Last days in Copenhagen

Dear all,
today is my last working day and my collegues just organised a nice get together to say good bye to me. I am looking forward to going back home but I will also miss my friends here.
Later today my boyfriend is comming and tomorrow I will throw a good bye party and will cook "Linsen mit Spätzle", a typical dish from the region where I am from. Sunday and Monday I will doa bit of travelling in Sweden and on Tuesday night I am back in Germany.
This is probably my last posting on this blog. Thank you for joining me online to Copenhagen and for the comments you left.
Take care and see you somewhere in Europe
Vera

Danish cheese and sushi

Dear all,
Some interesting days lay behind me, last Friday there was the culture night, where museums, galleries and other interesting places have been open half of the night. I went there with some of the other interns and I’ve seen some very cool places, like an old candy manufacture, a church with light installations or the highlight, the dairy forum where the Danish dairy industry was represented and where you could literally taste 1000 different kinds of cheese, drink milk and listen to music. I was surprised by how many wrappings of cheese were in German and I recognised a lot of cheese you can find in Germany at Aldi. On Monday we had a technical consultation on criminalisation of STI and HIV transmission where approx. 40 representatives of NGOs and research institutions came together at the WHO to discuss one day about an official WHO statement on this issue. Even if this was a very long day it was really interesting to see how so many people can agree on certain statements, of course after long discussions. I was a rapporteur and had to write a political summary afterwards, which is pretty cool, but not so cool is that my name will not appear anyway but other people claim they’ve written it…On Monday I also had my first interviews for my thesis project which I now have to transcribe in night shifts…
Yesterday the group of interns (for the first time in my life I have a clique) and me organised a surprise party for one of the girls and therefore we even prepared sushi. She was so happy and surprised that she could not stop hugging us. It was a great night and we had delicious Asian food.
So, the last weeks are good, beside the immense work load. But today I will leave in time (not at 8.30pm as the other days) and go to the gym.That’s for the moment,
Take care
Vera

It's Tuborg Thursday

Hello from Copenhagen,

Only a bit than two more weeks left and then I am back in Germany. My time is okay here, working, working, working and same things as usual: Monday cooking with interns, Tuesday gym, Wednesday swimming, Thursday Badminton or “Tuborg Thursday” (meeting at a pub) etc. This is nice, especially when I am doing something with the other interns (our number is continuously growing, at the moment we are 9) but feels really like a routine, a working routine. Only the money is missing….This week they started to charge us for the apples in the canteen which used to be free.

I am working on my project which is going more slowly than expected but the good news are that on Monday I will interview my first stakeholders, namely one from the European AIDS treatment group and one Robert Koch Institut. I am curious how that will work out. On Monday we are also having a conference on criminalisation of HIV transmission where I also did some research for. Other events going on are the world mental health awareness day which was two days ago and where someone from South Africa called me to ask for a statement in Portuguese about depression. I tried my best ;-) Furthermore, we have a series of lunch-briefings for the interns to learn about programmes and units in WHO EURO. Today there was a talk about malaria in the stan-countries, I did not know that malaria is such a problem there.

My new housing situation is nice, last week my landlady cooked for me and even gave me a hug before I left to Germany for the weekend. Right, I was in Germany for the weekend to see my boyfriend, which was sooo nice because as you might know, a distance-relationships with scheduled phone calls (staying longer at the office for this), not reaching each other when there is a need to talk, etc. is terrible. So we had a nice weekend and celebrated our 1,5 anniversary in a nice thai restaurant.

Ah, I finally have very typical Danish lights for my bike. They are as big as a walnut, about the same shape and you can fix it to your bike with small elastic strips, a great invention. It’s getting darker in Copenhagen…

Take care and hej-hej
Vera

new room, the 3rd ;-)

Dear all,

So, how is my life in Copenhagen at the moment? On Sunday with the help of Vicky, my very nice intern-colleague, I moved in typically Danish manner to my new room. That means that we walked our bikes from my old room to the new room and tried to pack as much as possible on the bikes. With a large bag, a big suitcases, laptop bag and several bags with food it wasn’t that easy but we could manage and saved the cost for the bus. The new room is very nice and the landlady as well although she has a problem when not drinking alcohol… Today we will arrange a new mattress so I hopefully can sleep the next nights.

On Sunday afternoon I went to the Copenhagen Film Festival, and saw the German movie called “Komm näher”, which I did not like at all because it was one of these alternative/underground movies showing broken characters having unfulfilled lives and a lot of sex with the wrong partners. I sat there thinking about sexual transmitted diseases and HIV and just did not leave the cinema because I paid 10 €. A big success at this festival was the German movie “Elementarteilchen” and they had to give two extra shows because the others were sold out immediately.

Beside this, I do not know why, but my mood is constantly getting worse: I cannot sleep very well, the office is very loud at the moment (people fighting in the corridor with the copy machine, open-door policy which makes it very hard to concentrate as you hear people walking on the corridor all the time, crowds of Greek visitors at the canteen fighting for the last trays). I catch myself that my coffee-breaks are getting longer but on the other hand last Saturday I came to the office to have time and silence to work on my project (EU Council presidency) because during the week there are often other things to do, e.g. help to prepare the media event on the World Hepatitis Awareness Day on Tuesday (with a video message by Bob Geldof who looked himself as he was a patient) but of course I prefer to get something done on my project.

