe that Brel is French (quickly adding 'but Jean-Claude Van Damme, he is from Belgium').

Busy

2009-05-05T21:58:00.006+02:00

Time: Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 (22h13)

Location: on the new sofa in my room in Frederiksberg, Denmark
Background: John Lennon
Drink: Blonde Leffe

***

For the first time since long (EVS life tends to be hectic), I decide to spend a lazy evening at home. I answer the post, I sort out the pile of newspapers and magazines that has been laying around for a while now. And I take the time to write.

***

Noor's bike, just before leaving

Noor, on the way to Belgium by bike, texted earlier today "On the boat, so almost in Germany. Already 195km." Her trip is really a big thing. Her whereabouts are a fixed topic on the (very popular) morning show of Studio Brussel for the next weeks, and through a competition (in which you can send an sms with the estimated number of seconds she needs to finish the journey), she is fundraising money for her next project, in Senegal. More info is to be found on www.bouwordesenegal.be and on the facebook-group.

***

Me, on a tour along the seaside

And also for me, May seems to be a rather busy month. In total, seven visitors (six in the category 'family' and one in the category 'friends') will be arriving to Copenhagen. There will be a hip-hop music festival, Gadestøj, organized by Cafe Retro (for which my colleague Pierre and some friends formed a hip-hop band called Pierre & the Smoking Orchestra). And there are two camping-out-of-town weekends: one with the volunteers of Cafe Retro in Frederiksværk, and one with the EVS volunteers in the coastal town of Gilleleje, the place where Søren Kierkegaard (the founding father of existentialism) used to take walks along the beach, about which (according to the Rough Guide) he wrote:

"I often stood there and reflected over my past life. The force of the sea and the struggle of the elements made me realize how unimportant I was."

Internationale

2009-05-01T19:19:00.004+02:00

Celebration of the international labour day, May 1st. A huge park full of people (100.000, I heard) - sunbathing, playing football, drinking beers (øl indeed) and ignoring the political speeches. Other pictures are on picasa.

Gentrification

2009-04-29T17:25:00.004+02:00

Today´s column on gentrification, written by Henrik List, on the alternative city guide Copenhagen Unlike. I do kind of share his feeling.

"Copenhagen has changed dramatically over the 25 years I’ve lived here, the last 15 of those right in the heart of it’s traditional red light district Vesterbro, now a trendy bohemian hot-spot. Copenhagen used to be a city in black and white, seedy, crumbling, and provincial, but through the ‘90s and into the new millennium it has bounced back as a much more international micro-metropolis with a whole new variety in its color scheme.

I don’t miss the provincial-ness of the ‘80s at all, but I do tend to miss the rough edges and the seediness from back when whole parts of the inner city looked like crumbling backdrops of a B&W punk documentary with a Sort Sol soundtrack…

But we have paid a high price for that gentrification. Copenhagen has lost its cheap apartments, its working class-population, its blue collar bars/coffee shops, its backyard workshops, its good, ol’ boys drinking beer on the door-steps, its restaurants allowing smoking after your meal, and a lot of the old tolerance, as the city has been turned into Big Mother Wallpaper Visitation Zone."

BBQ

2009-04-29T00:32:00.004+02:00

Today in the mailbox, an invitation to a barbeque:

- Saturday 2nd of May 7 pm
- Garden Diakoni
- Please bring your own cows and pigs to torture on the BBQ
- Please bring your own drinks to forget that you've just been torturing

Written by Noor, a vegetarian indeed. She's leaving in one week, the first of my international friends to go back home (eventhough in this case the label 'international' doesn't really apply since Noor is Belgian - so far the possibility to keep my knowledge of the Dutch language alive). She will be going back to Belgium by bike (a trip of around 800 km in two weeks). Well, that's what I call finishing in style.

Classified pictures

2009-04-28T20:56:00.010+02:00

A nice picture, taken yesterday evening, waiting to watch Into The Wild with some friends. I would not be surprised to be turned into a eighties poster soon. And I seem to be around many good photographers lately, particularily on enjoying spring in Copenhagen-moments. The result of their work can be admired on picasa.

A Quote

2009-04-26T02:44:00.003+02:00

A striking quote from the ethography currently on my bookshelf:

Several weeks after my return I phoned the friend whose conversation had sent me to the field in the first place.
'Ah, you're back.'
'Yes.'
'Was it boring?'
'Yes.'
'Did you get very sick?'
'Yes.'
'Did you bring back notes you can't make head or tail of and forget to ask all the important questions?'
'Yes.'
'When are you going back?'
I laughed feebly. Yet six months later I returned to Dowayoland.

(From: Nigel Barley. The innocent anthropologist, Notes from a mud hut.)

Wednesday Morning, 3am

2009-04-26T01:19:00.003+02:00

Copenhagen turns out to be a good city for (cheap) music and movies. My recent discoveries:

LP's for less than 20kr. (ca. 3 euro)

In the category 5 dvd's for 100 kroner

Summertime

2009-04-25T20:42:00.004+02:00

Along with the Danes, I get kind of excited by the twenty degrees celcius in Copenhagen, which should be the equivalent of Danish summer (I guess it is kind of worrysome that I write about the weather here so much, anyhow)...

