Velkommen to the Land of Bike Lanes and High Prices

I can’t believe a week has passed since I arrived in Denmark. It’s been a whirlwind of a week but I’d like to recap it as best I can.

Monday: I arrived bright and early in the morning around 9 AM Denmark time. I was greeted by my lovely buddy Ida, with a sign with my name on it and a Danish Flag. I thought it was really cute, I love how CBS sets up a “Buddy Program” for their exchange students. This means each exchange student has a designated Danish buddy to help them get started in a new country. This day was a little crazy. After spending a couple unsuccessful hours trying to connect to the Wi-Fi, I fell asleep. I woke up disoriented and confused (when am I not though?) and quickly headed to Dalgas Have to pick up my exchange bracelet. Upon getting there, I met a nice French exchange student who was also looking for her bracelet. We were sent from building to building looking for the pick-up station, and our company grew along the way. After almost 2 hours (I know…) we finally found the bracelet place and had a new friend join our group from Australia named Matt. Next we had a mandatory information session, which was a really great way to meet a ton of other exchange students. I met people from Germany, Australia, France and from good old Canada. As all mandatory introduction meetings go, there was no information that I didn’t already know in it. Next up was bowling, I scrambled to get back to do bowling with my cohort. I didn’t have time to freshen up, so Mira still fresh in her airport wear and day old make up made her way to bowling to meet the other 30 cohort members from Denmark and China. Bowling was fun, but I do felt like I stuck mainly to the UBC kids. We walked back to CBS, waited for some pizza. By waited, I mean waited almost 2 hours. It was a process, but when the pizza came boy was it delicious. Plus, I’d wait 2 hours for free food in Denmark, the prices here are atrocious.

Tuesday: Tuesday we were up bright and early for a company visit with Maersk Line. Maersk, if you haven’t seen their shipping containers before, is a shipping company based out of Denmark. It is actually the world’s largest shipping company, accounting for 20% of global trade. If I am being honest, I walked into Maersk not knowing much about the shipping industry. To be fair, in the time of self-driving cards and artificial intelligence that can turn your lights off from across the world, shipping containers are not often what comes in people’s mind when you say “cool and innovative”. But I can assure you, Maersk did a great job with our time there because by the end we all “had light blue in our blood” as they say. What I loved about our trip to Maersk was the true passion I saw from all their workers. It’s hard to keep people engaged during a power point. It really is, especially to a group of students who sits through power point presentations day after day during the school year. But Trine Nielsen, Head of Sales Excellence at Maersk, made it seem like it was easy. She was so excited by Maersk and so open. What I valued most, which seemed to be such a cultural difference, was the transparency from the company during our visit. They were very transparent about where they stood, where the industry was, and both the good and bad in their company. It was really refreshing to be at what was technically a “recruiting” session, but have the company not “sugar coat” at all. Our visit at Maersk consisted of some history of Maersk, a presentation by Trine, a presentation by Maersk Management Consulting (MMC), and by the Digital wing. MMC also stood out to me, because I had no clue that companies had internal consulting wings! In my head, when I think consulting, I think BCG or Mckinsey, I don’t necessarily think of an internal group. It just opened my mind to how many jobs there are that I still don’t even know about! I came back, got some groceries, and then we had a final dinner at “La Boucherie”. La Boucherie was a very hip club/restaurant in the old part of town. What surprised me most about La Boucherie was how bumping it was on a TUESDAY. There were huge lines to get in, it was insane! However, I was tired and left at 10:00 PM. Classic Mira Move.

Wednesday: This was our “Day Off” from GSCLM activities. So naturally, I did what was necessary, and finally got myself a bike. I decided that the best decision was to rent a bike through Swapfiets. They offer exchange students a deal equivalent to $30 CAD a month and one month free, so it would be $90 CAD throughout my time in Denmark. This includes all servicing and maintenance for the bike. I figured, since I don’t have Curtis to fix my chains every time something happens like I do at home, this was a good bit of “safety insurance” for me. Plus, I won’t have to deal with selling it at the end of December in exam craze. The cons include riding what is clearly the most touristy bike ever, it even has a blue tire to make it that much more obvious that you’re not Danish. I mean, I’m pretty sure just by looking at me you’d know I’m not Danish, but this attracts even more attention. Liam and I then went to Danish Folk Dancing as part of our Exchange Intro Week Package in the evening. The mild social anxiety was real. I was worried that everyone had already formed mini friend groups in the first couple days that we were at GSCLM activities. I wasn’t wrong, many people did already know each other. Then full on social anxiety hit me: we had to dance with people. Oh no. Oh gosh no. I skipped square dancing in high school for this reason. A deep secret of mine that I will now share publically on the internet: I get clammy hands after like 0.03 seconds of holding hands with people. That makes square dancing and anything alike my absolute worst nightmare. I got sick notes for every square dancing class in grade 11 to avoid the embarrassment that is wiping your hands on your pants. It however, was not as bad as I feared. A shout out to my good friend Liam, for being my dancing partner. That takes perseverance on many fronts. We got to meet quite a few exchange students, got beer for $2 CAD and over all, it was a fun evening. I passed out directly after, partially from jet lag and partially from social exhaustion of course.

