The COP15 Post

It was really great to have something aside from Danish class to focus on leading up to the holidays. I volunteered with the english newspaper here and learned a thing or two. The publishing world intrigues me... especially in a foreign country. It's funny to compare the headlines in North America versus the headlines here. I find the danish media has less focus on the doom and gloom. And no one really cares about gossip... Who's Tiger Woods?

During the whole N1H1 scandal, the local scandal here was that all æbleskriver come from the same place! Æbleskriver is a fried dough dessert that all the groceries stores brand as their own during Christmas.

Here are some pics of my experience with the COP15. We had great bikes where we would put our papers each day and get out to the street, hand them out shouting "Get your english news, here!" It was inevitable that people would stop to chat with us, let us know what they were thinking and sometimes tell a little too much...

This is me on my bike on our way to one of the big protests. Check out the police officer with his pipe! We had to stop and grab a picture. And just for you Christine, "Hopenhagen" below!

This is not Denmark

Frozen lakes and bays... riding my bike has proved to be a bit of a challenge these days, when every few days we get a blanket of fresh snow!

Oh, what a night!

I've missed writing. Usually I go about my day and say to myself, "I should write about this on my blog". Then I think I'm such a good blogger, keeping my readers in mind ALL the time. For the last few weeks I fell out of routine. We had our first scheduled visitors, my brother and his fiancé Laura. We joked that they had this trip planned even before Chris & I confirmed we were moving here. I have always experienced the process of going to another country to visit family since we have always been sprawled across different countries but this was the first time I've been abroad and had family visit me. IT WAS SOOOO MUCH FUN! We laughed, we cried (due to laughter) and then laughed some more. Raul, how come are you so funny??!! It must be the stress of the engineering world that must have made you such a clown. In good planning practice, we had a full day by day itinerary scheduled. Some things we got to, others we didn't, simply because we were exhausted (from walking and the cold weather). Chris' brother Matt and girlfriend Marie were also able to join us so we had a full group. Copenhagen is extremely easy to tour with a group - especially in the middle of winter when tourism is low. Finding a table in a cafe was never an issue. Overall, I think they were all able to get a good vibe of what this city is all about - quaint, chilled and very pretty - graffiti and all.

Highlights definitely include new years eve. We had everyone over at our place for dinner. See:




But I think what everyone will remember are the fireworks. You see, there doesn't seem to be any regulations for fireworks in Denmark in terms of where you can set them off. So what you get is people setting them off EVERYWHERE!! Out of balconies, between cars on the roads, on the sidewalks, etc. If they all worked as they are supposed to this would be not be a problem but since they sometimes malfunction... well let me tell you - I am pretty sure we will all remember getting shot at by fireworks! One of the fireworks we lit in the park decided to explode sideways and made us run for cover! I have not run so fast since grade 6 track and field! I also haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Luckily Matt had picked up some safety googles for all of us so I think we were relatively safe. Aside from the risk of being burned! We headed into the city centre (cautiously) to see what was going on. I have never seen anything like it! Fireworks everywhere! A bar tender told us that the Danish spend 30 million krones on fireworks each new years. We sure saw it - from the pier - we had a 360 view of the city and it was amazing!

Can't wait to get the pics Matt (our photographer) took - stay tuned!

Also, very glad to report that the days seem to be getting longer already! It's almost 4pm and it's not dark yet!! So much daylight to look forward to in the coming months!!!