Key words: lazy park afternoons, barbeques, suburban cycle tours, dinner and chess on the balcony.

But also: spending many afternoons inside, waiting for customers who are taking advantage of the sun.

Happy home

2009-04-21T13:38:00.003+02:00

"Well I left my happy home to see what I could find out
I left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out
Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there
Many stories told me of the way to get there"

- Cat Stevens -

Into the wild

2009-04-18T17:03:00.005+02:00

Today is the last day of my easter holidays. I spend the day on the terrace of our house, in the warm sun (though I have to admit there's a little wind tearing the temperature considerably down every once in a while).

Janika cuts my hair, Andreas listens to the afternoon's Bundesliga football on the radio, Tamas passes by to smoke a cigarette. We drink coffee and eat cookies from the bakery in Vimmerby (where I was last week).

I open my mailbox and am not even amazed to see that more than half of the 75 new e-mails are from Facebook. I upload pictures from Peter's visit, from the time I spent in Vimmerby and from the photoreportage made by Sim in the house where we stayed.

Arriving

2009-04-04T01:41:00.009+02:00

Today, I - finally - had the feeling that I could call the Copenhagen weather warm. With 14 degrees, I felt like joining the locals on the city's sidewalk terraces. I had my last shift before easter holidays, which I will partly spend in the village of Vimmerby (Sweden), the birthplace of Astrid Lindgren, and partly cruising around Copenhagen with a good friend from back home. I saw a good Danish folk music concert by Lotus Krokus, and am now writing these words on my balcony (which is now also an enjoyable place at 2 in the morning).

The last days, I (finally) had my on arrival training, in a town called Haslev, 60 kilometer out of Copenhagen. We had a good excursion to the impressive chalk cliffs of Stevns. I was quite inspired by hearing the experiences of other EVS volunteers (most of them are living in remote places in Jylland), and have now many new couch surfing addresses. A good time, of which the pictures are here.

Skåne

2009-03-25T14:11:00.006+01:00

Last weekend I spent touring around Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden that, together with greater Copenhagen, makes up the Øresund region. I slept in the old university town of Lund (with one of the largest - and oldest - universities of Sweden, academic bookstores and student bars were omnipresent), in an old nighttrain that is now rebuilt into the Train Hostel (my photo's are here).

After a walk around town (the historic center of Lund really isn't that large) I took an afternoon train to Landskrona – in summer probably the crown of the land, indeed. But in last weekends' five degrees windy drizzling it is a disappointingly boring seaside village – only really worth visiting for the view on the beautiful island of Ven, just off the coast, and on the Danish riviera just across the Øresund.

And I hopped on a random train, to end up in Höör. After consultation with the local tourist office (the tourist office lady even drew a personalized walking tour on my map), it became clear (at least for her) that it was the right decision to take a train to her beautiful town. Höör turns out to be the place where the stones for Lund cathedral were dug up, where there's a conditori with good coffee and, of course most important... just north of the city center, the geographic middle point of Skåne is to be found.

It was really nice, though, to escape from big city life for a few days. Particularily in Höör, I was reminded of the fact that there is still something we call nature - in this case forests, hills and lakes (something I easily tend to forget in the Copenhagen concrete jungle that isn't really spoiled with natural scenery - as a Norwegian acquintance of mine tends to say).

In the news - part2

2009-03-14T15:43:00.007+01:00

On thursday, Cafe Retro was honored by an article (including a picture of Pierre, my French colleague, and Rie, founder of the cafe) on the front page of Politiken, the second-bestselling newspapers in Denmark. Eventhough the text is in Danish, I will post it anyway - basically the article is about the boom in workplaces exposing an idealist edge, of which Retro is a good example.

Boom i idealistiske virksomheder
Firmaer med et godgørende formål skyder op som aldrig før. Hjulpet på vej af den økonomiske krise, der får forbrugerne til at stille krav. Af Michael Lund
Café Retro i København sender overskuddet videre til nødlidende i den tredje verden. Forretningen går så godt, at foreningen bag den nu udvider med endnu en café. - Foto: Finn Frandsen

iDet kan være en god forretning at kæmpe for en bedre verden.

Mens dansk erhvervsliv generelt er ramt af en dyb krise med dalende iværksætterlyst og et rekordhøjt antal konkurser, går det den stik modsatte vej for virksomheder, der har et idealistisk formål. Det er meldingen fra Center for Socialøkonomi, som rådgiver firmaer med en socialøkonomisk profil.

For tiden etableres der hver uge i gennemsnit tre virksomheder med hjælp fra centeret. Det er et langt højere antal end for et halvt år siden, og udviklingen tager fart måned for måned. Virksomhederne er kendetegnet ved at have et idealistisk formål – såsom at skaffe job til samfundets svage eller give overskuddet til godgørende formål.

»Interessen for at etablere socialøkonomiske virksomheder tog for alvor fart i sidste kvartal af 2008, og siden jul er det nærmest eksploderet med nye henvendelser fra interesserede iværksættere. Det overraskende er, at det sker på trods af den økonomiske krise«, siger Lars René Petersen, direktør for Center for Socialøkonomi.

Centret blev stiftet for et år siden og har foreløbigt hjulpet 140 iværksættere.

