Audrey's Danish Exchange

The pain of leaving isn’t what you’d expect it to be.

It’s not so simple as leaving your friends, or leaving your house, or even leaving the country. For me, leaving Denmark is more.

I’ve lived here for 10 months now. I call it home. The buildings, the trees, the skies, the people, the bike paths, my school, my host family, my bed. It’s all my home. 

When I think back, I can’t place when a stranger’s home became a friend’s home became my own, but I can remember how it felt to arrive. Not only was I physically very far from home, but everything I saw around me felt wild and strange and even unwelcoming at times. 

The longer you spend in a new place, the more of a “home” you begin to build around yourself. With the people you meet, routines you form, and experiences you have.

It’s built in perfect harmony with the physical places you live and exist, so that nearly every surface becomes steeped in memories and feelings. 

Touching the smooth wooden handle of a bread knife caused layers and layers of memories of cutting my bread in the morning into one, single layer of idealized emotion. Peace, hunger, satisfaction, stillness.

The sound of the floor creaking on the first floor landing brings back many midnight trips to fill up a glass of water, or creeping up the stairs after coming home late at night so as to not wake my family. Anticipation, sleepiness, thirst, caring.

Listening to my host mother talk and laugh overwhelms me with an absolute symphony of memories and thoughts. Eagerness, admiration, happiness,

Love.

A home is so much more than a house.

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Now, my time is up.

I have wished many times to be able to bundle up my nonphysical home here and put it in my suitcase next to my folded shirts and neatly packed shoes.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that.

What makes leaving as a foreign exchange student different than, say, moving to a different house in a new town is the amount of your home which has to be ripped away.

When I leave Denmark, I’ll have next to nothing of my physical home to hold my mental home together. That’s the true pain of leaving.

People like to say that memories can live on forever in your mind, but it isn’t true. For me, it fades and grows old and gathers dust until the original image is barely recognizable. And I think, although they may not like to admit it, most people feel the same.

So for me, losing all the people and places and things I’ve come to know as home over these past months...

...means losing that perfectly constructed temple of powerful and meaningful memories along with it. 

And that temple can never come to exist in the same way again.

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But one piece of this home I’ve built in Denmark WILL come with me.

Myself.

Inside I know Denmark has built just as much of a home in me as I have in it.

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A typical Danish birthday.

As many of you know, yesterday (March 27th) was my sixteenth birthday. It was an incredible day, and thanks to all the well-wishers! 

This post is going to tell you what my traditional Danish birthday looks like, at least in this family...in this part of the country...As with nearly every tradition, birthday celebrations vary vastly within the spectrum of Danish culture.

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On the morning of my birthday, I got up at around half past six as I normally do, and walked downstairs to see both my host parents in the kitchen, which was decked with a number of small, plastic, Danish flags. As I have witnessed during a number of other Danish birthdays, it is tradition to decorate with the Danish flag; in other words, red and white everywhere! My host parents were kind enough to bake fresh rolls for my breakfast, as well as some still-warm strawberry jam, homemade, of course. All four of us (my host sister came down to join us after a short time) ate breakfast together in the dining room, which is not something we normally do on weekdays. Usually, everyone is leaving the house at different times, and eating at the small counter in the kitchen which seats two. It was a nice way to start my day.

As I ate breakfast, my host parents and sister gave me their gifts to me, as gift-giving is most commonly done in the morning in Denmark. From my host parents, I received a sweater my host mother knitted me. Among other things, she is a fantastic knitter, and made me a sweater which I had once pointed out I liked in a catalog. It is soft, gray, open in the front, and - best of all, in my opinion - has a deep pocket on each side. From my host sister, I have received a simple, delicate bronze necklace with a heart on it.

After that, it was off to school. I brought with me the cookies I had prepared the previous day. I made chocolate chip cookies, as I wanted to bring something American for my classmates. It is normal, as well as expected, to bring some kind of cake or dessert on your birthday to share with your whole class. Finding the chocolate chips for the cookies wasn’t so easy. Chocolate chips are not really sold many places in Denmark, and definitely not the normal brands we see in the United States. Luckily, one of the English teachers at my school who comes from the same hometown as me saved the day by gifting me a bag of chocolate chips he had bought during his last visit to the States. As for the actual school day, it was mostly average, and my classmates seemed to enjoy my cookies.

When I came home from school, again both of my host parents were in the kitchen. I had planned to go for a jog that day, so I figured I should do it after school so it wouldn’t get in the way of dinner. So I asked my host parents if I could do that now, and they told me, actually not. This was because I was about to get my birthday cake, and some hot chocolate. Naturally, I was surprised. I believe most American families serve birthday cake after dinner, not before, so I had just assumed it would be the same. Nope, the Danish tradition is to serve birthday cake in the afternoon. My host mother is a spectacular baker, so I had high hopes. I was not even close to disappointed. 

