I *heart* Kobenhavn

To get rid of my demons I hit the train to Copenhagen, for another grand escape. The city of Copenhagen is absolutely gorgeous. I loved the vibe of a capital city, cars, people, noise and diversity. It's not Bucharest when it comes to traffic and crowd, but at least it's better than Aarhus. I totally enjoyed it and the weather was perfect. I could not stop smiling and enjoying. I left Aarhus on Friday, early morning by train and returned on Saturday evening by bus/ferry. We slept in a good hotel/hostel called Jorgensen in a 12 people room, with some French people, and a good breakfast for only 150 kr/night.

This is definitely a must see European capital. Still Stockholm is better :P.

The little mermaid (someone did a heart graffiti on the stone under the mermaid).

The National Museum (actually the best museum I have ever been in…it's perfect and full of cultural vibes, even if it's mainly Danish culture).

The Merman and his 7 sons (According to a Danish folk legend, Agnete was a young peasant girl who was walking by the shore as a merman emerged from the waves and offered her his hand. Agnete fell in love with him immediately and went to the bottom of the sea with him, where she gave birth to his seven sons. After eight years, however, as she was sitting by the crib of her youngest son, Agnete heard the sound of churchbells ringing from her old village, and she felt homesick. She got permission from the merman to go to church, on the one condition that she would come back to him after mass. But of course, once on land again, Agnete found that she missed the church and her family too much, and she wouldn't return. In Suste Bonnén’s sculpture, the merman and his seven sons are pleading for Agnete to return to them, stretching out their arms towards her).

Christiania (Freetown Christiania is a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 850 residents in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital Copenhagen. Christiania has established semi-legal status as an independent community, but has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its open cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. Since then, measures for normalising the legal status of the community have led to conflicts, and negotiations are ongoing.Among many Christiania residents, the community is known as staden ('the town'), short for fristaden ('the freetown').

Carlsberg factory/museum (I am not a big fun of beer, but I just found my favourite - Carl's Ale - it left a sweet honey taste in my mouth...mmm...delicious...and I found the Carl Jacobsen initially used the swastika as the symbol for Carlsberg in 1908 - this is a symbol of luck in the Viking culture and other cultures, as well as the Jewish star - which he considered the alchemy symbol for beer).

Crazy weather makes us weird

This day has to be written down and marked in my history. It was a strange day from the 1st second I woke up...at 04:13. First of all...after yesterday the sun rose at 6:00, this morning it did at 5:30...half an hour earlier in just one day. At that hour the weather was rather ok...not very cold...just usual spring early morning, but all of a sudden it starter snowing...and not just a few snow flakes...it was a fking blistering-windy snow...but only for 1 hour because the sun started shining bright  melting the snow. But no worries in another hour it started snowing again...in the same degree...and this is how the whole day went...with super snow and then super sun.

The second thing that really gave me a good laugh (ironic faith type of laugh) was more extreme. While I was eating my 10 o'clock lunch with Marketa somebody started knocking hard and ringing at the door. We had no idea who it was and we've been told about someone who comes randomly to invoice the radio/internet waves...and the bill is pretty high...so we decided not to answer :). He stopped, but after 10 minutes he was back...and we got really scared and of course didn't answer. Finally he stopped and came to Edita's window to make us signs to open the door...and we did...and it was the janitor. They had a problem with the sewage upstairs so he needed to know that we would be home when the plumbers will come to also check our kitchen sewage. Of course he was pissed at us, but we were scared :D. Anyway, before I tell the rest of the story I must say that this weekend we had general cleaning, which is once a semester and someone from the university comes to check if it's properly made...and it has to be otherwise they call in a cleaning company and charge us...so we spent all weekend cleaning to the extreme, everything. So...the plumbers came and started working in the apartment up stairs...they said everything is ok in our apartment, so we were relaxed. But after 10 minutes the kitchen was full of a black, smelly, sticky grease with water and hair and iiiiiiiiiiiii...horribleeeee.....the walls, the floor, the dishes, the furniture...everything. We couldn't do anything but laugh...it looked so bad and this was after one whole weekend of super cleaning...and tomorrow they are coming to check it...One of the plumbers agreed to help us clean. So he put on his gloves...rolled his sleeves and got on his knees to clean the floor while we were cleaning the furniture and the walls. He was a typical Danish guy: big and blond...Viking type...with a rose model tattoo on his forearm and a very strange sense of humour, as he was trying to make us feel better by telling us that we should be happy..."it could have been shit" :))...ha ha ha...funnnnyyyy…so we cleaned again…everything. I am only sorry for the t-shirt I was wearing which turned a bit violet from brown because of the acid in the dirty thing.