Breder sig til flere kommuner
Fænomenet er som noget nyt også ved at brede sig til landets kommuner. Foreløbig har fire kommuner nedfældet en decideret socialøkonomisk vækststrategi for at tiltrække virksomhederne. Og fire kommuner er på vej med lignende tiltag.

En af dem er Kolding Kommune, hvor man håber, at de idealistiske virksomheder kan hjælpe med at skaffe svage borgere et job. Kommunen har ladet sig inspirere af den sydengelske by Brighton, der efter flere års indsats i dag har 110 socialøkonomiske firmaer med en omsætning på i alt 210 millioner kroner årligt.

»Så erfaringerne fra Brighton viser, at der faktisk er gode penge i det her. Dels skaber virksomhederne i sig selv vækst og omsætning, og dels får man nogle svage borgere i arbejde, som ellers skulle have været forsørget af kommunen«, siger Bent Leon Nilsen, der er formand for erhvervsorganisationen Business Kolding.

Han forventer, at kommunen om et år vil have ti socialøkonomiske firmaer med en samlet omsætning i millionklassen.

Cafe sender penge til nødlidende
Café Retro i indre København er et eksempel på en virksomhed med et idealistisk formål. Caféen sender overskuddet til nødlidende i den tredje verden, og forretningen går så godt, at foreningen bag den nu udvider med endnu en café.

»Antallet af kunder er steget helt vildt de sidste par år, det samme er vores omsætning. Jeg tror, at mange danskere på det seneste er blevet mere bevidste om at bruge deres penge på noget, der giver en større mening«, siger Rie Skårhøj, der er formand i foreningen.

Reaktion på den økonomiske krise
Professor John Parm Ulhøi, der er ekspert i iværksætteri ved Handelshøjskolen, Aarhus Universitet, ser udviklingen som en reaktion fra forbrugerne på krisen:

»Krisen er jo et vink med en vognstang om, at forbrugere og virksomheder er nødt til at ændre adfærd. Mange forbrugere gør op med ’brug og smid væk’-kulturen og prioriterer de mest nødvendige produkter – og helst dem, der er fremstillet på en bæredygtig og socialt ansvarlig måde«, siger han.

In the news - part1

2009-03-14T15:22:00.006+01:00

In the news last week: Copenhagen turns out to be the city with the highest quality of life (for expats, at least). The top three is completed by... Antwerp and Brussels, by coincidence both located in the country that, as for now, we like to call Belgium.

After Copenhagen, Antwerp and Brussels have highest quality of life for expats
According to Study by ECA International, Copenhagen, Antwerp and Brussels (in that order) are the cities with the highest quality of life. Antwerp jumped from number 5 to number 2. It is the second year in a row that Copenhagen came out first. ECA International is a service provider that advises companies who employ expatriates around the world. Every year they rank cities that are most expatriate-friendly. In order to do this, ECA rates 254 cities using criteria such as climate, air quality, access to medical care, public transport, social life and entertainment, the infrastructure, safety and finally political tension. The results enable companies to calculate remuneration for expatriates and their families.
Gazet van Antwerpen /Kempen ; Friday 13 March 2009 ; p.3

Vitamine D3

2009-03-11T01:05:00.007+01:00

View from our balcony. With some sunshine behind the buildings.

After a longer period of feeling not too well (to use an understatement), I decided to get done with that story. I got a blood test. The results came in today. Turns out I have a shortage of vitamine D3, which is mainly to be found in... sunlight. Now, with a Danish winter just behind, that explains a lot.

By coincidence, today turned out to be a pretty sunny day (which in Denmark means it is possible to see the sun behind the clouds at least some time during the day). I took the doctor's advice and went for a cycling tour around the city.

On picasa, todays pictures. Which reminds me of the fact that the pictures of february are also online, namely here (I have to admit, though, that I stole most of those from Michaelia's camera when she was visiting).

La Fontaine

2009-03-10T14:10:00.003+01:00

Around the corner from my working place, a good after-work spot is to be found. La Fontaine is the oldest Copenhagen jazz bar, with live music every Sunday from 9pm. Last weekend, I went to see the regulars playing their standards, accompanied by three young guys (I guess they were not older than 17) jamming way past midnight. So far, so good.

One day, however, I was there with my mother, Dominique and my 10 years old brother Sim. After a long day of sightseeing, Sim fell asleep on the bench. The bartender immediately drew our attention to the fact that customers are not allowed to sleep in La Fontaine (imagine drunk customers using the principle of equality to fall asleep as well). Well, that's what I would call arrogance.

Ørestad

2009-03-09T13:20:00.008+01:00

VM-houses in Ørestad. Picture from wikipedia.

With spring arriving (and being outside for a couple of hours actually being enjoyable), I start discovering many new places. I spent a sunny afternoon in the Danish Jewish museum (designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect of the new WTC site in New York), where I saw the propaganda film made in Theresienstadt during WWII for the first time, and I accompanied my brother to the H.C. Andersen Eventyrhuset (a big joke, really).

And for the first time ever, I was so amazed by an exposition (Yes is More, in the Danish Architecture Centre) that I actually bought the catalog afterwards. In the narrative style of Frank Miller (known from the dark comic film Sin City), Yes is More tells the story of how the idea for postmodern city quarters got shape. One of these postmodern city quarters is currently in development just a couple of metrostops away from downtown Copenhagen. The development site is to be the new home for 70.000 inhabitants and to an enormous shopping centre, ironically called Fields. The site is called Ørestad, and as I browse through the wikipedia page, I learn that the masterplan was drawn by... Daniel Libeskind.

