Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen

A lot of people asked me if they could read the article I wrote in English language at York College, which I mentioned in one of my recent blogposts (HERE). So if you are interested in reading the article or simply just get a lot of information about my beloved city, here you go with the article! Remember it’s a college essay made up of real statistics about Copenhagen but the persons in the interviews are fictive.

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Picture from Google. 

Copenhagen: the place to find the world’s best restaurant, the inventors of Lego, and the capital of the happiest country in the world.

written by Maria B. Andreassen 

Denmark is the perfect proof that sometimes more isn’t better. With only 43.094 km², Denmark may be an extremely small country, but with the title of being the capital of the happiest people on Earth, size apparently doesn’t matter when it comes to a country’s happiness. The compact country with high taxes, free health care, and free education, also has hold of the world’s best restaurant – and perhaps that might be the reason why Danes are the happiest people on Earth!

It’s a matter of fact that most of Denmark is covered by fields. But if you go to the heart of Denmark, the capital city Copenhagen, you will for sure think about other things than fields, pigs, and Vikings, next time someone mentions Denmark. Nevertheless Denmark used to be a powerful Viking country that had colonies all over the world. Believe it or not, but York even used to be Danish, which you can clearly see on the road names; most of them ends on ‘gate’, which is Scandinavian for road. What then happened to the big Scandinavian empire is a whole other story…

Today Copenhagen is known as a compact and kind of cute country with a special word called ‘hygge’. When a Dane says that something is ‘hyggeligt’ it’s a way to express Denmark’s candle-lit, woolly and snuggly version of cosiness.

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Picture from Google. 

Back to the history, when Denmark was a bigger and greater empire, the Kingdom of Denmark even inspired the brilliant, memorable, and incredible William Shakespeare. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark turned out to be Shakespeare’s longest play and one of the most influential tragedies ever in English literature. And believe it or not, it all takes place in Copenhagen!

According to John Hansen, who is half British and half Danish, Copenhagen is definitely worth considering next time you are planning your holiday.

“Not only is Copenhagen the perfect place if you feel like snugging up in a café with a good book; which could be one of the great stories by the Danish author H.C. Andersen, Copenhagen is also the place for everyone who adores fashion. With shops like Valentino, Michael Kors, Monclér and even more, the shopping street called Strøget, is the most fashionable place ever,” John tells while sitting with his fresh pressed ginger juice from the local ‘Joe & The Juice’ shop; a brand that started as a small beginner café in Denmark. Today ‘Joe & The Juice’ is in both London and New York.

With the biggest smile on his face John keeps telling about his hipster life in Copenhagen: “I live on Vesterbro, which is probably the coolest part of Copenhagen. Not that the rest of Copenhagen isn’t cool, but Vesterbro is just a tiny bit cooler. I can’t really describe why… I think you just have to go there yourself and sense the atmosphere!” he laughs taking another sip of his juice, and it seems like the smile is just glued to his face. Apparently the ‘world’s happiest country’-title isn’t completely taken by mistake.

It’s no wonder that the famous writer H.C. Andersen called Copenhagen ‘wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen’. Wonderful once, simply isn’t enough.

Home is where the heart is

Thursday morning at 4:30 my alarm on my phone went off. It was way too early, but I’ve never had so much energy and motivation to get out of bed. Sofie and I showered and packed the last couple of things while we listened to ‘Home’ with Michael Bublé and ‘Hold on, we’re going home’ with Drake. About an hour later we stood in the dark in front of the school ready to start our travel towards home <3

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The view from the plane was extremely gorgeous and with earphones in my ears and ELLE magazine on my lap, I really enjoyed the whole trip. When we landed in Copenhagen my whole family was there to greet me, and it was so nice to see them all again. It’s like I realized how much I’ve missed them, when I got to hug them all again.

I’ve now been home for a week and I have to say the first day of school back on Gammel Hellerup was so unbelievable! It felt so extremely nice to be back with all your Danish friends and get to tell them all the exciting things I’ve experienced the last couple of months. Even tough it was really nice to be back, it was a bit absurd as well. I felt a bit like everything back home in Denmark has been paused while we were gone, when in reality everything and everyone kept going on with their lives. To be honest it was a bit of a chok to come back and realize that so much had changed! My sister had a big birthday party, there’s been social events and parties at school that we missed, we got a new kitchen in my house, and I’ve totally missed out on this year’s Dancing With The Stars (which is quite a big deal in our dancing family… hahahaah)! So yeah, two months really is a long time and I felt like I missed out on a lot. But I would not for anything in the whole world change the last two months. Being on your own in a new country has been so developing and I feel like I’m two years older by now, compared to when I left Denmark two months ago.

When all is said and done it’s nothing but amazing to be back in my own country. Sorry England but nothing can be compared to where your heart is.

xxx

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Saying my goodbyes

Last day at York College was so weird. Definitely not in a bad way, but it was just so weird having classes with people you would probably never see again. Every time a class ended, I felt like giving them all a hug and wish them a nice, happy and successful  life… But of course I didn’t, because then we could talk about being weird, haha. The class that was hardest to say goodbye to, was definitely my Spanish class. You know I’ve told you how clever and extremely talented they are? Well as clever and talented they are, just as sweet and nice people are they. In the end of the lesson I got a post card in Spanish telling me that it was nice to have me and wishing me good luck in the future. All the students in my class had signed with their name and the text ‘Buena suerte’ which means have a good life. It was so nice and I had a really hard time saying good bye to them all <3

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/ Minutes before I left York College for the last time… Such a weird feeling /

When hard work pays off

It’s no secret that it has been hard to keep up with the classes at York College. Not only because English is their first language, and Danish is ours, also because the students are really clever! York College even got the title as an “outstanding college” because of their great graduation percent. No wonder it’s hard to keep up with such a college! However I’ve been working my butt of to do the best assignments I could ever possible make. And this week the hard work seems to finally have payed off. Last week I turned in two essays in English Language, that I got back today. The first essay was a short story, which I got a B+ for! I’m really happy for that B+, because the task was really hard and considering that we are being judged at the same level as the British students make me a bit proud of my mark. The other essay was an article about Copenhagen, that I wrote in connection to the task description “write about something you love” and well, I love Copenhagen. And I wanted to show all my British classmates and teacher that Copenhagen is nothing but amazing. And unfortunately they did! My teacher Alison was beyond amazed about the things I had written about Copenhagen, which resulted in an A+ with the note “You should consider a career in journalism – this is fabulous!”  I have to say that I’m not only a little bit proud of this one. I’m extremely proud to be honest.

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Walking the City Wall

Last week Sofie and I finished school earlier than normally so we decided to go to the city and explore the places we hadn’t been yet! Our host mom Emma recommended us to take a walk on the city wall and so we did. The weather was so mild and warm, that it almost felt like a spring day. Anyway, Sofie and I walked the city wall and it was really cool to see the city from a lot of different angles. The wall is about 4 kilometres long, so when we were back where we started, we decided to find a nice café for a lovely warm cup of te (and maybeeee a scone… 🙂 )

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