touch down: Scandinavia

ok, so i've been in copenhagen for 5 days now, and i'm only blogging now. been utterly lazy despite the fact that time passes rather slowly here and i don't exactly have anything to do. i'll do a quick update now.

16th jan (wed) night. changi airport t3. time to go. we checked in rather fearfully knowing full well that we've exceeded our baggage allowance (by a lot) and didn't harbour any intention of taking anything out, much less part with our precious food boxes which we intended to survive on for the next 5 months. Thank God, everything went through, all 170+kg of baggag for 4 of us. heh.

was rather surprised to have a rather large send-off crew, since it was so late at night. but i guess that the fact that it was at the spanking new t3 helped entice pple... heh. there was bren and lu, who came all the way by train... and had to run for the last train back. (i'm so sorry we didn't get to talk much...); aunty carrie, who so nicely drove us there and gave some pineapple tarts to brighten up my CNY; aunty alen, who specially came all the way down to give us a gift (which was really really sweet:); the rest of the family, who now have more space at home/less mess to clean up; david's mum, who's probably been to the airport more times than all the rest of us;

and not forgetting, the dear frisbee pple, who came all the way for...... popeye's. thanks seb for organising the post-PT supper in the far east, and everyone for tearing yourselves away from the busy-ness of the week to be there.. thanks a lot for coming down, i truly appreciate it :)

we literally ran to the gate and was the last on the place before the doors shut right behind us. an uneventful flight- my first on SQ, landing us at Copenhagen International Airport some 13+ hours later. We were greeted by super efficient customs (we literally walked through, no queueing at all!) and with no incidence of lost baggages which plagued the whole of december, we were greeted by our buddies right outside in the arrival hall. didn't manage to get a picture of katrine and her friend cecile, but i know i should cos she's seriously super-model material.

took a metro to our place and lugged all the luggage 4 storeys up, which seemed to comprise of endless flights of steps. the apt turned out to be really cosy but kinda small, not the type we would be able to survive in for the long term. but we've been here 4 nights now, and all's well.

met up with our new landlord at our new apt in the afternoon so that we could sign the contract and offload some cash in deposit. a spacious apt near the main road and not far from the city centre. we know that cos we tried walking after that, on our way to register ourselves as danish residents. despite the fact that almost everyone speaks english, we felt greatly handicapped becasue almost always, all the impt notices being pasted on walls are 100% in danish, which makes comprehension impossible. for example, we had located the right building, but did not manage to comprehend the sign that said 'entrance on the other side of the building', resulting in an additional 7 mins wandering out in the cold.

we met at jian feng's place for the 1st night, so that we could go grocery shopping and cook something, but we ended up at macs cos we were too hungry and the supermarket seemed too expensive. it was to be a fatal error, all we could afford were the puny burgers on the 'coinsaver' menu, which is equivalent to our $2 McChicken kinda thing, except smaller, cos McChicken itself was already 40 dkk (about S$12?). i had some 15 dkk burger. and we spent the rest of dinner plotting and scheming of ways to save money in the land of the unaffordable.

but our fortunes turned slightly the next day. jf, david and i decided to go take a stroll along what was supposedly Europe's longest shopping street-stroget. it's a pedestrian street so it's pretty cool. until now, i have no idea how long the street really is, because we never really completed it. we barely conquered half of it, because we were constantly being drawn into the stores with the large bold letters S-A-L-E. h&m was quite good, topshop was not bad, but it was at zara that we spent a good proportion of our time. the prices are comparable/cheaper than singapore's on a sale, and jf nearly bought the entire shop. the logic: why buy food when clothes are so much cheaper, and can last longer?

of cos other side distractions included a few museums, one of which is clearly shown in the pictures, but of course, we did not enter.

the next day was pretty much the same, david and i headed down south to field's, supposedly the largest shopping mall in scandinavia. obviously we didn't complete it as well, but we didn find a rather cheap hypermart! (i miss walmart and meijers. : junk food here is a luxury - largely explains the vast difference in size between an average dane and an average american)

randrom shot of our first brunch. relatively healthy, don't you think?

sunday we went to church. first international baptist church. it truly lived up to its name, because it was made up of so many nationalities. it was in english, the message was brought by an american missionary, and it was pretty sound. the only weird thing was that the entire service lasted all of 1 hour. and well, the songs/ singing isn't something we're most comfortable with. i took a choir book from them, cos they were gonna present a musical at easter, taken from the book '3:16, the numbers of hope' by max lucado. to be presented on march the 16th as well. heh. i was just curious to see how the songs were like. i must say that they're really organised tho, for a small church of about 100 people. many active fellowship groups in place as well. they actually invited us to one of the guys' place for dinner, and we went. the company was great, and they were really hospitable. one of them even gave david and i a lift after chruch to the little mermaid.

the icon of denmark is pathetic. pretty much like mona lisa in the louvre. we were honestly disappointed, and would have been even more so if we had walked all the way in search of it. it was a rather chilly afternoon as well, and it became nearly impossible to move your lips when you talked. if i go on like that one day i can own an achmed as well. so we soujourned all the way back to kongens nytov, where stroget begins, to look at the ice-skating rink set up there.

(clockwise from top): the LITTLE mermaid; some anglican church; carol on stroget; on the ice-skating rink

today, we didn't go out at all. i spent all afternoon doing my long-overdue research, and we watched stardust (which is a fairytale for kids that's a tad too scary). our steak which was intended for dinner turned bad, so we had to eat pasta for the 4th night in a row. but it was good, nonetheless. the chef himself would demand a compliment no less than that.

weather-wise, it hasn't been that cold, temperature's in the region of the single digits, no doubt, but still manageable. not that gloomy, despite the fact that the sun sets rather early, by which time we're back/heading back to cook dinner anyways. it's the wind that kills though, and each gust cracks my skin so bad. i need better moisturiser. argh.

wow i've typed a lot. see when i blog, i over-write. just like how when it rains, it storms - back home, that is. over here it just rains and rains. and rains. it's just never done.

tomorrow we're moving our things to the new place, (i'll post some pictures of the present place after i take some) and on wed morning, we're off to norway for some real snow action! :p