Whereas I really enjoyed his Jewish museum, I am not sure what to think of his plans with Ørestad. A place that used to be a natural reserve just next to the city, but now turned into a social experiment where the symbiosis between various city functions is to be artificially recreated on micro (one building) level. I took a walk around the buildings, and sure: the idea behind the buildings is impressive. But it has a very absurd feel to it. No restaurants, no cafés, no street life what so ever. Then, I do prefer to spend some time in Kalvebod Fælled (the nature reserve just next to Ørestad), which used to be a military shooting ground - for which reason The Rough Guide to Copenhagen advises to stick to the marked paths.

WildCard

2009-03-03T00:44:00.004+01:00

"With DSB WildCard you can now visit your beloved ones all over the country with a 50% discount"

A commercial for the Danish Railways, which (I guess) would not be tolerared in many places (I'm reminding the scandal surrounding the 'pornographic movie' planned by Belgian radio station Studio Brussel around valentine day), but in Denmark it seems to be absolutely fine. Well, now that is something I do like about Denmark very much.

National Gallery

2009-03-01T03:22:00.002+01:00

Copenhagen snow

2009-02-19T22:20:00.015+01:00

(photo made by Daniel K.)

Winter time finally really arrived. After a long period of windy, half-rainy, half-snowy and dark days, the weather finally turned to the point where winter becomes enjoyable. A week of snowfall during the night and sun during the day turned Copenhagen into a white fairytale-like place.

Tonight, FC København was playing against Manchester City (EUFA Cup) at Parken, the city's football stadion. During the afternoon, Manchester-supporters started crowding the city. Even some entered Café Retro, though they decided that the place did not exactly have the atmosphere they were looking for, after which I directed them to the Irish pub just around the corner.

Last week I was particularily happy to be born in a place like Belgium. Somehow, the topic of compulsory military service (which in Belgium was abandoned some time ago) came up in three situations. As I believe I mentioned before, many of the German volunteers here are taking a year of voluntary work (after finishing high school) abroad instead of the military service. A Greek friend just explained me that in Greece it is impossible to object to the service on moral grounds. And I was speaking to a friend who currently does not have the possibility to call her brother because he's taking the (compulsory) military service in a war zone. And I still believe that I'm changing the world by selling coffees.

And, to conclude, the short news. The tiredness remains, but that seems to be a common phenomenon. Everyone I ask 'how are you?' answers 'good... but tired'. Since I missed most of the lectures of the Danish language course, I am starting all over next week. And there are some new pictures (somehow I deleted all the pictures I took since I arrived here, so the ones I put online are really recent, and half of them are stolen from people who are smart enough not to delete their pictures).

Bike culture

2009-02-15T04:06:00.007+01:00

Yesterday I learned a new word. Bike culture. Since I grew up in a country with a blooming bike culture as well, I never even realized that some people really see cycling as a cultural practice. Cycling is cycling - that's all. However, in a country where 5.5 million inhabitants share around 2 million cars (according to The Portrait of a Dane in the Copenhagen Post), cycling must be a big thing. Some Copenhageners even devote a weblog to the topic. My favourite:

"Each and every day 500,000 people ride their bicycle to work or school in Copenhagen. This blog highlights who they are, why they do and how it was made possible." (copenhagenize.com)

Ithaca (Constantin Kavafis)

2009-02-12T02:20:00.001+01:00

As you set out to Ithaca
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery,
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always on your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

Belgium in town

2009-02-11T16:47:00.003+01:00

The last two weeks were pretty 'Belgian' and busy. I had three visitors from Belgium, they brought me the stories from back home, the newspapers, the dialect, Blonde Leffe and Duvel. Even more, they brought me the feeling of being a local. They made me realize that, actually I do know much about this city already, I did gather a selection of nice spots to spend some time and I lived a part of my life (be it a short part) here.

Music

2009-02-08T15:16:00.004+01:00

A selection of the music played during an average bar shift:

1962-1966 (The Red Album) - The Beatles
Automatic for the People - R.E.M.
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan
Ganze Velt - Klezmofobia (my personal favourite)

Culture Shock

2009-01-26T02:59:00.004+01:00

"In later years, in a half-dozen other countries, we would come to recognize the symptoms, for they are common enough in fieldwork to have been given a name: "culture shock", a syndrome experienced in one form or another by all anthropologists. Our attack was late in coming.

Culture schock may develop anywhere from a week to several months after a move to another culture. Men and women develop a demoralizing sense of inadequacy, of hovering between a familiar way of life, from which they are removed, and a new world to which they cannot really belong. Diplomats, peace corps workers, business people abroad, and even those tourists who get off the packaged routes experience culture schock.

Depending on many things, including one's temparament (Type A personalities are definitely at risk), sense of humor (which is likely to convert to an acid tongue), time, and luck sooner or later, culture shock strikes. Professionals struggle with dark fears of failure too dreadful and damning to articulate;

Some form of crisis eventually peaks, and either it is passed succesfully or the sufferer throws in the towel and goes home. For the anthropologist, there is nothing ever so engulfing again as first culture shock. (...)

