Vera's time in Copenhagen

Last days in Copenhagen

2006-10-27T16:28:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-19T17:11:00.000+02:00

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

2006-10-12T18:51:00.000+02:00

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 ;-)

2006-10-03T17:32:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-22T18:41:00.000+02:00

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 ;-)

2006-09-20T22:10:00.000+02:00

fed up with housing situation

2006-09-20T19:29:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-12T18:15:00.000+02:00

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

New room

2006-09-01T22:18:00.000+02:00

Haha, I am online at my new room, using a friendly neighbour´s wireless internet connection :-) So, surfing with Firefox, I could upload some pictures to the last post, have a look.
Yesterday I moved to the place of Nena and Pankaj. Here´s life, people are talking, cooking and socialising which appearently my former landlady never did. I am just comming from some TV watching with them. It was an Indian movie and Pankaj described them in general: "usually 3 hours and at least 6 songs", right. I just enjoyed watching one hour: very colourful, very emotional and nice songs and dances (sometimes a bit like makarena) and I learned that even today no one marriages outside one caste.
The week was a bit boring, but today my supervisor took Johanna, our new intern and me to Copenhagen´s university to a 3 hour panel discussion on HIV/AIDS including him as one of the speakers. It was really interesting and the speakers had an argument on the claim that money is not anymore the problem for providing infected persons with medication but that the medical staff is missing, especially in developing countries. I learned the term "braindrain" which means that qualified health staff from developing countries decide to work in developed countries instead in their home coutries because of a better salary. Approximately 40.000 HIV- infected people worldwide are still waiting to be treated. Did you know that HIV cases are rising in western and eastern Europe in recent years (also in Germany)? And that 8.000 people world wide die from AIDS - every day?
Ok, that´s for now.
Take care and ABC (abstinence, being faithful to one faithful partner, condom use)
Vera

Copenhagen free newspaper

2006-08-29T18:03:00.000+02:00

Hello everybody,
news from rainy Copenhagen. On the weekend I participated in a dragon boat race with 20 other colleagues. We dressed up like pirates (we were defenetly the best looking team) and more or less successfully, we won one out of four races and in the end got a medal and a bottle of sparkling wine for the team, it was a fun afternoon. Picture left: hard race, look at our faces. Picture right: Priya (my roommate, friend and intern colleague) and me.

Denmark seems to be a very safe country according to the behaviour of many parents who leave their babies outside in the carriage when they do a quick shopping at the supermarket. Another situation was on Sunday when I found shelter (it’s raining since weeks, I mentioned this in other posts) in café of a tourist office. While sitting there reading and coffee drinking I observed a carriage with a sleeping baby right next to the entrance. The parents of this baby where sitting on a table in 15 meter distance and just occasionally had a look. Imagine, the carriage was standing next to the entrance of a tourist office where a lot of people where passing by…. I did not leave before the father came to take the baby with him, Priya, my roommate who left yeaterday, told me that a Danish couple was arrested in New York because they left their baby outside a bar.

Guess how many free newspapers there are in Copenhagen.... seven! Every morning when I cycle to work on my way there are three people handing out different free newspapers to the bikers. Like in a cycle race, just reach out your hand and grap one. Unfortunately I cannot read Danish. Another thing about this free newspapers: a colleague told me that they had difficulties to find people to deliver these newspapers so they hired people from abroad. Like in Germany with the harvest heplers. There is a construction outside the house where I am living now (I will move in some days, woho) where they start every morning at 6.30 am with terrible noise. The men working there are Germans, I was surprised by this. Maybe it is a labour migration? In Denmark the unemployment rate is very low (I think around 3%) and people here get a minimum wage which is around 100 Dkr (I think) which is 14€, great, isn't it? Maybe I should think of working in Denmark.... but to be honest, for now I like it but I cannot imagine to live in Denmark my whole life.

Alright, that's for now,
hej-hej
Vera

Pictures online

2006-08-28T18:17:00.000+02:00

Finally I managed to upload some pictures to my yahoo photo album. Here they are
http://de.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/vera_klopprogge/my_photos

in, tor, tre, feer

2006-08-25T18:37:00.000+02:00

Dear readers,
How are you out there? Thanks to those who left a comment on my page. Hopefully one day I can also provide pictures, but as mentioned earlier, I think because at the browser at work I am unable to publish pictures.
After a not very happy start of the week because I had some problems at work which I will not explain in detail but which made me very frustrated and angry, things are getting better now. I was given a new project yesterday on travel restrictions for HIV positive people and criminalisation of HIV transmission in the former Soviet Union countries. It sounded very interesting and the idea was that I had to get in contact with field offices, health ministries and human rights NGOs to map and analyse the legal situation. I already had some ideas how to approach this task when I found a very detailed paper about all of this in the internet. After some more research I think that there will be no new information to be collected. Alright, so I am free for other tasks and I will continue one more week with power point presentations and excel sheets. When I heard that the presentation will be published as hard copy at the Regional Meeting in mid September where representatives of other WHO regional offices and health ministries of the member countries will be participating, I got more motivation for this assignment. My office-mate Stine was very nice today as she was all the day thinking how we can add communication-aspects to this, e.g. advertisement for this publication and how to attract people to read this document to make use of my studies and to make this task more interesting to me. Even if the work sometimes is boring, people here (especially the younger ones) are encouraging and motivating me, especially this week when I had some frustrating moments. So, looking for more sunshine to come…
Oh, when I look outside the window, no rain drops today :-). Tomorrow I will participate at a dragon boat race in the canals of Copenhagen. A dragon boat is a boat for 20 people with one drummer in the front. Our team will row in big WHO shirts which have to fit over the live-jackets and we agreed to dress on the head as pirates. Woho, gonna be fun. We practised this week and we even learned to count from one to four (to hold the pace) in many languages as we are having people from Ghana, Italy, Denmark, France, Russia and Germany on the boat. Let’s start in Danish: in, tor, tre, feer
No time to tell you more about Danish culture this time but next time more on cycling culture.
Take care and have a nice weekend, Vera

still raining

2006-08-21T17:51:00.000+02:00

Dear blog-readers,
I am afraid, I do not have much news for you this time. It is raining since more than a week, except for Saturday afternoon, when I went with my partens on a canal tour. For some hours the sun was shining so much that I got burned on my neck and face. But it is cooling down as it is raining, raining, raining. With my parents I saw a great English Shakespeare play on Friday, visited all the sightseeings and explored new things like the Botanic Garden and Helsingborg, the castle where Hamlet was supposed to take place. As it was raining (I know, I keep on repeading ;-) ) on Sunday we were stopping under a roof in Helsongör (the city where castle is located) which turned out to belong to a shop selling tickets for a seabus (ship) to Sweden. They had a special offer (half price) and we spontaneously bought a ticket to Sweden. Not only Sweden was catching our interest, but also Smoerebroed, a Danish speciality which can hardly be found in Copenhagen on a weekend and after lunch time, but was served on the seabus. So we got on the seabus, ate delicious smoerebroed (sandwiched with lots of stuff on it) and walked around in Helsongborg, Sweden. Was a nice weekend except, the r... (ok, you know the word ;-) ). Last night my landlady returned from her absence and I had to tell her that I will move out at the end of this month. Of course she wasn't pleased. Till the end of the month I'll try not to be at home very much, because I have a strange feeling when she's around. Priya's sister put it into the right words : "I have the feeling somebody is watching me".
Back to routine this week, back to power point slides and data. To bring some movement in this grey and boring day I now will try WHO's gym.
Take care, hej-hej
Vera

Rain in Copenhagen

2006-08-15T17:50:00.000+02:00

Hello from rainy Copenhagen!
How are you doing? Here it is raining, raining, raining. Beside this I had a great weekend because my boyfriend Sascha visited me. On Friday night we went to Tivoli, the famous amusement park directly located in oposit of the main station. Did you know that Walt Disney was inspired by Tivoli for creating his first Disney World park? Tivoli was nice but very very crowded and there was an open air concert included in the admission (but so not the rides). On Saturday we did sightseeing in the pouring rain and got home wet and a bit frustrated because in the rain it is only half of the fun visiting the city but in the evening it cleared up and we returned to the city and went on a canal boat tour which was realy nice. On Sunday morning he already had to leave... So a shot visit, but I enjoyed it very much. The picture shows Sascha and an eagle on a photo exibition at Kongens Nytorv. And the next visitors are comming soon, my parents will be in Copenhagen for the weekend and I am looking forward to.
Work is getting better, after two weeks of excel and power point I now have to analyse the graphs and do another power point with the main outcomes and trend analysis and how sexual transmitted infections and HIV follow a similar trend or not.
Here at WHO I like how they train and inform the staff, we have weekly meetings for the newcomers and have talks e.g. on UN and WHO or a introduction to the computer system at work. Yesterday there was a meeting with the Regional Director, one of the six bosses of WHO (one for every region, here it's the EURO region), and he was telling about the mission of WHO and it's function, how to define "health" etc.. He stressed the point that we are a service-oriented supporter, facilitator and knowledge provider for member countries in order to improve their health systems. Afterwards the newcomers were given the chance to ask questions and one intern asked him if he has any piece of advise for young people at the beginning of their career. "Be an expert in your country, that you can get and expert international". Alright, let's keep this in mind ;-)
Have a good time,
hej-hej
Vera

