Danish First Floors, Bicycle Streets, Moving Again

I imagine once my stream-of-consciousness peters out here tonight, this post won't qualify as short, but if you hate long blog posts, just take comfort in this, Dear Reader: it could be a lot longer if I wasn't so lazy!

Some interesting features I have found in Denmark (I call them 'features' because I have no better word for them, and, to write 'things' is terribly trite):

The Danes count building floors starting with 'ground' or 'zero' as what Americans would think of as the 'first' floor. So, the 'second' floor in an U.S. building would be the 'first' floor in Denmark. Perhaps this is true elsewhere in Europe and the world? I'd not be surprised to find out America is the only country with a system like it has (e.g. holding to the Imperial (British) system of units and measures as opposed to metric). Cogitation aside, this change caused me some confusion the first time I got directions to find an office on the first floor of a building last week.

Secondly, the fact there are raised bicycle lanes running between the pedestrian walks and streets in nearly all parts of the Danish cities (the ones I've been in anyway: Roskilde, København, Århus) is really very awesome. It's like a cyclist's own street. These bike paths are set at a height greater than the road, but less than the sidewalk. The elevated plane with its well-weathered borders actually makes me feel safer, more contained than I feel riding on the same level as cars or people. I suppose this feeling comes out of my desires to see order and neatness in a lot of life, and to have thorough organization. I don't think it's OCD (I'm quite uninformed on that condition), but maybe it's my equally inherent laziness that combats true obsessiveness. Simply put: if I don't find order and organization quickly or relatively easily, I usually just give up and stop caring, perhaps to return and tackle the task later.

Anyway...I moved into a spare room in a downtown København flat owned by a Danish doctor and lived in by his son Laurids (say it: Laord-ss and swallow the 'd') and Peter, Laurids' friend. I took my stuff down from Risø in a couple trips. The room has a backwards 'L' shape, enclosed with white-painted concrete walls, a wood panel floor and a plaster ceiling with an obscure rectangular hole shooting upwards into darkness and the fourth through sixth floors. A floor-to-ceiling window that opens two different ways depending on the handle's position overlooks a triangular courtyard where the residents' bikes and the trash bins sit. I'm living on the third floor (Danish third) of a good-sized apartment building on Christianshavn, the small oblong island that rides up alongside København central with a couple hundred meters of water between. My street is Voldgården if you'd like to look it up (the zip code, which goes before the city, is 1412; Google Maps'll pick it out right quick).

I'd say to mail me some letters telling me how much you miss me, Dear Reader, but, alas, after two nights living in my island-bound room, I heard back on another apartment lead. This one's in Nørrebro, a region of København to the northwest of center, about 10 minutes' bike ride from the main train station, Hovedbanegård (meaning roughly 'main station'). I hadn't expected to get contacted by this other landlord. In the variable sieve of my memory I didn't pay enough attention to the detail that he'd be telling me by Tuesday (20 January) if he found me the best choice for the room. I had thought it was to be Monday (19) at the latest. So! I am moving again! I lose my deposit to my current roommates, and I'm paying 1000 kroner/month more, but I gain some nice benefits.

First off, my Nørrebro room is three times larger! The L-room I'm in now; it's a mere 6 square meters. if I lie down across the widest portion, I can't stretch out fully. For the visual learner (like me), imagine a letter 'L' whose base is thicker than it is long. This geometry leaves only one place to put the bed, running parallel to the 'L's vertical spine, nestled in the corner of that 'thickened base.' As for the bed itself, we found the frame on a dumpster dive. It's a single-person rig that's just wide enough to let me lie on my back and long enough that my toes come to rest on the wooden footboard as my scalp touches the head piece. No mattress. When I arrived with my belongings, it was the only piece of furniture. Why would I even take this small, bare room? All my other leads hadn't contacted me back (not including the one that did two days later), and Svaleholm charges about double my rent for this place. I decided to wing it. It happened that my roommates are kind Danish guys, and they lent me a mattress, pillow, and sleeping bag to cover me during the cold København nights. One of them (Peter) even gave me a lamp to plug into the lone socket. All together, it was quite a shift from the well-furnished farmhouse near Risø. To make matters even better, when I reassembled the refuse bed frame, I found some of the screws missing. While I was able to get it into a whole piece of work, I had to use screws from the foot and head boards. Even then, I may have discovered why it was all trashed in the first place--it wobbles, even with the transplanted screws. Definitely not a bed to be used roughly! I have slept on it now for a week and it hasn't fallen down. Oh, what fun!

Second, third, and fourth real quick. The new room is furnished with bed, couch, and desk. The apartment has its own washing facilities (I pay 17.5 kroner per wash here at Voldgården). Finally, it's closer to the train depot (Nørrebro station) where I need to get to classes at DTU (they start next week), and a connection down to Hovedbanegård (often abbreviated to København H) for my ride out to Risø.

To make this long post not so long, I am moving Saturday, another adventure to close out an action-packed January. What a way to spend the first days of 2009!

For those of you I relayed my Vodgården address to, I'll let you know my new-new address soon, and the rest of you will get a (hopefully) more permanent one.

That's enough for tonight.

Until some undetermined future time! Hej og godnat.