Last week I had my last 8 o’clock lecture. When I picked my courses I had a romantic notion that the subject would be so inspiring and fascinating that it would overpower and conqure my desire to stay in bed… I was wrong. Waking up at 6 something in the dark to go out into the bitterly cold Danish weather and ride my bike to the other side of the city, another island in fact, overpowered my desire for education. I worked from 7am this summer at a guest house in Iceland and that wasn’t too bad, but it was sunny from 4am. Usually I’m pretty good in the mornings, but in winter when it’s dark outside and cold I want to hibernate a warm cosy bed seems the natural place to be, like a little nest, not out in the dark. Anyway, from now on I have a couple weeks to finish my essays before some of my family come to stay and then I’m off to Germany for Gluhwein and Christmas cookies… oh and the lovely company of friends ^_^

Class’s this semester have been quite interesting. It’s a very different style to Edinburgh, far more independent and far far less contact time. We had small classes of about 20 people, and each class only met once a week for a 2 hour class, and considering I only had 2 classes, I was only at university 2 days of the week and only for a couple hours. As easy as that sounds it’s actually quite difficult because to balance out you have a 6,000 to 10,000 word essay due at the end of the semester on whatever you like, which means you have to work continuously throughout the week researching and writing, so you need the time away from university to work. I feel like I’m gaining experience and skills that I may not have at Edinburgh and I think it’s good training for when it comes to writing that nasty dissertation. Although I do prefer the more personal approach at Edinburgh.

Last week, I voted in the Danish elections, I read up about each political party before I decided, there’s so many here… at least in comparison to what I’m used to in the UK. Here, there seemed to be many parties with similar ideas merging somewhere in the centre of the politcal spectrum

Social democrats, Liberal Alliance, Radical left party, Conservative peoples party, Socialist peoples party, Danish people’s party, Venstre Liberal Party… etc. Although there are ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’ parties, there’s so many that claim to be ‘left’ or socialist – some seem to be too close to communism for comfort while others actually appear to be quite conservative. Names appear to be deceptive. Overall the social democrats remained the largest party at local level, even securing the position of Lord Mayor of Copenhagen in Frank Jensen, a position the Social Democrats have held in concession since 1938!

Christmas is also arriving in Denmark, in a beautiful way, but that’s another post for another time!