Translation: Audrey - 16 years

It was one of the best cakes I’ve ever had in my life. 

This cake was one fantastic example of a traditional Danish birthday dessert. It was made up of layers of plain cake, raspberry filling, vanilla creme, and finally a chocolate glaze/icing on top. And, of course, where would we be without the whipped cream on the top and the sides?! I was lucky enough to eat this cake three times: Once in the afternoon, once in the evening, and then once again after school today. It was fantastic on each occasion. 

The birthday festivities concluded with dinner that night. A few weeks before, my host parents had asked me what I would like on my birthday. I diverted the question originally, simply because there are far too many options to choose just one. I guess I just hoped my host parents would choose for me, but nope, they were very firm on that it should be I who makes the decision. I finally decided on one of my favorites - a savory leek and potato pie with cheese on top. As always, it was excellent, and there was enough for me to have a piece with for my lunch today.

Hello readers // 

This post is going to be about the other side of being an exchange student.

In the (now many) months I’ve been here, I can no longer count how many times I got the question. Yup. “Are you homesick?” “Don’t you miss America?” “Do you miss your family?” “How can you stand to be so far from home?”  

Okay, to be fair, that’s technically more than one question. But when you get down to it, they’re all the same. People want to know how badly it hurts to be far away from your home, your family, your friends, and everyone you know. Of course they do. They’re just curious, particularly those who have never been away from their families or homes for longer than the span of an average beach vacation. 

Here I sit, in the bed I now consider to be my own, after more than seven months abroad. By now, I rarely, if ever, experience real homesickness. Well, right now is falling into that ‘rarely’ category, because I’m wearing a turquoise blue shirt. Yup. More specifically, a turquoise blue shirt printed with big, white letters that say LORAS COLLEGE, sent to me by mail from my family back in the United States. It’s a nice shirt, though I’m not altogether too likely to wear it out and about much (sorry Mom and Grace). Tonight, I decided to wear it as a pajama shirt. I was about to put it on when I suddenly wondered if it had that cool New Shirt Smell. I raised it to my nose and - big mistake. It was like walking through the front doors of my parents’ house. It smelled like home. And more importantly, I didn’t realize home had a smell until the turquoise shirt told me so. I stood there, eyes closed, deeply inhaling though a turquoise shirt at 9 P.M. Like a total maniac.

The thing about homesickness is that it’s not some sort of constant ache that underlies everything I do. I’m not just going about my daily business thinking, “I wonder what my parents are doing right now,” or, “How much would these Oreos cost in America?” or, “Could it be raining right now in Wisconsin?” Just, no. Maybe I somehow expected it to be like that, because it seems to be the most common portrayal of homesickness in movies. But, the fact of the matter is, I’m far too caught up in my day to day activities to really care what’s going on “back home.” It’s as simple as that. When you’re sitting at lunch, listening to friends’ stories of their weekends, while helping a different friend with some English homework, while ALSO thinking about how you hope it doesn’t rain when you’re biking home from school today, there’s just not much spare room in your brain for entirely irrelevant thoughts of home.

As I have demonstrated with the turquoise shirt example, homesickness is most likely to strike when your guard is down. For me - and not uncommonly, I should think - this means at nighttime. When all the day’s activities have died down and I’m left with more room for wandering thoughts. It’s usually something small and unexpected that manages to find just the hole through which it can wriggle in. 

When homesickness hits, I often find myself with a seemingly incurable case of boredom, where I simultaneously want to do absolutely nothing and absolutely everything, yet all the options for the things I could do seem endlessly dull. I find myself thinking of a number of entertaining things I could do in the U.S. that are (conveniently and without exception) largely unavailable in Denmark. This usually means hanging out with my friends in Wisconsin, or going somewhere specific to my hometown. Sometimes, I even just miss attending a normal day high school.

Some people assume that to be homesick, it must mean you don’t like where you are now. In my case, this is definitely untrue. I love being in Denmark, and I hardly ever have a dull day here. As a matter of fact, I believe that loving where I live now only compounds the homesickness. It’s because, on top of the wistfulness of missing things from home, I’m also faced with the painfully obvious realizations of the things I love about Denmark that I won’t be able to take back to the States. 

