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.