There were ten days during which we could do nothing right, and wound up wondering if we hadn't really hopelessly botched the whole damn Taarnby project. Nor did we recognise these frustrations for what they were, the deepest phase of culture shock."

first fieldwork, the misadventures of an anthropologist, Barbara Gallatin Anderson

In Bruges

2009-01-20T00:55:00.008+01:00

Today in my mailbox: pictures of Bruges in wintertime, made by one of my homies. Honestly, I do realize once again now that I grew up in a beautiful city. A selection:

German volunteers

2009-01-19T20:08:00.003+01:00

At dinner, I sat around a table with one Armenian and five German volunteers. After some smalltalk, a quite interesting discussion developed about the issue of the large percentage of German volunteers in projects abroad. Obviously the gathered guests came up with quite logical explanations (the small distance between Denmark and Germany, the large population of Germany in general, perhaps also the small distance between the German and English language). But perhaps there is more. One German girl saw the big historical consciousness of Germans (i.e. concerning the second world war) as an important factor. Perhaps also the obligatory military service (which can be replaced by a voluntary service) plays a role. And for me, also the money is an important factor: as Germans are in general quite richer than inhabitants of other parts of our world, it is obviously more easy for many of them to donate a year of their time (with a sponsorship from family, for example).

Varia

2009-01-16T14:39:00.005+01:00

The tiredness did not go away. It got even worse - to a point where there is no logical connection between my physical efforts and the degree of tiredness. Which is a quite unconcrete complaint, I do know. Sometimes I'm fine for hours, then I get really tired from something which takes only a minor effort. I guess it is time to see a doctor again. Getting an appointment with a doctor in this country, by the way, is much more difficult than I ever imagined (particularly taking into consideration that the Danish health care system is considered to be one of the best in the world): it took me about ten calls to finally get an appointment (and not even one for the same day, eventhough I called at 8am).

And the non-medical news: the working days started again after the holidays (well, holidays) and there was a open air music-, light- and art-festival (City Lights) with a quite illegal (I guess) afterparty under a bridge, which was really cool. Pictures made by Noor are to be found here (I was too lazy to make some myself).

And in exactly 48 minutes a week of 'mid term evaluation' is starting. Quite funny: I am here for less than two months now and there is not so much to evaluate.

Human progress

2009-01-10T19:36:00.005+01:00

The fever is gone, but I am still incredibly tired. Last week, the Danish state administration granted me permission to do voluntary work on their territory (for which I even received a ID-like card). I had to register myself at the city hall, due to which I am now officially a resident of Frederiksberg, the fiscal paradise where Copenhagen's rich and famous found a safe place for their earnings (taxes here are considerably lower, I heard, and the city council is liberal and conservative - as opposed to the social democrats who are populating Copenhagen's city council). The process of registration is very much presented as a privilege, as if they are doing me a favour. And this part, I don't really understand: I always thought that the fact that I am a EU citizen gives me the right to work wherever I would like to (in the EU, that is).

Today I took a walk at the artificial beach next to Kastrup Airport. The desolated strip of sand and the concrete structures had a very absurd look to it. The view of landing airplanes around sunset was quite impressive. I went home by metro (the metro here is operated by a remote computer rather than by a driver) and ate some food which is probably genetically modified. There are those days when it appears to me that we do live in a postmodern, urban jungle. On the upside: the pictures are already online.

New Year in Copenhagen

2009-01-04T21:44:00.002+01:00

New Years eve: a party with the international volunteers (at home) and watching fireworks in the city.

New Years day: picking up my bike in the city. The roads were full of broken bottles, demolished phonecells, broken shop windows, and fireworks. The fireworks (which started more than a week before new year) are still lighting the air from time to time, even today.

The rest of the week I spent in bed with a high fever. Today (a sunday) things got worse, I even managed to talk myself into seeing a doctor (like many people, I am not very fond of visiting them). After a long phonecall with the doctors-on-duty-service, I found out that the one located closest to my room actually has his office in the same building as where I live (the house is an old hospital building which now houses an elderly home, a kindergarten, a school, a church, etc., and, apparantly, a hospital).

The doctor prescribed me 2-3 more days of relaxing. My lungs and breath sounded fine (that is a relieve). And I have all symptoms of a flew epidemia which is going through Denmark now. So, probably, that's it.

I am not looking forward to another 2-3 days of obligatory relaxing. I finished most of my reading material. And my dvd-player is out of order (good timing). But on the other hand, my flatmates didn't forget me, knocking on the door every couple of hours to see if I need something.

Lost Days

2008-12-30T01:30:00.000+01:00

I never really like the days between Christmas and New Year. These days are lost. Everyone considers the last year to be pretty much over and starts preparing for the fireworks-lead rite of passage to something new. The plans for New Year's eve seem to be the one and only topic worth discussing. I never really planned New Year's eve more than one week in advance, but the endless stream of people asking for my plans finally got me to actually make plans as well (eating with colleagues at Retro, fireworks at Rådhuspladsen, a couple of parties to chose from afterwards).

