By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Contributing Writer
Studying abroad is a time of self-discovery. By the end, you may become a person that you would never expect. Maybe you pick up new hobbies or find a new dream career path. Maybe, like me, you will become a regular at 7-Eleven. This is where I started my Friday morning in Copenhagen. Nothing leaves you fiending for a cold bottle of orange juice like a night spent in a sweaty club. To start my day, I miraculously managed to roll out of bed and get ready in time for the bus. After collecting my much needed OJ and a blueberry muffin, I headed to Danish Language and Culture, my first class of the day. The day’s class looked different from our usual recitations of tongue-twisting Danish dialogues. Instead, we workshopped ideas for our final papers on Danish culture. While I opted to write about Danish author and cultural superstar Hans Cristian Andersen, several of my classmates opted instead to write about a topic that Americans might find puzzling: the Danish welfare system. Denmark serves as just one example of the thriving welfare systems that are prevalent throughout Scandinavia. It might be hard to imagine how they succeed when in America government welfare is often underfunded and subjected to the whims of political turnover. Denmark’s welfare system relies on deep-seated societal trust to keep it going. This collectivism pays off, with Danes — and foreigners staying for an extended period — receiving free healthcare and other services.
After Danish, I headed to my next class, Anthropology of Food, where we mulled over the true meaning of “home-cooked,” which naturally made me very hungry. I met up with some of my roommates after class and we walked to one of Copenhagen’s buzzing centers, Nørreport, for one of the city’s only affordable meals: falafel pitas. Danish food is not known for its spice, nor, frankly, its flavor in general, but one thing Copenhagen does right is have a shawarma shop on every corner. The prevalence of foods from the Middle East is one of the more obvious signs of increasing multiculturalism in Denmark. Immigration into the country is the source of much political and social controversy in Denmark, as it has been across Europe over the past decade. Food is one of the tools through which Denmark has resisted the influx of non-Western immigrants and their cultures. I remember learning in Anthropology of Food about one famous incident dubbed “Frikadeller-gate,” which involved an attempt to mandate serving pork in school cafeterias, despite strict rules against consumption of the meat in many religions, notably Islam. The ease with which Danish society integrates some parts of immigrant cultures while attacking others is almost as puzzling as it is expected.
We brought our tzatziki-laden pitas to a local park, where it seemed the entirety of Copenhagen had gathered to sunbathe, since the temperature had finally eclipsed 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The green surrounding the central lake was dotted with people sipping iced lattes and lying out on blankets. My roommates and I spent a while enjoying the sun before taking the bus back to our apartment in a quiet residential neighborhood just outside the city. After rushing to get ready in time for the next bus — which I missed, in typical fashion — I headed off to meet with a friend who was visiting from Berlin. A 20-minute walk, metro ride and bus trip later, I arrived at Reffen, an outdoor food market placed along one of Copenhagen’s idyllic canals. The market, which is the place to go to try cuisines from around the world, had just opened as the weather started to become tolerable. After waiting in a couple impossibly slow lines — the pace in Copenhagen is anything but fast — I happily stuffed down my chana masala and veggie empanadas. Once the sun went down and we couldn’t stand to be outside any longer, my friends and I parted ways, and I embarked on the lengthy journey home. I arrived to my roommates eating dinner together and, before long, I fell asleep in front of our current favorite show, Love Island, which we’d been chipping away at all semester