The sunny side of Copenhagen are the nice interns with whom I do a lot together, mostly sports like going to the gym, swimming or playing badminton or meeting for cooking on the weekends. One of them received a wedding proposal last week and we all are so happy for her and prepared a small celebration.

So, ups and downs in Copenhagen and not much things happened, that's it for the moment. Looking forward escaping one weekend to Germany and going to the gym now.

Take care,
Vera

new room for October

Dear all,
just comming back from having a look at the room of an intern who is leaving today and the great news: I can move into this room in October!!!!!!! And it is also cheaper than the other room and the landlandy (who is also living in the same appartment) seems to be nice. I just have to tell the people I am living with at the moment about it....
Alright, next weekend: moving again ;-)
Have a nice weekend
Vera :-))))))

How true ;-)

fed up with housing situation

Hi everybody,
sorry for not keeping you updated so often, but one day is like the other here: I work long, go to the gym or meet with the other interns, go to bed, go to work.... I realised that I have seen all of the sightseeing in and around Copenhagen, so not much new impressions only this: last weeekend some of the other interns and me went to Christiania, the free town in Copenhagen. It was "funded "in 1971 when people occupied an empty miliary base and turned into a "social experiment" how they called it. In this Hippi community more things are legal than in the rest of Copenhagen (but when it started it was much than today), everybody is living his/her life and contributes something to the community. They produce a lot things themselves, e.g. bikes, soap and vegetables and live an alternative life. We had a guided tour there and the guide, who also lives there, explained a lot and told some funny stories. Christiania is in danger because the governement wants to close it and build apartment buildings there which the Christianian people of course don't like. So they are having "100 open days of Christiania" to present alternative concepts than closing it down.
Work is going ok, whenever I have time, I do research for my project, which I really like. The rest is not as good at the moment, I am not happy with my housing situation- again-. For everything I have to ask, I am not allowed to use the phone, to turn on the heating without paying (it is getting colder and in the evenings I am usually wearing 2 sweaters in my room) or bring friends. Today I learned that I am not supposed to put any dishes in the dish washer and that I have to collect all my waste in my room and must not use the trash bin in the kitchen or the bathroom. I even had to remove a newspaper that I put on their paper to recycle-pile. Argh! That's no life, I feel like caught in a cage, a small cage for 400€. Obviously my renters do not feel comfortable that they have a well payed job, a large appartment, a new car and charging a poor intern infront of others, because the women told me that I should not tell anybody at work that I am living with here and on Sunday they had guest and they told them that I am only staying here for a week. I am really looking forward having an own room in a nice shared appartment back in Fulda. But I can tel you, my housing situation is not the worst, compared to the other interns': one is living with an alcoholic, it's son which tells the mother that he's going to break her arms, another strange son who tries to touch her all the time and various other strange guests. Another interns is also living with an alcoholic and another lives in a house where every free space is rented out, even the living room (but which is still used as living room by the landlady). The other day I said to my intern colleagues that we could write "the collected housing stories of Copenhagen". Obviously only really strange people are renting out rooms in Copenhagen...
Sorry for all the negative news but as you can read, I do not feel very comfortable here and I'm already counting the weeks till I am back in Germany.
Alright, enjoy your freedom at your home,
bye
Vera

weekend trip and princess of Denmark

Dear friends and readers,
finally some news from Copenhagen. I do not have an internet connection at home anymore (the neighbour's connection disappeared) and the last days I was very busy but here some news:
The best of all: I was in Germany for an extended weekend, to see my boyfriend! The journey was a bit long (8 h by train) and the way back yesterday even took 11h because due to delays I missed a connecting train, so I had to wait for 4h in Hamburg... but the rest was great and I enjoyed so much of beeing with Sascha and beeing in a familiar surrounding, especially to be in an appartment where you have more than an empty guest-room and a small space in the fridge. Sascha and me went to the cinema, to a party and on Sunday to a park, called "Seringeti Park" which is like a safari-park where you can see animals while driving slowly through the park. In the area of the monkeys we had a nice encounter with a monkey with a wounderful red **** who jumped on the roof of the car and bit into the windscreen washer system and removed the tube for the water. Very artful but of course very annoying for us.
At the moment there is the Regional Committee at WHO which is a huge conference with delegates from the 52 WHO EURO member states. Today my unit had a so called "technical briefing" where speakers fom the WHO, European AIDS group and the European Committee spoke about the HIV/AIDS situation in Europe. Furthermore, we provided tons of brochures, articles and other publications for the audience. 4 weeks of work (the popwer point presentations I did) for a paper of 12 pages in the end (original lenght 50 pages), you can imagine the process and the extra work not published now.... Yesterday there was a reception also for the "ordinary staff" and the delegates: they rented a museum and had drinks and food. As mentioned, I was late, so I ran home, changed my clothes, took a train to this museum and arrived there at 8.30pm. At 9 pm the reception was over but at least I saw the crown princess of Denmark who was also participating and shaking hands.
Since last week I have a new research project, woho! I am in the idea-collecting and -structuring process now but it will be something about the German Council Presidency and its agenda-setting concerning HIV/AIDS. Finally an interesting topic which I had chosen myself.
It's half the time of my internship now, 6.5 working weeks but for me it feels definitely longer.
Alright, I am very tired now, was an exhausting day, so see you soon
Take care, Vera