Homesickness is bittersweet. It has managed to increase my affection greatly for my hometown, my friends, and my family (distance makes the heart grow fonder) while also filling me with longing for days that came and went and can never be come and gone again. In a way, I know I’ll never go back home. Because the home that exists in my memories is made up of so much more than people and places. It’s made of moments, and conversations, and sensations, and scents, and personalities, and emotions. All things that aligned perfectly to form my home. A formation I was a part of. 

The ‘home’ I get sick for is nothing more than a freeze-frame. A portrait of my life as it was when I walked out of it. Herein lies the problem. Making your home in a moment means you’ll never get to go back there. People change, conversations can never be relived, moments come and go and fade, and everything that once fell into a ‘perfect’ order drifts apart. Unfortunately, that’s just the reality of life.

If I had never left for Denmark, my definition of home would have been constantly evolving to keep up with the changes, as everyone’s does if life moves slowly enough for them to keep up. 

However, I did get on that plane, and what I took with me was a definition of home which is, by now, seriously outdated, and will never exist again.

Knowing that.

Another post coming to you from the distant past, a review of my autumn holiday in mid-October, the first part of which was spent visiting the capital city of Copenhagen with my host sister and her good friend. About the second half...that’s for the next post :)

Be sure to see the pictures that correspond to this trip in my next post.

So, to set the scene. Our trip was planned as such: On the Friday which began the autumn holiday, we were driven to a bus stop in the city of Odense. From that bus stop, we boarded a long-distance bus to Copenhagen from Odense. When we arrived, we traveled by city buses to the eastern part of Copenhagen (a neighborhood called Østerbro), where my host sister’s grandparents have a flat. During the days, we were out in the city, and at nights we came back to the flat to sleep, as well as for dinner on most nights. Our entire trip was around four whole days, as we left Copenhagen on the following Tuesday.

Now that I have laid out the basic structure of the trip, I will fill in some of the details.

Friday: 

There’s not much to tell of on the Friday we departed for Copenhagen. The bus wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, as it arrived much later than expected, and our seats were at the back of the old, crowded vehicle. Luckily, it didn’t really take that long to get to Copenhagen from Odense via bus, only about 2 hours. Maybe it’s worth mentioning that, to Danes, that can be considered quite a long trip (think halfway across the country!) as Denmark is generally on a much smaller scale. Things are closer together, more accessible, and there just isn’t as much land area in the whole country. Going back to the story, the bus which took us from the other bus to my host sister’s grandparents’ flat was just as uncomfortable. It was so much more crowded, less comfortable, and more noisy than the buses I was used to back on Fyn. I suppose it didn’t help that I was quite tired already. When we arrived at the flat, we climbed up the four flights of stairs (important point, that one..comes up a lot in this narrative..) and I was introduced to my host sister’s lovely grandparents and given a tour of their large and beautiful living space. After a nice home-cooked meal, they sent us three off to bed, where I fell asleep almost instantly.

Saturday: 

On Saturday, my host sister’s grandfather started our day with a nice walk around the city, giving us lots of amazing history lessons about different sights in the city. These included old hospitals, embassies, churches, army bases, palaces, parks, museums, and more. Copenhagen, a city which traces back to the 1100′s, is not, in any way, short on history and interesting facts. It was really cool to learn about the city from one who has lived there his entire life. Some collections of knowledge can really only be acquired by being immersed in a thing, place, or activity for a long period of time. That day, we got lunch at a really fascinating place called Papirøen, translated to The Paper Island. It was an indoor street food market that occupied a large warehouse-type building along the interior of the Copenhagen harbor. I didn’t take many pictures of the inside as it was crowded and difficult to get a good shot, but I highly encourage you to look it up. It contained stands and trucks featuring cuisine from all around the world. From American, to Brazilian, to Moroccan, to Danish, to Indian, to Vietnamese, you can expect to find nearly every type of cuisine at this fantastic food market. It also seemed to be quite environmentally-conscious, as much of the seating and interior design was made from clearly re-purposed materials, and all the utensils and dishes seemed to be biodegradable. I got a dish which came with some chorizo and a salad, followed by some tiramisu. Some more touring of the city, and we ended up at the central shopping street (a gågade, if you can remember from my last post) known as Strøget. Even though I said it was a street, it’s more of a complicated web of them. We walked up and down the streets, going into some stores (the highlight of which was Hotel Chocolat) and taking in the sights. After that, we traveled back to the flat for dinner. Afterwards, I got to see some fantastic pieces of history courtesy of my host sister’s grandfather. Be sure to see the pictures that correspond to this trip in my next post. After that it was off to bed, and again, sleep came quickly.

