Adventures of a Catalan student in Denmark

It is no secret to all of you that college students party a lot. Or at least we used to before this corona crisis made us practice social distance. We don't know when this is going to end so I thought that maybe I could write a less serious blog this week and explain how nightlife and partying are in Copenhagen and in DTU. Maybe many of you reading this blog are from Spain or from other Mediterranean and Latin countries where partying is part of our soul. Let me tell you that Danes are also quite good at it too. I didn't expect most of the things that I will explain in this entry before I first came to Denmark so I hope that I can surprise you a little bit. Many people say that Danes transform themselves completely when they go out. It is true that they can get quite wild after some beers even if they are quite shy or not very outspoken during the day. Copenhagen is a city full of young people. Danes and young expats pack the clubs and bars in the city center on weekends. T...

You may have all heard that Denmark is one of the happiest countries on earth. The truth is that even if happiness is very subjective, the nordic country I call home has topped the World Happiness Report rankings for many years. In the last couple of years, Denmark has fallen short to its neighbor Finland but still ranks very high every year.  You can read last year's report on this link.   https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/ Danes are so proud of it that they have even created a think tank called Happiness Research Institute. It was founded by the author of the book that I will talk about today. His name is Meik Wiking and his book is "The little book of Lykke. The Danish search for the world's happiest people". I have read this book during the quarantine to understand what makes my new country one of the happiest in the world. To tell you the truth I didn't need to read the book to learn some of the staff that is written on it because I am lucky to live ...

It is 3:30 PM on a rainy December afternoon at DTU's Lyngby campus. