The Perks of Not Being a Wallflower
Or, how I am staying busy and meeting people in a new city
I am from a long line of the least sedentary people you’ve ever met. It's something like a disease. We move and shake and I think we’d keel over and die if the fire under our asses ever went out, because the Ritters are a breed defined by their Doings and Goings On and Impact on their Community. I can’t sit down while the sun is up, a condition I maintain by collecting jobs, hobbies, and a time-intensive major, until there is no conceivable time left in which to marinate in my own thoughts. It's historically a very healthy strategy in the long term.
In earnest though, I came here to run away from all that a little bit. That lasted about a week. So, let me tell you about some of the ways I’ve been keeping myself busy in Denmark!
grønt marked
I started volunteering at the Grønt Marked partly for the selfish reason of hoping to score some free fresh produce, which did happen, but was a perk immediately eclipsed by the lovely people I met working there. I volunteer on the afternoon shifts, which involves answering questions, selling coffee, chitchatting with your friends, then breaking down all the market tents and fitting them into an impossibly petite trailer.
You guys, when I say this market breakdown is an act of beauty and science, I mean it. Every carabiner and sandbag has its place. Everyone has a job, and somehow an entire village of canvas, folding tables, and vegetables disappears in under an hour.
It is also an excellent way to make friends, because nothing bonds people quite like manual labor, or sheltering under a market tent from one of Copenhagen’s signature violent rain bursts. By the time you’ve carried a table across a park together, wrestled a tent into submission, and violated the laws of physics by fitting fifteen stands and benches and tables and signs and sawhorses into a tiny trailer, small talk is no longer necessary. You are comrades now.
københavn danser studios
Dancing, music, and rhythm clock in somewhere on my list of indispensables between water and air. As a child of musicians my house was never quiet, I’d wake up to music and go to sleep dancing. I love ballet. It is hard to do, harder to do well, and hardest of all to make look good. I am humbled violently in every class, but I practice like a maniac. Yes, it is about minute muscular arrangements, strength, and flexibility, but it is also about the angle of your chin, the fire or softness in your eyes, and the path of a trailing finger. When I dance, I experience the same toe-to-nose jolt of euphoria you get from the first stretch of the morning, or what I imagine a butterfly splitting open its chrysalis must feel. It is control and release at once. It is freedom and sweat and all the things that render you human.
All of this to say I’ve been dancing a lot here in Denmark. I am writing standing up right now because I hit a three hour ballet bender last night to avoid doing my homework, and it feels as though my calves are filled with buckshot and I don't care to try and sit right now. Ballet was one of the first hobbies I settled into here. I looked for a studio that had a lot of adult class offerings, and the one I settled on was København Danser Studios.
I have no photos from dance class so enjoy these dance outfit photos from the past few classes. I brought a limited dance wardrobe so have been doing some fun mix and match. The rule is the more layers the better.
Danser Studios is in Østerbro, and the commute from where I live is about 30 minutes by metro and foot. It’s about the same by bike, but the first time I biked there my legs were so thrashed after biking as fast as I could the whole way there that I danced like a marionette with several crucial strings missing.
The studio is vibrant and social, and the teachers are artists in the purest meaning of the word. They are all professional ballet dancers, many of them ex-principals at the Danish Royal Ballet. I often mess up the routines because I am too busy open-mouth staring at the teachers in awe as they demonstrate. There is also a live piano player, which instantly makes you feel like you're dancing about ten times better than you are. To the future balletic DIS students who might be reading my blog, check out København Danser Studios, I give full endorsement.
studenterhuset
Free coffee is worth its weight in gold in this city. Copenhagen will squeeze and bleed you dry of every cent solely through $9 lattes, unfortunately the best you’ve ever had, on every corner. The coffee shops glow from within with a seductive golden light, like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel. If you have anything approximating a caffeine addiction buy a to-go thermos and bring your coffee from home otherwise you’re screwed.
OR... you could go to Studenterhuset. Cafe by day, bar by night, part study space part community center, entirely charming. Their motto is “for students, by students” and it is the cheapest coffee and beer I have found in Copenhagen. If you’re a DIS student you can pay 12 bucks and have a 25% discount on everything for the whole year. If you're a volunteer, like me, they give you vouchers for free meals and coffee. There are sun drenched rooms to study in, and they often throw parties with DJs when it becomes a bar at night. It is volunteer run, awesome, and another successful way to meet people. Being a volunteer beer slinger (the great Danish unifier) is a great way to get into some fascinating conversations, only half of which you desperately want to escape. Also, the nature of the barista and bartender job instantly bonds you and your coworkers because there is a clear Us (the workers) and Them (the customers). Though it’s primitive, it might be the easiest and quickest way to make friends. It is mostly international students working there too, so it's a way to escape the DIS American student bubble, and meet people I would have never crossed paths with otherwise.
The moral of the story is get out there. It is hard not to make friends in a city full of young, interesting people, especially when you choose activities that put you side by side with them. I think that the American study abroad experience rhetoric is sometimes selfish, as though the goal is to collect cities, countries, and cultural experiences like merit badges, proof that we are becoming more worldly, more interesting, and, god willing, more Instagrammable. Give your time away. Loose yourself in volunteering and the things that bring you joy. Don't treat the city like a vessel for your precious experience, start participating in the machinery that keeps it running. The work may be unpaid, but it returns the favor in friendships, stories, free coffee, occasional vegetables, and the feeling of being helpful. One of my favorite David Byrne songs says "life is long when you give it away," and I think that can go for your time abroad as well.
some recent photos
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