Sunday:

On Sunday in the late morning, we attended a family birthday party for a small cousin of my host sister’s. It was a nice brunch in a kind of suburb of Copenhagen which was followed by some fantastic fudge brownies. After, we took the train back to central Copenhagen. The rest of the day we spent at Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli is an amusement park central to the city of Copenhagen. And when I say amusement park, don’t think Six Flags. Think similar to Disney, but older, classier, smaller, and with less promotion of feature cartoon films. Think been around since 1843, think second-oldest amusement park in the world, second only to ANOTHER Danish amusement park. Think world’s first and oldest wooden roller coaster, which is, by the way, still fully operational today. Obviously, it was a blast, and we had good dinner and dessert there as well. We took the bus back that night and went to sleep. 

Monday:

On Monday, we did some miscellaneous shopping and touring, including looking for and finding a dress for my host sister’s gala, going to a bolcher shop where they produced the traditional Danish hard candies (yes of course I bought some), visiting the Botanical Gardens, seeing a castle which I no longer remember the name or history of, and re-visiting Hotel Chocolat. We ate lunch at a small sandwich cafe in the central walking streets. After dinner and some board games back at the flat, we went to sleep after our last full day in the city.

Tuesday:

Not much happened on our departure day other than departing. I was pretty tired, and understandably so. After getting home, I slept most of the day. In conclusion, it was a really fun and interesting trip, with lots of walking, climbing stairs, and shopping.

Before I begin this post, I’m just going to apologize. I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I intend to, and I’ve got about a month’s worth of backlogged posts to write for you guys. So I’ll be making posts about some things that happened quite a long time ago. I hope you will be understanding!

In October, I went to go spend some time with another exchange student living in Denmark whom I met when I sat next to her on the plane that took us from New York to Copenhagen. It’s been about a full month since that happened, but better late than never.

First, to introduce my foreign exchange friend Laura, originally from Canada. She is living in a town to the north of Copenhagen, called Hillerød. We became pretty good friends during the time we spent together at orientation in Copenhagen, so naturally we wanted to see each other again before she leaves. So, we arranged that I would come up for the weekend. On Friday after school, I took the bus to the Odense main station, then got on a train headed to Copenhagen with my host parents sending me off. I was on an express train, so it took a little over an hour to get there.

When I got off, Laura and her host father were waiting for me on the platform. After the 45-minute drive back to Hillerød (and by this time it was evening), Laura’s family ordered some pizza for us, and we spent the night talking  about anything and everything. Living in Denmark is really cool and great and nice, and Danes speak English fantastically, but it was so indescribably comforting to talk to someone who speaks my first language as their own, who comes from an extremely similar culture, and who is going through nearly the same experience as my own. We didn’t have any problems finding things to talk about with each other.

On Saturday, Laura and I were basically free to just roam around Hillerød and do whatever. One of the first placed we walked to was the castle in Hillerød, Frederiksborg Slot. It was extremely beautiful. When I was in Copenhagen in August, I saw Amalienborg, which is technically a castle, but I think it lacked that magical characteristic that, in my mind, would change it from a royal residence to a castle. The castle I saw that day, and it definitely was a castle, really had that mysterious, unidentifiable characteristic. And don’t worry, photos from my Hillerød trip will all be in the next post, with captions!

Okay, technically we didn’t go TO the castle first, we went to the gardens that accompanied the castle, from which you could clearly see it. The gardens were really beautiful as well, and immaculately cared for. The gardens there are known as the slotshave (castle gardens) or barokhave (baroque gardens). The main feature of these gardens were the spectacular monogrammed hedges, which looked a bit like strange swirling patterns when you were on their level, but transformed into intricate, beautiful monograms as you climbed higher away from them to the next levels of the garden. Walking through the garden was really beautiful, and you’ll see a number of pictures from that in my next post.

After visited Frederiksborg Slot, we went to downtown Hillerød, to the popular “gågade,” or walking streets. Nearly every town has one of these. They are long, winding streets lined with shops and restaurants where you can enjoy a nice, cozy walk with friends or family away from the noise of main roads. These walking streets are exclusively for passersby on foot and on bike. Laura and I made our way down the street and went into the local shopping mall to get some lunch. We went to a restaurant called the Burger Garage, where we ordered not-burgers, and enjoyed the warmth inside. 

After lunch, we went next door in the mall to the mighty Bilka. To give you a perspective of what exactly Bilka is, it’s as close as Denmark gets to Walmart. Basically, it’s a mega grocery store that also has some clothes, toys, cleaning products, and things like that. We wandered around inside for a while, discussing Danish foods and which we had tried, which we had liked, which we hadn’t, and things like that. We eventually found ourselves in the candy section and decided to buy some Ritter Sport chocolates, some in some distinctly non-american flavors, like Marzipan, strawberry yogurt, and white chocolate with corn chips. We also came upon the American food section of the store, which had marshmallows, barbeque sauce, canned cranberry sauce, pancake mix, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and more.