Thursday: Thursday morning bright and early we started our GSCLM Case Competition with DHL. If you don’t know, DHL is a large-scale logistics company head-quartered in Germany. Nothing says good morning like a 20 page case, am I right? We worked in groups of 3 students, one from Sauder School of Business (myself), one from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and one from Copenhagen Business School. We worked on the case all day, until about 7 PM. Then, Liam and I went to the “Buddy Party” part of our exchange week. Your CBS Buddy was supposed to have organized a pre-event for you to go to, but the GSCLM Buddies were actually told not to participate in the program so Liam and I had a nice party for 2 (cue the Shania Twain) in Porcelshaven. The buddy party was at Chateau Motel, a chic (normally crazy expensive), four-story club in the old part of town. It was very cool, think expensive chandeliers and castle vibes in a modern way. I’m normally not much of a clubber. Clubbing culture can be very synonymous with hook up culture, and you can catch me running in the opposite direction of both of those. But I had a really nice time just dancing with friends! We met up with the Australian friend I had met on Monday, and I also met up with Parker, a friend from home. The music was also bumping, they had everything from Michael Jackson to Charlie Puth playing. Good music is definitely make or break, and it made the night in this case. 

Friday: After a refreshing five-hour sleep, I met my group at 8:00 AM the next morning for this case competition. We refined our slides and idea’s a bit and submitted our work. The case day was done differently than at home. We were all required to stay on campus in a room and called in one by one for 15 minute sessions. 15 teams, 15 minute sessions, wait a minute… Does that mean you had to stay there for almost 4 hours? Yes, that is correct. We had to stay in that room for a while. After presenting, we decided to go get bubble tea from Copenhagen’s only bubble tea shop. I know what you’re thinking, why would you get bubble tea in Copenhagen. I guess, you can take the girl out of Vancouver, but you can’t take Vancouver out of the girl. One of the Danish students in the cohort from CBS had never tried bubble tea, and joined us. He did all the navigating, while the three of us (Chelsea, Liam, and I) unstably and slowly followed behind on our bikes. Honestly though, the bubble tea I got there, was the best bubble tea I’ve ever had. I got Coconut Milk Tea with Pearls. It was the perfect amount of sweetness and coconut flavouring, without being overbearingly sugary. I would get it again in a heartbeat if it wasn’t $8 CAD. While I was supposed to go to a Nordic art exhibit with some friends from UBC, I fell asleep at 6 PM this day. What a time to be alive.

Saturday: Our first day to explore! Liam and I went into to old town and headed to shop. The Danes are stylish folk, without even trying. Here I try my very hardest, and end up still being underdressed. We then found the cheapest food we could possibly find in Old Town (a very touristy area), which was from a Thai hole in the wall restaurant. It was 45 Kroner ($9 CAD) for Thai Noodles that were perfect in the moment. We then met up with my friends from UBC in Christiania. We did not know where we were heading but boy did we learn. The TLDR about Christiania :

“Christiania is a former military base that sat abandoned for many years before becoming the neighborhood we know today. In 1971, a group of hippies broke down the barricades and began squatting there. Nowadays, approximately 900 people live in the area, comprising a community that has its own rules and regulations completely independent of the Danish government.” – source

I have never seen anything like it. It’s hard to even put into words, it’s really a sight you’d have to see for yourself. It is graffiti infested, cheap food, very laid back vibes, stalls for cheap goods line up the sides of the roads, yet it is still very tourist-y. It’s a sight to see to say the very least. We then biked around and they took us to this water front indie bar called Baby Baby. There’s a floating Sauna, a mini water slide, and in the warmer months Tommy and Charlie told us people just jump in and swim around. We then went our separate ways, as Liam and I had our last Exchange Week event: Final Dinner. It was a Casino Royale themed dinner and then an after party at KB3, a club in the meat packing district of town. The dinner was nice, I met some new friends that my friend Parker already knew from Germany. After Chateau Motel, we all had high hopes on this clubbing experience, however KB3 was just different. The Meat Packing district plays more techno music. It was more of a bar than a club with many tables but limited seating for the amount of us there. Liam and I were tired from our long day, and just as we were about to leave we found and outdoor patio that our friends were at. We stayed and chatted for a bit, and started our long trek back home. The meat packing district is not close to Frederiksberg, and since we took a bus there, we needed to take one back.

Sunday: What I thought was a sore throat began to turn into more this day. Uh oh. I definitely woke up feeling under the weather, but persevered and left my room to get my groceries from Netto (the Danish equivalent to No Frills). Liam and I met up with our friend Hannah from UBC and some of her friends at the beach in Denmark. Amager beach was really beautiful, even if it clouded over when we arrived. We then packed up our stuff and I headed over to their residence in Norreboro for a roof top BBQ. We stopped by a falafel place by their house ad I had the best Turkish wrap ever (it was also only $5 CAD!). Everyone is Hannah’s residence is so close and family-like, despite only knowing each other for a week and being from all around the world. It reminded me of my Quebec 2016 Explore Family. I fought the destructive thinking of wishing I had chosen that residence. What they have is truly something special. It was an amazing evening, the sunset was beautiful, and the company was even better.

Monday: First day of class and I woke up with a raging fever. Nice. Classes here are about 2.5 hours in length. Definitely different than at home, and I felt the length in this class but Andreas (our professor) was really great at keeping us engaged and including us in the conversation. The dynamic from student to professor is different here. It’s not quite seen as a professor being more knowledgeable than you, but more seen on an equal, eye to eye level. I had my Entrepreneurship and Global Strategy Class next. This was the true test. I am in a cohort, studying with 15 other Canadian’s and most the time, I’m with one of them. I was the only person in my cohort in this class, and it was scary. It was scary finding the building. It was scary being around a sea of people who are visibly different from than you, who all speak an entirely different language than you, and it was hard not to be uncomfortable. I felt very lost and uncomfortable, but I think it was good to get out of my comfort zone entirely. I met a new friend who is also an exchange student in the same boat as me in the process.

I write this now from my bed on Tuesday, where I am suffering from what has probably been the worst fever I’ve ever had. Chills, overheating, coughing, sore throat and everything you can imagine, I have. #PrayforMira2018