INTRODUCTION WEEK DAY 2

After the early waking of the previous day the Danes relaxed a little and arrange a lecture at 9. This lecture versed about Danes their customs and culture. This lecture was classified as “indispensable” by Kristian. I have to say that this is an adjective I tend to distrust due to the fact that is used by all the publishing houses and journals to promote books they have some interest on, and these books use to be unbearable. So I went to the lecture under the effect of this association. Once again, that’s what I thought after a 2 boring hours lecture. It doesn’t mean that Danish culture is boring at all. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just talking about the lecture per se.

After the lecture we went to sightsee the downtown of Copenhagen. I have to say that is way nicer than Helsinki. We were lucky and the sun was shining over us, so I couldn’t but take a siesta during the boat trip. I don’t really get why this is so funny to the foreigner eyes that they even took pictures of me while sleeping. I should introduce some professionals of the construction sector which have done an art out of the siesta in extreme spots. 

Once we were done with the boat trip we went to a free buffet. A free buffet without meat!!!! I felt devastated, after having waited for this moment the whole day. Not even a small chicken wing. I curse you vegetarians!!! And if there is any vegetarian reading this, I curse you twice!!! I don’t really care if there is people that prefers to cover their nutritional needs with disgusting and tasteless food supplements. But, having a jaw as a result of an omnivores feeding after millions of evolution years, I will curse the vegetarianism every time it interferes in my own meal.

We went to an open beer bar for free (well , technically it wasn’t free since we’ve paid 30€ for the introduction week) It was there when I though off my Rugby team mates “If my whole team was here we don’t even let the bricks standing) It was a night as any other, a little of music, a not that little beer, and going back home at the risky time of midnight (I will always say the same: no one parties like a Spanish)

Strange phenomenon that I cannot but notice, is the foreign taste for old fashioned Spanish music. You play them Bisbal and you get nothing, but you play “La Bamba” or “La Macarena” and they get crazy.

Introduction week. Day 1

8:30.That was the hour when those merciless Danes summoned us in the Sport hall. It is not that it’s hard to me to wake up that early, but come on! They could have taken easy. They welcomed us inside a great sport hall, which I wish we had back in the UPM. They split us in different groups depending if we are Master students or just exchange students. First fright, I do not appear in the list! It is what happens when you look at the wrong list. Once I find my table I head toward it and I find a folder on each chair containing a bunch of brochures with some useful information. Suddenly a guy appears and introduce himself as Kristian, my guide during this Introduction week. The rest of the group arrives and we are from very different places such as Germany, Italy, Greece (half of Greeks are here in DTU) Faroe Islands, Iceland, Mexico, Romania, Nepal and, of course, Spain.

After a light breakfast our guides gave us a tour all around the campus and this was the very first time I realized I was in an engineering school. The campus is divided in four quadrants with the Cartesians axis and you can locate every single building by its coordinates. It means that if you are looking for the building 134 you have to go to the third quadrant and (3,4) would be the coordinates in x and y axis respectively. Cool right? After this tour we came back to the Sport hall where we start a contest. We had some question and we had to go around the campus to find the answers.

After this we started the second task which is to build a bridge and a tower made by spaghetti and marshmallows. You can’t imagine how much pressure I had to suffer, they all turned at me and said “You’re the one studying Civil Engineering…” staring at me with “Oh master, enlighten us” so there I am cursing the time I decided to tell them what I was going to be studying at DTU. The torture lasted 40 minutes. I will safe you the pain of telling you the whole process. I have to say that was a really Spanish process, though. Hi! This is falling, use a patch. This is twisting! Another patch. So far so on till we got a patch made tower that ended collapsing under the inevitable certainty of our uselessness. My group looked at me completely desolated asking, what did we do wrong? The only thing I wanted to say was, have you seen those magnificent Quercus Robur just by the entry of the building…?

We ended up drinking some beers in the Student House, which humiliates any Spanish student association I had ever seen. Summarizing, a pretty good day.

That strange feeling

Have you ever had that feeling that in a short period of time so many things have occurred and your previous life seems far-off and diffuse? That’s what happened to me during my first days in Copenhagen. Let’s start from the beginning as is the point from every story should start.

August 26^th

My trip to Copenhagen started pretty bad due to this “nice and kind” Iberia staff lady, which made me open my suitcase just for 2kg of luggage excess. As you could imagine I was pretty mad at her but I did my best in order to change her mind. Like talking to a chair, I got nothing. But things got even worse when in one of the airports decided to use my suitcase as a punching bag to train Jiu Jitsu. 30 cm that was the length of the crack. One applies a force of 3000Kn and the suitcase breaks as easy as an egg (sarcasm mode)

“This cannot be worse” I thought. So naïve. Went we landed there was a perfect sunny day, like I was back in Spain, but when I got off the metro, taraaaaaaa! A tropical storm!! Then again sunny weather followed by a Vietnamese monsoon. To end this marvelous and unforgettable day I have to say that I arrived to my accommodation perfectly. And I say accommodation because I do not dare to call that a room. Sorry for you guys I won’t be able to host you here if you come to Denmark, to visit me.

August 27^th

 

After having arrived to a new country, any other person would visit the city, do paperwork, rest…but not me. I accepted, long time ago, that there’s something  wrong with me, so in my first day in Copenhagen I went to the first job interview in my whole life. It was for DLH, a company from the Danish Stock Exchange, which traded with timber. They asked me the usual stuff , “why do you apply?” “tell me something about you”, everything goes well  (that well that I even bragged saying look how much I know about wood that this table is made of Fagus Sylvatica) till the moment the guy ask me to show my Excel skills. Let’s just say that it didn’t go that well this time. “I would call you “ he said, mmm let me doubt it…

We’ll continue with the introduction week