After Bilka we walked around the mall and walking street a bit more before going down to the international market that was stopping in town. It had a lot of food and clothes, and other craftsman-type goods from all around Europe. One thing that surprised me there, but shouldn’t have, was that all the vendors and customers were speaking English to each other. I was a bit startled at first to be hearing English, but then I realized that this was, in fact, an international market, and all the vendors were from places that weren’t Denmark. Sometimes I forget how English is actually being used as a universal language.

We made a quick stop at Laura’s gymnasium, basically high school, and walked through a forest to go back to Laura’s home for dinner. Her host family had some company that night, and we had some quite good burgers for dinner. After that, Laura and I mostly just chilled, played some Mario Kart, had some of the chocolate we bought earlier, and then went to bed.

The next morning, everyone woke up early to go to Fredensborg Slot, the historical and current residence of the Danish queen in the summer months. This castle was also very beautiful, and the gardens as well. We also saw the boats and boathouse used by the royal family. Since this is an actively used residency of the Danish royals, there were palace guards on-duty, the same as those on patrol at Amalienborg. We walked around the grounds for a while with Laura’s host family, and even got a (usually impossible) peek into the church in the castle compound, where a special seat for the queen herself is included at the back of the small, beautiful chapel. 

Hey everyone.

As some of you may know, I’ve been in Denmark as a foreign exchange student for a little over a month now. Throughout my time here, I will be making a post at the end of each of my months here (this will usually fall in the middle of the month, I was late this time) as a sort of overview of what I did and what has changed. Without further ado...

August-September

I don’t think it needs saying that a lot in my life has changed since leaving Wisconsin. I bike to school every day. I eat rugbrød and leverpostej and flødeboller. I have new friends, a new family, a new home. I live in Denmark now. Of course, the list of things that have changed is so much longer than the list of things that haven’t, but that really isn’t a bad thing. One of the most important things I’ve learned in my first month is that different does not equal worse. It is really easy to feel like you’ve found the best way to do something, the best combination of foods (peanut butter and jelly okay), and to feel that your way is so right that you don’t even want to try the other way. Unfortunately, this way of thinking will do nothing but hold you back from experiencing new things. My time here got a lot easier once I was ready to let go of my old traditions and habits and embrace the Danish way of doing things.

I would say after a month in Denmark, that I have made some new friends. My class is very small, only 16 people, so it isn’t hard to get to known people. I am closer with some of the girls than others but I don’t think anyone hates me...? I hope ;). (Shoutout hej Josefine, Salma, Linnea, Sara, Nanna, Silja, Rabia, and Sabrina tusind tak, I er mine venner) I think my classmates have all been very kind and patient with me, which I am really very grateful for. Overall I really like going to school, I think it’s a lot of fun even if I don’t understand much of what happens yet.

As for language...I can’t speak Danish yet okay...I understand quite a bit though, at least in everyday conversation. I am working on expanding my vocabulary, and also trying to learn Danish grammar, pronunciation, and sentence structure. I admit that I could be doing a better job of pushing myself to try to speak in Danish, or at least get help to try that. I am working on that, but I think you can understand how it might be scary. If you don’t understand, then just trust me: It can be scary.

I’ve had some really cool experiences here in this first month. I went to Legoland (the original one) which was really fun, and definitely worthwhile. I’ve gotten to make and try so many new foods, most of them delicious, thanks to my host parents’ amazing garden and cooking skills. Some food products that I have seen in Denmark and not the United States are skyr (Icelandic yogurt), rugbrød (Danish rye bread), Fanta Exotic, Faxe Kondi (Danish soda), and lots and lots of different types of candy (Kinder Maxi, Maoam, marzipan candies, Daim, Skum Bananer, Ritter Sport, more varieties of Haribo that you didn’t even know existed, and much more) Among my favorite Danish grocery store goods are Faxe Kondi, skyr, and Ritter Sport.

I think it has been surprisingly easy so far to adjust to life without a car. It simply isn’t needed in the way it is in America. There is a bus stop a few houses down from mine, and the buses in Denmark are clean and comfortable, if hot in warm weather. I have a very short distance to bike to school, and a grocery store is only about a ten minute ride away. I have only ever felt like a small inconvenience exists, but one that is really just my laziness in disguise. I’m pretty used to biking now, and I’m not as afraid as I was starting out. Although, I still don’t find biking in the rain to school particularly enjoyable... 

Overall, this has been a very enjoyable month for me, thanks to the help and support of wonderful new friends and family.