April 1

Busy times. Here are the last couple of weeks in review:

I got a new bicycle. Since I got my bike stolen last year, I had been trying to find a dutch-style bicycle with both front and rear hand breaks instead of pedal breaks, which I really hate. I tried every bike shop I could find but they never had what I was looking for until my friend Chris suggested me to try Hr. Velo, a local bikeshop in Frederiksberg that specializes in classic bicycles and special-bulids.

I knew their bikes were going to be more expensive but after a quick visit to their workshop, I realized it was going to be well worth the investment: Friendly staff, plenty of options and helpful advice, all coming together to assist me in the process of choosing the right parts for my shiny new bike, which they put together in less than 3 days. Flawless service.

I passed my first Danish test. Nearly three months after I started taking classes, I took a mandatory test at my language school, which I had to pass to move on to the next module. It only took 10 minutes and, although it was quite simple (5 minutes of conversation about my work and 5 minutes asking questions to my teacher about the characters in a picture from my Danish book), I’m still quite thrilled to have passed.

Just three months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to put together a simple sentence, now I can read a basic text and have a better understanding of what is being said around me. I’m far from being fluent and I still miss 90% of the conversations I hear, but I’m starting to recognize words that I was oblivious to before, and now have a vague idea of what people are talking about. I still have a long way to go but I’m moving forward.

I found an original 1994 copy of “Superunknown”. Last weekend, Kat and I went into a small record shop in Nørrebro, just to see what they had, and as it turns out, hidden somewhere between dozens of second-hand records, there was a 1994 US first pressing of Soundgarden’s “Superunknown” on orange vinyl, in excellent condition after almost 20 years. I texted my friend Ross to asked him if it was worth paying 72$ for it and he texted back saying that if it was an actual first pressing in coloured vinyl, it was definitely a bargain. So I just went ahead and bought it. I’m pretty happy I did.

Kat and I mixed our books. Some people say this is the ultimate display of affection, even more powerful than marriage. Truth is, we didn’t think about it too much, we just thought organizing our books by colour would be a good idea and decided to go ahead with it. We set our turntable, opened a bottle of champagne and went through all of our books, building colourful piles around us while we listened to a bunch of records we had bought that same afternoon.

We enjoyed it but it was harder than we expected; after sorting them out by colour, we realized we had to organize them by shades and then figure out how the letters on the spines of the books fit within that system. It also became evident that we have too many beige books (boring) and that we need more yellow and green in our collection. So far, we’re pretty happy with the result but let’s see how we like this idea when we want to locate a book and take us ages to find it.

I was reunited with my copy of Led Zeppelin II. When I moved to Copenhagen a couple of years ago, I had to leave some of my stuff behind and asked my ex-housemates to keep them safe for me until I could pick them up. Amongst those items was a Mexican edition of “Led Zeppelin II” (my favourite Led Zep record) on red vinyl that Jimmy Page got me as a present three years ago, at the Reading Record Fair, during an Easter break. I wrote about it here, in case you’re interested in the full story.

Yesterday, my friend Latifa arrived from London to spend a few days with us and brought back my record, along with bags of chocolate eggs, hot cross buns, a chocolate bunny and long lasting Ibuprofen tablets. Isn’t she wonderful? I like her a lot and we’re very good friends, which is why I’m really looking forward to have her over. It makes me realize how much I miss my friends and how happy it makes me to see them.

November 21

Kat started her Spanish classes yesterday and it seems I will be starting my Danish classes next month, which is both exciting and scary. It’s been almost two years since I moved to Denmark and during that time I always avoided the subject, partly because I wasn’t particularly thrilled about the idea of spending almost three hours in a classroom after a long day of work, but I refused to sign up for Danish classes mostly because I was terrified by the possibility of embarrassing myself in public.

I know it’s stupid, especially considering everyone taking up those classes is probably in the same situation as me, but the truth is that I find group learning terribly intimidating. It makes me feel vulnerable and anxious. Add to that the fact that you don’t really need to speak Danish to get by in Copenhagen and you have the perfect excuse to avoid learning the language all together. I just didn’t see the point in doing it.

In fact, when I first came Denmark, I wasn’t planning to stay and I saw my time here as a transition phase; a convenient time-off to get some money, travel and reorganize my strategy in order to find my way back to London. But then I met Kat and everything changed. Suddenly, Denmark stopped being a back-up plan and became the plan, and although that means giving up on the idea of moving back to England and work in a big advertising agency, it also represents the start of a new stage of my life I’m really looking forward to. If I’m entirely honest, so far the trade off seems totally worth it.

The only downside to it is, of course, that I can’t postpone these bloody Danish classes anymore and will need to find a way to get my body to produce those impossible guttural scandinavian sounds; anatomically, I know my throat has everything it needs to pronounce every single Danish word there is, I just can’t figure out the way to do it. Once I get started with my classes, I suspect I will hate every minute spent on that classroom, every homework and every awkward attempt to read out loud some illegible sentence from my textbook in front of a dozen students, but I will give it a shot and I’ll try my best.

Kat’s doing her bit, it would only be fair to do mine.