Et Nyt Liv. A New Life.

I haven't been able to give enough attention to my blog for the last couple of days, but I have a proper explanation. I'm going to move soon, and those of you who have had this experience for at least once in a lifetime know how much work it requires. So, I've been packing, packing and packing. And while packing I was still attending the danish language school in Randers (wednesday was my last class). I'm going to move to Copenhagen on sunday, not exactly to the the capital's exciting downtown, but to one of its quiet suburbs, Høje Taastrup. All these suburbs are part of the city itself, and where I'm going to live it takes exact 15 minutes by metro to reach the center. I'm really happy for this change in my life concerning the fact Randers is a very quiet town, besides, it can be really provincial in many aspects, especially now during the cold endless months. It can become really depressing. And how hard it was to spend last winter in Randers when I first arrived in Denmark, without knowing anyone but my husband.

Last february: Please, starving bambis, don't eat my fingers. There's food to everyone.

It may sound cheesy, but the most important thing to go through the dark and depressing winter is not a big city full of exciting things to do (Ok, this help A LOT too), but friends. And I've made friends I really care about in Randers. And I'm going to miss them so very much. Of course Denmark is a small country, which will make it easier for us to meet ocasionally, but that won't make me miss them less. All friends I've made here were the ones i met in the language school, therefore, they were foreigners like me, not danish people. Our class was as multicultural as any other class in school, but as I've observed, many school groups doesn't tend to be as united as we were. People easily tend to segregate, so there's the turkish people group, the asian groups, the african groups and so on. As I speak spanish (that doesn't happen to be my first language), I've been invited quite some times to join the spanish speaking groups, but I've always prefered to sit in a multicultural group during my lunch breaks. I hate segregation of any kind and besides, sitting with people who doesn't speak english or any other language I speak forced me to practice danish. My entire class connected very well, despite the language and cultural differences. It was a rare and beautiful thing that happened. We were from Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Peru, Philippines, Tadjikistan, Turkey and Sri Lanka, and we were friends. And we still are.

The girl in a red H&M raincoat was a true symbol of danish summer in 2007 (Photo by Face Hunter)

I'm obviously happy for moving to Copenhagen, as I've always had great times there during my short visits. There's not such a thing as winter depression in Copenhagen, there's no gray months in Copenhagen. I wanna find a new school as soon as possible, as it's going quite well with my danish learning and I don't wanna blow it by now. Who knows if I'll find such great people in the new school (I seriously doubt) and I hope I'll get at least teachers as good as the ones I've had. If not... If not, there's plenty of escapism in this city. I'll lose myself in the countless museums (especially those with free entrance), I'll go to the movies over and over and over... Oh, the movies. So many movie theaters. And so many movies waiting for me every single friday. I'm really happy and excited about it. Besides, just walking in the city is like a fresh breeze of life. Jeg elsker København! :-)

Winter also means: no more crocs. Amen.

And so it's winter. Maybe not officially, but as it has already snowed twice and the temperature reached minus zero a couple of times during early morning, for me, that's winter. After a summer that wasn't quite a real summer (I know, I sound like a broken record), and a sudden autumn (some leaves were already fading by early september), it's winter again. For some people the best winter thing is the snow, or perhaps christmas, or perhaps both. I'm not really excited about christmas and snow looks beautiful and it's amazing to photograph it, but my real and perhaps unique winter happiness (considering my first winter) is to feed the starving deer at the Deer Park in Århus. It's winter, and they need to eat as much as they can, they are capable to eat until they drop sick. It's remarkable. The same thing happens to ducks and some other birds. The bambis are so cute and sweet I didn't mind the fact my hands were freezing. Another good thing about winter: no more of those awful crocs. Thank God.

Eva Green, WTF?!?

To end this post with something that really doesn't connect to any of the previous subjects, but caught my attention somehow. The dress, shoes and hairstyle worn by Eva Green last week in some event. What the hell she was thinking?

(...)

Update: It's been a very tiring week, but luckily I feel recovered by now. Last sunday, the day of the arrival, was the worst day. John and I removed the 41 boxes from the truck, up to the third floor (no elevators), a lot of work, as we had expected, but while I was doing it, it felt actually worse than what i had expected. And considering that the day before we put those same 41 boxes inside the truck, I had body pain all over the day next, the day I had to do the worst part of the moving. I'm not used to that kind of "hardcore" work, I suppose the only time i got close to work this hard was when I worked out 3 or 4 hours straight in a gym. Carrying those boxes and everything else to our new place while being in pain was definitely an experience to remember (When I think that I'll have to do something of this sort again, perhaps in one year or in 18 months, oh, the thought makes me stressed already).

And what to say of these new sides? It's funny how the suburbs here feel as quiet as Randers after 4pm during winter time. But I guess there's how suburbs are supposed to be. Luckily there's a metro/train station very closely, and shortly later, you're directed to a total different atmosphere. Copenhagen is so remarkably different from the rest of Denmark. It's almost like if there were two different countries in one. There's Copenhagen and there's the rest of DK. Perhaps, just the weather is the same. Ah, concerning the moving day, the weather was an ensemble of wind, rain and cold that made the work even harder. It was so cold that it snowed a little during night. When we came back to Randers by the middle of the week it wasn't any better. We needed to go back to get some of the stuff that couldn't fit in the little truck we had rented, as well as to clean our flat, as we intend to sell it. We were also supposed to paint the walls, but there was no time left.

I haven't enjoyed myself so far, except for a saturday afternoon when I went to Copenhagen downtown to see I'm Not There, which has opened a week ago, and only in one single theater in the entire country, which is a shame. I'm not quite sure of what I thought of the film so far, I'm currently digesting the whole experience, as it was much more complex than I imagined it would be. I also feel the desperate need of seeing the film one more time, but for financial reasons, I'd rather wait until it's available on DVD. Later in the evening I visited some imdb forums to check what normal people have been saying about the film, and it seems like it is a festival of past movies references, films like 8 1/2 and others of the sort. Films I haven't seen. I'm deeply aware of my lack of knowledge towards some "essential films", in short, those directed by european filmmakers in the 1960s. Despite of that, I suppose there's much more than understanding those movie references in order to absorbe the entire "essence" of Todd Haynes newest film. I don't have any great interpretation to share with you, but I intend to write a little post about the film, as it deserves a post of its own.

Excuse me about the lack of updates, but our Internet hasn't been installed here, it's taking so long. I'm actually using someone's unprotected wireless Internet at the moment (I know, it sounds illegal, but...), perhaps from one of those people i have seen in the stairs last weekend while carrying up one of those 41 heavy boxes. People who hardly reply on a warm and smiling Hello, but that's not a surprise to me, after nearly a year living in Denmark. My husband lived over 10 years in our last home and he didn't know many of his neighbours, including the guy (or woman?) who lived in the flat above. That leads me to the following question: Why do people get shocked (Do they? Well, I do), when they read headlines of this sort, "70-year old woman is found dead in her own apartment after two years of her death." I hope there are no cats involved in such stories. This kind of incident is so horrid that it's almost laughable, in an ironic way.

Well, time to move on. Tomorrow i have an "interview" in the local danish language school, and I hope I'll be able to go back to school very soon. And I wanna thank you again for the good luck wishes, it helped. In the end, it all worked fine. Thank You.

P.S.: I had to rewrite this update, as the first attempt didn't work, and I hadn't copied and pasted the text, and you know, it's never actually the same after you have to write it all over again.