The city is empty now. Many Copenhageners (and also most of the volunteers) went to visit their families out of the city. Not many things are going on. I spend much time with Andreas and Pierre (the other volunteers who decided to stay here during holidays), we have film nights, play chess and found out that, last Saturday night, Copenhagen nightlife was completely non-existent.

My visitors got me to read The Rough Guide to Copenhagen, and there seem to be a lot of things definitely worth visiting - the Danish Jewish Museum, the Labour movement museum, the museum of Freedom and Cinemateket being first on my wish list. Sounds like a good New Years resolution.

One week of tourism

2008-12-27T17:32:00.004+01:00

My mother, Dominique and Sim were here. Which means, finally a good excuse for some tourism. What we saw.

Obviously, Tivoli, one of the oldest theme parks in the world
Walk along Stroget, Kgs. Nytorv and Nyhavn, Copenhagen's 'must see' sequence of streets
The change of the royal guards at Amalienborg. Because it was Chrismas, the royal baker was also present with a Chrismas cake (a present from the queen to the guards)
The little mermaid, the most overrated city emblem in the world, according to my guests
A trip with the harbour bus, a boat which operates as a regular public transport line
Ecological beer in the freetown of Christiania
A walk along the five lakes, a break in the Botanical Garden and a movie at Grand Teater (Maradona by Kusturica)
A day at the Experimentarium

A selection of photo's is on picasa now, and more news on how a stranger in this city will celebrate the end of the year will be online soon.

Disko Partizani (Shantel)

2008-12-19T03:41:00.006+01:00

A song I re-discovered surfing the net, bored of just being sick. Wonderful Istanbul and the suggestion of a brass band on the background, I feel like drinking coffee along the Bosphorus or passing time on a beach along the Danube.

Yes, Copenhagen is cold, windy and rainy these days - and that does not fit very well with being ill.

Sick

2008-12-17T15:41:00.006+01:00

I am quite sick. I stay in bed, drink tea and take the time to write a serious contribution on this weblog. Finally.

My life here has been quite busy. I spend most of my time working in the Café, but I enjoy it. I share many shifts with Lucie and Pierre (my EVS colleagues). Well, since I know they both read this weblog, I am obviously not going to say a bad word about them – no, seriously, I enjoy working with these guys. They are both quite crazy in many ways and that is exactly what makes every shift a time to look forward to, The evenings and the weekends are mostly shared with Danish volunteers who devote a free evening to the Café every once in a while. It is always a surprise for me to see who I'm going to work with, but actually all the shifts I had so far, were real fun.

The language course is good. I start to catch some words. A quite interesting thing happened. When in the Polish lectures (which I took two years ago when I was living in Kraków) the family tree was presented, I was never informed about how to name a stepfamily in Polish. In the Danish course of last week, the opposite thing happened. When being introduced to the stamtavlen, the different ways of saying stepfamily came along in a quite natural way (neutral: sted-, positive: bonus-, negative: pap- or plastic-). On the downside, the book we use in the language course features the very stereotyped familien Jensen and even more stereotyped neighbours (Ali and Ayse from Turkey), which seems to be a typical story of family re-union.

The issue of languages is getting quite interesting. Of course I communicate in English for ninety procent of the time here. Besides, I try to improve my French (mainly with Pierre), I try to catch some words in Czech (with Lucie), in Danish (with pretty much everybody here) and in German (with the German EVS volunteers living on my floor). Only speaking Dutch seems to be totally out of the question: I only speak it with Noor (I guess we must be the only two Belgian EVS volunteers in this country), and even then we switch to English from the moment a non-Dutch-speaker is around.

It is, by the way, quite interesting to see that Flemish and Dutch are considered to be two different languages (whereas I believe that these languages are actually quite the same). During the language course, I presented myself as a Dutch-speaker from Belgium, on which the teacher tried to convince me that I speak Flemish, not Dutch. This happened in my Polish language course as well, so now I am a bit confused. but for now I keep insisting that I do speak Dutch, not Flemish.

Somehow I did not manage to do any sightseeing at all. The time I planned to spend on that during the first days somehow disappeared while looking for a less noisy room, meeting new people and finding my way to new shops and bars. Now I am here for almost a month, the excuse (and the motivation) to spend a day on straightforward tourism is gone. So now I am waiting for the visit of friends and family, which will give me a good excuse to finally see the Little Mermaid, take a boattrip on ther canals and get into Tivoli.

On the other hand, yesterday I ended up in Roskilde (the city 30 km from Copenhagen most famous for the music festival) quite unexpectedly. After cleaning the bar, a colleague and me wanted to go for a drink. As we drove along a street called Roskildevej (by bike, obviously) we suddenly ended up at the city border without noticing the bar we were looking for. Eventhough it was probably freezing, we got the crazy idea to cycle on and go for a beer in Roskilde (a street called Roskildevej is supposed to end up in Roskilde, right?). Which we accomplished (by the way, beers in Roskilde are almost half of the price of beers in Copenhagen).

Copenhagen is expensive. I am not surprised anymore when I go into 7eleven (the cornershop opened 24/7, there are at least five of those on the way from my flat to work) and pay 37 kroner (this is about 5 euro) for a Carlsberg beer and a bag of crisps. But I was very happy to find out that there is both an Aldi and a Lidl store at walking-and-carrying-10kgs-of-food-distance from my new home.

