Closing a triumphant year of success and adventure
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After returning from my holiday in Norway, I fell back into my work-study routine for the rest of 2016. Apart from the occasional bike trips to Bakken, or hang outs with my friends from university, the last months were fairly uneventful. It was soon time to close a triumphant year of success and adventure.
Work and study were intense through this period. I didn’t have any more courses, but I began thoroughly working on the samples collected in Iceland. Whenever I wasn’t working in the labs, I tried to read through one of the numerous scientific articles my supervisor had sent me. Apart from that, I had my part-time job and Danish language classes to fill my time. Whenever I’d manage to get a free day during the week, I’d try to hang out with friends. I remember being amused at one of my Danish friends, Irene, calling me a machine because it seemed like I wasn’t ever taking any breaks.
I was busier than ever and it felt great. It felt so rewarding! Having purpose, earning money, building my life and having more friends than ever.
The housing crisis is back
As busy as I had become, I had completely forgotten the unwritten terms of my then living arrangement. If you recall, I had moved in with one of my friends in early summer. However, the deal was supposed to be short term, while I find my own place. I was still looking, but not as hard as I should have. With everything else happening, looking for a new place had fallen to the bottom of my priority list. That’s until, Lasse gave me a wake-up call in November, which then really took me off guard.
I tried to figure out if there was an issue I could fix with him so that I could stay more, but the man simply wanted to go back to living alone. Which was completely understandable. Although I jokingly kept poking him for years later about that time he wanted to “kick me out on the streets”. Hehe… It wasn’t anything like that, of course (If you’re reading this Lasse, you know I love ya, buddy!). In any case, the pressure was on to find a new place to live. Not an easy feat in Copenhagen.
Farum
After quickly exhausting all possibilities in Copenhagen due to unavailability and pricing, I had to settle on moving out of the city. As long as I could live close to an S-train station, I could easily get in and out of the city. I ended up panic-agreeing to a basement apartment in a house to the west of Copenhagen. The price was a bit steep for me, but I was going to have a fairly large area to myself.
No written contract, just a trust-based payment. However, on second inspection, I found quite a few things that were off putting, like no toilet seat, very poor lighting throughout the day, dirty surroundings and a moldy smell. Oh and did I mention NO TOILET SEAT? That one really bothered me. But I had already sent those people my two month deposit.
Just as I was getting ready to move in, a much better offer had fallen into my lap through a friend of a friend from Romania. At the risk of losing my deposit, a substantial amount, I decided to cancel the first offer and go with the second. Thus, I ended up moving to Farum, a small town to the north of Copenhagen.
I had a nice clean room with a balcony and was sharing the lower part of an apartment with a neat and friendly Romanian guy. As for the other offer, well… I never saw my deposit again. Still worth it.
Holiday season
With the holiday season around the corner, I was planning to gift my mom a trip to Copenhagen so we could be together for Christmas. I wanted her to experience arriving in Denmark the same way I had, so a Norwegian Airlines flight from Budapest was the best option. I had also found a decently priced room in the WakeUpCopenhagen hotel, right in the city center. All she had to do was get herself to Budapest a couple of days before Christmas.
It was around that time that I had bought my second bike. A new one, fresh from the store. It was a simple city bike, but without all the quirks of “Shame“. So from that point on, Shame became the tourist bike I would lend out to anyone visiting me. Sometimes it was also the backup bike whenever my main one had a flat tire. Shame would never disappoint, despite it’s shameful name!
My mom was fairly quickly impressed with her experience, having appropriately flown on the “Hans Christian Andersen” plane from Norwegian Airlines. Old Andersen being one of her favorite authors growing up. She also enjoyed cycling, so Copenhagen’s extensive cycling culture was ideal for her.
Touring the city
During her few days there, I basically wanted to show her around as many places as I could. I would head back to Farum each evening and then take a train to Copenhagen the next morning. By the time I would arrive she would have had time to go through her morning routine, and then we’d have the entire day to cycle around.
We toured the Copenhagen Citadel, Amelienborg, Frederik’s Church, The King’s Garden and of course Nyhavn. I gave her a tour of my university campus as well. On another day we cycled all the way to my sanctuary at Charlottenlund beach. I probably also took her around Østerbro to show her where I used to live. It was basically a tour of my life for the past year and a half.
She enjoyed it very much. She also developed an odd love and fascination for canons, which were plentiful around the old city fortifications. Even to this day she gets excited whenever she sees an old canon or artillery piece displayed in a park.
We spent Christmas night in the hotel room. I was hoping to be able to go out for a nice dinner somewhere, but all restaurants were of course closed. The only thing I found open was my favorite Turkish kebab place. So we ended up ordering a pizza from there. A Christmas pizza!
On our last night, we visited Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli is basically an amusement park and my mom wasn’t really big on rides, or anything like that, but she was taken away by the decorations. She was snapping photos left and right at every little corner. Suffice to say, she had fallen in love with Denmark by this point.
Considering that my mom raves about that Copenhagen Christmas holiday to this day, I would say it was a resounding success.
New Years Eve
After Christmas had passed and my mom left, I went back to my work routine. I had to work on the 31’st of December too, which lasted well into the night. I didn’t make any plans, so at around 10 pm when I was done, I messaged my friends to see if anyone was available to grab a few a drinks in the city for New Years Eve. One of my friends, Carlos, replied.
We met up soon enough and bought some extra strong Carlsberg Elephant beers. I’m not going to go into details, but we ended up having a pretty wild night on the streets of Copenhagen. We even made it to the Town Hall square for the fireworks just in the nick of time!
The next morning I woke up at Carlos’ place with a pounding headache and an adequate hangover. It was an appropriate way to close a triumphant year of success and adventure. One of my best years to date!