Altruistic Joy: August 2008

From 26th August to 29th August, I was having Introduction Week in DTU. I was the only Indonesian in the 600-700 exchange students and I'm very proud to have represented my country. Most exchange students are from Europe, mostly from Poland, Spain and France. I'm very happy to have known many other Asians (Japanese, Thailand, Korean, Singaporean) through the programme as well as through friends.

My group leader for the week is Anikka and she is not a Danish, but she has lived in Denmark for about 3 years if i don't remember wrongly. On the 2nd day of the orientation, we were brought to Copenhagen city center and on the 3rd day, we went to Calzburg brewery. The Caucasians really drink a lot and love to party! Usually the day will end in the bar with drinking and disco and I will not take part in any of those because I have made a Buddhist vow to abstain from Intoxicating drinks. At the end of the night, many people will be dead drunk, inlcuding Anikka. I will usually leave earlier than usual because I don't drink and I don't want to be in the midst of drunkards. During some meals, they also have alcoholic drinks, and I will always only take non-alcoholic drinks like coca cola. Similarly, in Calzburg, we were given 2 free drinks and I chose to take only coca cola and orange squash. It's my first time seeing students drinking so much. On the last day of orientation, one guy in my group finished 11 cans of beer and most probably more during the night and he looked really awful to me, he was not that sober anymore and when he was taking the cakes, his plates were upside down! I joined in the disco for about half an hour just to see around and to relax a little. There were students who were so drunk that they dance around like no one's business.

We were told during the Introduction week that Danish people are generally extremely reserved, except after alcoholic drinks when they go into the state of 'hygge'. The Danish people likes independence, they don't hold the door for you and they will always try to avoid conflicts. When the Danes get comfortable with you, then they will open up and make stupid jokes and tease you that may sometimes offend you but they don't mean it.

Generally, I feel comfortable here in Denmark because it is extremely safe and comfortable place to live. I was expecting that everything in Denmark will be extremely expensive as my seniors have told me. However, when I go to the supermarket, there are things that can be cheap (eg milk, biscuits, cereals, some frozen foods, pasta, shampoo, conditioner, soap). But fresh fruits, vegetables and meat are expensive. One whole chicken cost around S$15-S$20, whereas you can get it in Singapore supermarket for like S$6. There is quite limited variety of vegetables as I have observed, only cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, brocoli, capcium and few others. Cauliflower, brocoli and 3 capcium cost 10 DKK, which is about S$3! In Singapore, you can get all these below $2. Nevertheless, I still find them reasonable enough. Lucky for us, there is an apple tree in Campus Village which is full of apples and we plucked them, so we save quite a lot in that way because each apple in the supermarket cost 2.75DKK, which is about S$0.80.