New pictures (I do try to avoid the tilted ones, from now on) are on picasa now.

Run

2008-12-13T18:29:00.004+01:00

With Christmas arriving shortly, days seem to be too stort. Christmas shoppers started dropping into the café in between their obligatory shopping adventures on Strøget, the main shopping street, just around the corner from the café. Today (a saturday) was the most busy working day so far. I did not even have the time to take a 5 minute coffee break. But at least the day went by really fast.

Tonight there is an EVS party at the place where I am living now (the room is really great, by the way). So I got to run again. But I will write more soon.

Picasa

2008-12-06T13:50:00.008+01:00

I created a photo album on picasaweb.google.com/jensverlinde. Pictures from Poland and the journey to Copenhagen are online now, others will be any time soon.

Good news: on monday I am moving to a new room, located 15 minutes by bike from the Café. I will be living with other EVS-volunteers there. And I imagine it will be much more silent. I am looking forward, and guess I will survive for the weekend.

Plans for the weekend: a lazy saturday afternoon, cleaning the kitchen, Julefrokost (the typical Danish Christmas dinner) organized by Retro in the evening, making Danish homework, packing to move to my new room.

One week

2008-12-04T10:50:00.004+01:00

I am in Copenhagen for more than one week now. The work has started. I believe I am getting handy with the routine of running a bar. Somehow, I enjoy it. The language courses have started. I am attending classes with ten girls who are au pair here. Which probably means that I'll be quite fluent in household-, cooking-, shopping- and babysitting-vocabulary soon. But I do see the absurd fun of it. And the good thing: my classmates are probably practicing much during their everyday tasks, so I better get started practicing as well.

The room is still a problem. During the last week, I did not sleep too much. I am really quite tired. But it seems like we are working on a solution to find another room soon. I keep my fingers crossed for that.

Administration

2008-12-01T16:49:00.003+01:00

Arranged:
a Danish phone number, subscribing to the Danish language course (starting tomorrow), a bike, the work schedule for the first week (starting tomorrow as well), location of the closest shops

In progress:
bank account, registration of residence, euro-26 card

"Cultures in my street"

2008-11-27T17:08:00.008+01:00

Today I visited the closing session of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Many things seemed interesting (how about the organisation for cultural exchange with Greenland, for example?), but especially the exhibition of the photo competition Cultures On My Street drew my attention. A selection of the pictures:

Rozmowa o... (Photographer: Łukasz Majer, Poland)

Wheel of frienship (Photographer: Lucian Enasoni, Romania)

Lifetalk (Photographer: Egils Krutovs, Latvia)

First impressions

2008-11-26T19:30:00.006+01:00

After a whole day of running around, I finally find some time to write down the first impressions.

To start with the train-ride: actually I never had the impression of traveling for 20 hours. I guess I switched off the 'keeping track of time'-modus. I had a beer with the other passengers in my compartment (a Danish couple, a German lady and two girls from the Netherlands) and actually slept pretty well.

My first 24 hours in Copenhagen were more than satisfactory. Anna, one of the responsibles of Café Retro, waited for me at the railway station. We had breakfast and an introduction to the work in the Café, the people around and about living in the house. I share the house with Pierre, my French colleague in the café, and with some other volunteers, who are mostly connected to projects in Christiania, a neighbourhood in Copenhagen with relative authonomy.

In the evening, Pierre took me for a tour around the city, ending up in The Moose, a bar of which I suspect it could become my favorite very soon. Drinks are rather cheap and I was very happy to hear Johnny Cash's version of Personal Jesus when I opened the door. The visuals of the version you find here are pretty bad, though (I did not find another version).

In the morning, I discovered what Pierre meant when he said that my room is 'pretty noisy': the kitchen is located just two meters above my bed, which means that I woke up at 9 (i.e. at the time when the first of my flatmates took breakfast). Had a meeting about the paperwork, went to open a bank-account. Walked a lot. Pretty full day. Time for dinner.

PL - DK

2008-11-25T19:38:00.006+01:00

As you can see, I integrated quite well with the locals in the Tatra mountains.

I arrived to Copenhagen this morning. So far, all goes well. I'm extremely tired, so I'll just get myself something to eat, a beer and a lot of sleep. More news, any time soon.

Laundry Day

2008-11-24T14:02:00.005+01:00

In between two loads of laundry, I finally force myself too sit down for five minutes. After arriving to Bruges yesterday around 10pm, I am leaving the city again in less than two hours. The last moments in the places I love are always strange. Time is always limited (in the first place because I try to make these moments as short as possible).

Do I still have time to visit someone? Shall I go to the bank and get out some money or can I leave that for later? Should I make myself a couple of sandwiches or will I buy them on the way? Did I really pack everything I need? Passport? Travel documents?