Bike, room and Danish flags

2006-08-10T18:32:00.000+02:00

Hello people around the world!
More news from sunny Copenhagen. Things are getting better each day. I found a new room to move into in September. It's a room in the appartment of an Indian couple, the husband is working at WHO and his wife is with UNICEF also here in Copenhagen. After visiting their appartment I made the decision to move there, although it is more expensive than the room I am renting at the moment, but the advantages I will have there are worth it: two beds in the room (so visitors are welcome), lifely kitchen and living room, washing machine, phone and friendly people living there. Oh, don't forget to mention the Hindi channel on TV ;-) I think it is also going to be a good intercultural experience.

Since yeaterday I am part of the Danish culture when it comes to cycling as I got a bike from a colleague. After repairing and washing it, it just looks as it was the same age as me. It has no fancy equipment as gears or bell, but it is my pride! From now on it will have 45min of exercise and fresh air each direction to work, I am more flexible and I will save the cost for public transportation. I just learned today that Copanhagen is the 3rd most expensive city in Europe or was is it the world? I can tell you, I can feel this. I went to do the laundry yesterday and for the money I spend for washing two shopping bags of clothes, I could have bought 1/4 of the washing machine I was selling recently in Fulda.

Anyway, let me tell a little bit about Danish culture. You might know that the Germans had a problem with showing German flags until the soccer world championship (I remember myself wearing black, red, gold stripes in my face on the fan mile in Berlin), but so do not the Danes. I was talking with some Danes from AEGEE Copenhagen about this. Here the flag is a party decoration. Whenever it is someone's birthday, wedding or whatever party, on the invitation card, in the house, in the garden, you can see Danish flags. It is a sign for celebrating. I saw it when passing restaurants: the table with the Danish flag on it was a birthday celebration. In the park: the group sitting on the ground having a Danish flag was a bachelor party or a birthday.
Another, not so happy thing I observed, are the homeless people here. Most of them look Asian, so I was asking a colleague where they are from and he told me that these people are from Greenland where alcoholism is widely spread. Another colleague told me that in the 60ies the Danish government decided that the way the people in Greenland live (fishing, hunting) was not appropriate and so they took their children and brought them to Denmark to gave them "good education". That this was going to fail can be now seen on the streets of Copenhagen... that's sad.
On the weekend my boyfriend is going to visit me and I am sooooo much looking forward to! Now I will leave the office to meet with some other interns for a free open air dance performance.
Take care and read on,
hej-hej
Vera