The day is not yet over, but I hope no other things worth remembering will happen :)

My religion

A lot of holidays happen in the spring, especially religious holidays. That is why in this period I feel more of a stranger than ever in the great country of Denmark. The most spread religion here is Protestantism. So, they are Christians following the catholic religious calendar...just like most of the Western countries.

Now, I am officially an Orthodox. This to them has no meaning, as most of them never heard this term in their life. So..this makes it so difficult for me to explain what Romania actually is historically and so difficult for them to understand the way Romanians might be by following cultural patterns such as language and religion. How could it be easy for a person who doesn't really learn in school anything about East Europe to understand that Romania in a Latin country with a Latin language, surrounded by Slavic countries and which has actually a Slavic religion but was not part of the USSR and actually has a long time history in the area? As my IPM teacher would say *This is not poooosible*

I am not a religious person, though I have been baptized as an Orthodox. This was actually not my decision to make...it's just following traditions. Traditions which from birth take a democratic right away from you..the right to choose and perform your religion. Anyway, this is a controversial topic, for me at least. Not only was I baptised and became part of something I don't really feel part of, but it was and still is mandatory to learn it in school. So, even if I am not a religious person, I still have this great frustration of not really being able to choose and properly celebrate. And now for me it is chaos. Easter is getting closer and everybody will celebrate it here on the 12th of April, and we will have a long holiday to enjoy Easter at that point. I don't mind some time off from school, is just that I feel somehow sorry that on the Orthodox Easter (19th of April) I will not have part of anything. I am again forced to celebrate something which doesn't really exist for me. I am free to do whatever right, but not really...I have to take that long holiday for the Catholic Easter and not work for 3 days in that period. If I could choose I could actually finish with school a week earlier and I would also earn money for those 3 days of work which I don't actually have to take off.

Oh yeah and today it's St. Patrick's day. It has absolutelly no emaning for me and I have no idea what it is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick), but I will celebrate it as everybody does with green bier and a green outfit.

So me/How I spent my Friday 13 weekend

Friday 13

Well...we went to UniBar and than to Social Club. I am in my 23rd hour of being awake...uber drunk, but still able to write in English on my blog. It's 3:13 in the morning...I woke up at 4:00 in the morning yesterday, but I feel good...I'm eating raisins and drinking water and thinking about nothing :)

Ahh...and we met Edita on the bus when we were coming back home coz she went to another party and she had her hair cut :)

I hope I'm not gonna delete this when I wake up....nighty night to me :)

Saturday 14

Today I started speaking again with a special someone who I'm happy to have back in my life. After a day of shopping for food, yahoo chatting and sleeping we went to Lina's house for pancakes. The night didn't end so fast as we decided to all go to Ris Ras - our favourite cafe in Aarhus. I met some new internationals with who I think I am going to hang out more from now on. This semester I think it's more diverse for me...I know more people from a bigger variety of countries (Turkey, Greece, Italy, Czech, USA, Canada and of course Spain and Romania) and the Latvians are gone along with Mara.

Sunday 15

I had a weird dream last night. I dreamt that I received an e-mail that I didn't get accepted for my internship in Madrid because my profile didn't fit with what they were searching. I hope it's not going to be like that. I hate waiting for answers.

An already traditional walk on the beach and chocolate muffin with maple syrup in a coffee shop with Mathew.

MPD

Laura, Lora, Luli, Lulu, Lali

Oh...I saw a great documentary today on human right abuses in China, called "China Blue". It was really touching and it hurts to acknowledge that such abuses happen in the world, just so we can wear a damn pair of jeans...which is bought from the Chinese producer with 4.1$/pair and sold in the West with even more than 100$/pair.

Buhu...I have a flat tyre on my bike :( I small piece of glass managed to break through my tyre this morning when I was coming from work. Devastating...since the bike is the only way I can get around... especially to work in the morning. Luckily there are shops where they sale and repair bikes everywhere. With my puppy...begging for mercy face, I managed to convince the guys at the shop to repair it in the same day, because I would've been dead otherwise. It costed me 92 dkk (about 13 euro) for a tiny little hole...but I guess I had no other option...and they know it is too far to walk with a flat tyre (because you are not allowed to take bikes on the bus) till the city centre  where it would have costed me only 60 dkk for the same job. Anyway...at least a have a mean of transportation again...