Goodbye, once more

2008-11-22T22:11:00.004+01:00

I am sitting in the dining room of Pension Bernadeta, the hotel where the project on ecology took place. Around me: sounds of Polish on the couch behind me. An animated discussion in Italian between seven Italian guys sitting around an oversized pizza (very Italian, indeed), in front of me. An English joke at my right hand side. Snow outside the window at the left. The project is about to finish. Two days of intensive travel are about to start. An impression:

Saturday evening - a goodbye party in Zakopane, Poland
Saturday night - a bus ride through Slovakia
Sunday morning - breakfast in Budapest, Hungary
Sunday afternoon - a quick dinner (durum) in the overcrowded railway station of Charleroi, Belgium
Sunday evening - a beer on my couch in Bruges, Belgium
Monday afternoon - a coffee with my brother, mother and Dominique in Brussels, Belgium
Monday evening - one hour to spend in Cologne, Germany
Tuesday morning - arrival to Copenhagen, Denmark

More news after my arrival there. A goodbye party is waiting for me!

Saying goodbye - the facts, the figures

2008-11-14T18:52:00.005+01:00

A week of saying goodbye (a word I don't like that much, but lacking an alternative, I keep using it) in this occasion means:

15 coffees and 30 cups of tea (29 mint and 1 vanilla)
7 train tickets
1 lunch and 3 dinners
1 exhibition - Decolonizing Architecture at Bozar, Brussels
2 parties and 1 concert of Cocktail Dress
2 movies (Loft and Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and a 40-minute walk back home through the pouring rain when I discovered that the 1:00 AM bus does not run on public holidays
2 autumn walks - 1 along de Vesten (the old fortification wall of Bruges), 1 around the Coupure in Ghent

Luggage

2008-11-13T18:27:00.005+01:00

One hundred days became twenty-four. Twenty-four turned into nine. And now, only two-and-a-half days are left. Time to start packing. Limited space (two big bags, one small), limited weight (not the 20kg limit of an airline this time - only the one set by my own capacity to carry the kilo's around; this is the advantage of taking a train, not an airplane).

Clothes are easy (I take pretty much all I have), shoes as well (people possessing only three pairs generally don't have a hard time to consider how many of them to take along). Laptop, passport, mobile phone, address book and documents don't need much consideration either. Books (I limit myself to 10), music (limit: 25, only the discs, not the boxes), pictures (limit still to be considered) and the like give me a much harder time.

A Polish stop-over

2008-11-06T13:29:00.004+01:00

The 24 days before I'm leaving Belgium (this beautiful country, as a friend of mine likes to call it) slowly disappear. Only 19 are left. That may look like my time here is limited, but 19 days to pack luggage, empty the bookshelf and have goodbye parties with friends, is far too much. I'm just killing time, somehow.

Quite unexpected, I got the possibility to leave a week earlier and make a stop-over on the way. I will join a youth project on ecology for some days in Biały Dunajec, a small village in the Polish Tatra mountains, close to the hugely popular tourist destination Zakopane.

This implies that, in the end, I do have quite limited time to prepare.

Finally

2008-11-05T12:29:00.001+01:00

On the Bookshelf

2008-11-01T14:33:00.017+01:00

The Rough Guide to Copenhagen

Quite simple: must have!
[Mouritsen, L. & Osborne, C. (2007). The Rough Guide to Copenhagen. New York: Rough Guides.]

Denemarken (ANWB travel guide)

1995 travel guide, 1 euro at a flea market. Totally outdated, but a rather interesting, old fashioned history lecture about kings, queens, vikings and long forgotten poets.
[Hoogendoorn, H. (1995). Denemarken. Den Haag: ANWB.]

Falling Off the Map - Some Lonely Places of the World

A travel diary about the most absurd places in the world. A sweet memory from Massolit, a great bookstore in Kraków.
[Iyer, P. (1993). Falling Off the Map - Some Lonely Places of the World. New York: Knopf.]

Europe, a History

The reference on European history. Gets boring from time to time, but it is a quite important book to understand the general framework.
[Davies, N. (1997). Europe, a History. London: Pimlico.]

The Cultural Guide to Jewish Europe

The heritage of a world that once was.
[Lévy-Willard Foundation (2004). The Cultural Guide to Jewish Europe. California: Chronicle books.]

Teach Yourself Danish

In four weeks?! Yeah, right.
[Elsworth, B. (2003). Teach Yourself Danish. London: Hodder headline Ltd.]

T-Kit 5: International Voluntary Service

The basics of working abroad as a volunteer. The theory of intercultural learning, working in various languages, ...
[Geudens, T. (ed.) (2002). T-Kit on International Voluntary Service. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.]

Creative Copenhagen: Globalization, Urban Governance and Social Change

The forces of globalization, the democratic deficit and the rise of social inequality? No, the picture is not good in Copenhagen either.
[Hansen, A., Andersen, H. & Clark, E. (2001). Creative Copenhagen: Globalization, Urban Governance and Social Change. European Planning Studies, 9 (7), 851-869.]

'But Suppose Everyone Did the Same' - The Case of the Danish Utopian Micro-Society of Christiania

A utopian society that survives for over 30 years? Worth studying a bit deeper. To be continued.
[Midtgaard, S. (2007). 'But Suppose Everyone Did the Same' - The Case of the Danish Utopian Micro-Society of Christiania. Journal of Applied Phylosophy, 24 (3), 299-315.]

24

2008-10-31T16:04:00.006+01:00

In exactly twenty-four days from now, I'm leaving to Denmark, where I will participate in a EVS (European Voluntary Service) project for ten months. I will work in Retro, a non-profit café in Copenhagen. It is, like always when I travel, hard to imagine what to expect. I am, however, very much looking forward.