Summer, sun and Sweden

2006-08-07T17:23:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody!
More fairytales from the country of fairytales….
Unfortunately I can’t upload pictures, I don’t know why, I think it’s because of the browser at work. So, use your imagination ;-)
It’s now a week that I am in Copenhagen and the good things are my work and the nice people I got the know here. I am also looking forward to the visits of my boyfriend and my parents the next weekends. My housing situation is the same but at least Priya’s sister is visiting her at the moment, so the apartment is a bit livelier. The landlady somehow disappeared, I haven’t seen here since Monday last week.
I had a good weekend: on Friday AEGEE Copenhagen invited me for a BBQ. AEGEE is a European wide student organisation and during my time in Manheim I had been an active member. Contacts still exist and thanks to this network, I met them on Friday. What a coincidence, they are running a summer university at the moment, so around 25 people from all over Europe were attending this BBQ and I was talking to a lot of people and had much fun. On Saturday I went to Malmö in Sweden with a group of other interns. To go there we took a train and crossed the ocean on the 8km long bridge. Malmö is a nice city with lots of parks and nice old buildings. I liked it a lot, especially because it is not as busy as Copenhagen and, I cannot describe it, there was a very peaceful atmosphere which made me feel very happy. The group was fantastic, consisting of people with Canadian, Malaysian, Czech, Indian, Turkish and German culture background. As I study intercultural communication I am very aware of intercultural communication differences, but, hey, there weren’t any and we got along very well and had much fun exploring Malmö and relaxing in the nice parks. On Sunday I did some sightseeing in Copenhagen and went on a canal boat tour.
As promised, I will tell you a bit about some observations I made here in Denmark. First of all, it seems to be true that the Danish social system is very good when it comes to combining career and having children. Almost disappeared in Germany (when you believe in the media discussion in Germany at the moment) you can see pregnant women everywhere here!
Another observation is the fashion trend: leggings (very tied pants, good for doing gymnastics) are back in Denmark! When you want to be up to date in Copenhagen, combine a ¾ leggings with a skirt or a dress, a pair of flip flops, some necklaces, bracelets and don’t comb your hair too much, voilá, you are very hip. Did I tell you where I have met Michael Ballack, the German soccer player? He was looking at me from a hairdresser’s shop, advertising for hair styling products. I haven’t seen an advertisement with him in Germany, but as he his doing this for so many products, why not for hairstyling products.
Do you know about the relation the Danish people have with their national flag? Stay online and you will find out soon.
Take care
Vera

First impressions of Copenhagen

2006-08-03T17:19:00.000+02:00

Hej!
After the first days in Copenhagen (Danish: “Koepenhaun”) I will tell you a little bit how life is going here.
Since Tuesday I am working at the WHO which is a good place with very friendly, multicultural people from for example GB, Georgia, Denmark, Russia, Northern America and Germany. My original task should have be to help in the organisation of a conference on HIV/AIDS to be held in Germany, but plans have changed, so at the moment I am mainly editing and redoing power point slides on sexual transmitted infections. That’s ok and I will see what other tasks are coming up when my boss returns from a conference on the last week of August. Everything at the WHO seams healthy: the canteen is mainly offering salad and vegetables and at the reception you find a basket with fruit to pick one. Furthermore, they have a doctor for the staff, a small fitness centre and you can smell the fresh air blowing directly from the ocean (WHO is located close to the coast).
Copenhagen is a nice city, but to be honest, not extraordinary, but I will find out more as I just have visited a few things. On Monday I had plenty of time to walk around because I was just in the office to see my boss for the first time and say hello to my new colleagues. So I saw for example the Little Mermaid and the City Centre.
So, these were the nice things to tell…. Not as nice is my housing situation. I life in an apartment with a lady of 60 years (the landlady) and she welcomed me introducing me to her house rules, e.g. not to leave anything in the bathroom or kitchen, always be “discrete” and respect her “private space”. So here is no “infrastructure”: no phone, no internet (so I am staying longer at work to do some private things), no washing machine, no chairs in the living room, just a big empty and dusty table, an empty kitchen (no food or drink is standing around, except some seasoning) and a bathroom with nothing but white tiles. Luckily another girl, also an intern, is also living here but she is just staying for one more month. With her (Priya) I get along very well. She also had some strange experience with the landlady. My room is ok, with nice funny clown-wallpaper. I was asking the landlady, who hangs up her self-painted pictures showing strange white faces, if it used to be a kid’s room but she denied and told me that this was the cheapest wallpaper to find. I am just coming back from the kitchen where I was looking for salt and pepper and I found that everything in the shelf for seasoning was expired, in 1996 or 2000…If it wasn’t that scary here I would laugh ;-) Anyway, the neighbourhood is nice with a park nearby and a good bus connection to work.
All Danes cycle, that’s true, so the buses and the streets are never crowded. Cycling is easy here, everything is very flat and good to reach. At the moment I am using the bus but I will get the bike of a colleague when the intern who is using it at the moment is ending her work here in a couple of weeks. Public transport is good but - not surprisingly- not cheap. Yesterday I went out with my roommate for a beer, and guess what I’ve paid: 7€.

Ok, that’s for now, about Danish pregnant women, the latest Danish fashion trends and where I met Michael Ballack I will tell the next time. If anyone wants to phone me, you can ring me at work between 5 and 6 pm and I also managed to buy a Danish prepaid card for my cell phone. If you are interested in the numbers, just send me an email.
Hej- hej
Vera