Icicles

It's been a while since I last posted, so let's work our way backward.

The good thing about Denmark is that its not as cold as everyone makes it out to be (I'm referring to guidebooks here). Or perhaps its because I currently go to school in Saratoga Springs, which has made me immune to cold weather, so that now when its 26 degrees outside, it's no big deal. So most days (and I haven't been here for a week yet, so when I say "most days" I really mean the past 6 days) its been 30-36 degrees everyday, which is pretty warm (again, compared to Saratoga). It's also a different kind of cold. It's not that bone chilling cold like upstate New York, instead its just chilly, like a damp cold. Yet I wasn't prepared for the damn wind. Nor did I realize how hard it was going to be for me to get back into bike riding (biking is huge here; in the city, everyone rides a bike, and you have to watch out for them just as much as you have to watch out for cars). Like take yesterday for example. I bought a bike from a student who was here last semester (I signed up for a Sweden bike and canoe trip in April, so my goal is to improve my biking skills by then!) so I was going to try riding it to the train station yesterday. I knew this was a going to be a little difficult because the seat is a little too high for my short legs :(. Michael said that it was only a 5 minute bike ride, but me forgetting that he is a Dane and thus an expert at bike riding, plus the fact that I haven't ridden a bike in 10 years AND the fact that its 5 minutes by car, lead to me not leaving enough time to get to the train station on time via bike. This is what happened: I started biking up the small hill (any hill = ridiculously difficult for me on a bike I've realized), got winded and tired after two minutes (mind you, I'm only halfway up the block, its 10:29 by now and my train arrives at 10:39), I try riding a little more, realize that I'm about to die, so I give up and walk my bike the rest of the way until I reach the corner. The corner comes, and the street I'm supposed to take is closed to bikes. Panic. I call Michael, he tells me to go left, so I go left. Nothing looks familiar to me, leading me to conclude that I'm lost. Panic again. It's 10:35 by now. I'm not making that damn train (it's also my first day of classes and everything starts on time at DIS so I really didn't want to be late). I call Michael again in a state of panic, he tells me to continue going straight. I do, but I can't ride the bike because there are too many damn people on the street. At this point I just want to throw the bike down in the street and leave it there I'm so annoyed. I park it, and decide to walk/run the rest of the way to the train (it's 10:44 at this point) thinking that hopefully there will be another train before 11:00 (Michael printed me out my own train schedule and according to that the next one wasn't supposed to leave till 11:05 and get into the city at 11:35 giving me five mins to get to class on time). So I try walking/running to the train, but this giant gust of wind decides to blow right in my face and my body, making it twice as hard to walk down the street (apparently Copenhagen is ridiculously winding, something the guidebooks forgot to mention, thanks). I finally make it to the damn strain station at 10:55 and to my surprise there was an express train at 10:57, so I was in luck! Lesson learned: I suck at biking. Christina (host mother) is taking me on a "biking lesson" tomorrow to the train station and around Roskilde. Hopefully I won't suck at life and will somehow manage to ride the whole way to the station tomorrow.

Just to paint a better picture of the strong wind: I almost got knocked down to the ground by the wind later that day, it literally pushed me into the street. Damn wind.