Broken strings

I feel so lazy…and tomorrow the action starts again. Doing nothing gets me so tired and lazy…My mind is field with controversial thoughts right now…about many things…my personal conclusion is that the world is completely f**ked and this is only because people live in it…we are so weird, difficult, impossible to understand and selfish that we became blind to everything…all in all we are nothing but some stupid asses destroying everything we don’t really have to pay for (nature, feelings, relationships, ideologies etc.). I'm a bit broken...

Though I was pessimistic about the Martisor last weekend on Monday my Bulgarian classmate surprised me with one. I think it's the most beautiful Martisor I ever got...it's a girl made of red and white threads, just like the one in my previous post...and I felt weird getting one in Denmark from someone in Bulgaria. They call the celebration "Baba Marta" and the idea behind the celebration is the same as in Romania. I don't know the roots of the celebration, because they didn't have it in Ukraine...so it's not coming for Russia. (need of further research at some point in this life)

On Wednesday I felt like an workacholic or a money addict. I worked more that ever - 3 hours of cleaning, 3 hours Romanian classes with Rein (which by the way are weird, I never imagined how difficult it is to explain Romanian to someone), 4 hours of projecting for LSRS and at the end of the day again 6 hours of cleaning (because Marketa went to Copenhagen with her Czech friends who came to visit). Yes...I was dead at the end of the day. But at least I had a no cleaning day on Friday...though it was a long day at school.

I made MUCENICIIIII!!!!!!!!! I am a true Ratatouille.

Last day of winter – First day of spring

I am starting to get the meaning and hidden logic of my blog. It gives me the opportunity to look back and see what I was doing last year in the same period, what my thoughts were and even how I looked. I love this…especially because of my gold fish memory.

Today it’s basically the start of my favourite period of the year. This is because the sun starts shining again, nature blossoms, hope resurrects, we stop hibernating and head for a prolific, fun year and of course I have my birthday. I’m a bit sorry to miss all the “Martisor” commotion, but I feel it more from here than when I was at home, maybe because for the first time the financial frustration of buying things disappeared and I truly enjoy the first day of spring in red and white. Still, I imagine my Bucharest crowded with people desperately trying to find something special this year to give the loved ones. I imagine everybody wearing the white and red thread around their wrists or on their chest. I miss the thread I always used to have around my wrist...I'm not going to have it this year I guess, as nobody is going to give me a Martisor.

This week I tried to push myself physically a bit too much. I decided to go to the gym. And it was a wise decision to take…if only I would learn not to exaggerate with things when I start doing them. My muscles hurt like hell…especially my legs, which in my mind should have already been trained from cycling. Anyway, this week I went to Tae Bo, Funk and Boxing - twice. I'm going to pursue the boxing thing because it is really relaxing to do something aggressive and get the hunger to scream and run out in another way. I will also try some other programs and maybe by the end of this week decide what is better for my body and mind. And…oh my God…I went to the solar…for the first time and I didn't change my colour one bit…but I will peruse…not till I get a carbonised look, but till I get some colour.

On Tuesday we had the Festvalen for International Students, so I made up a quick costume (cat) and went, even if I had a really full day. It was good to see people again but we didn't stay long, because we had to wake up at 4 the next day.

Tomorrow I'm sending my application to the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I decided to apply for the Embassy in Madrid or the Romanian UNESCO representation in Paris. I don’t know which I would prefer…I just hope I get accepted…so fingers crossed for me…If I get it I will spend my summer (July – September) far from home and under the sun.

And this week I got my first salary…yuuppyyy…they pay here for 2 weeks every 2 weeks… a strange system for me, because basically after one month of work I received the money for two weeks and things are getting a bit delayed…so I got just enough money to pay my rent. I hope I’ll manage to raise some money for summer in this rhythm…I have to stop myself from buying unnecessary things, especialy food – a difficult thing to achieve in my case.

To celebrate the first day of spring we went on a walk through a forest which used to be glacier 15000 years ago and where they found some ancient thumbs and then on a beautiful beach.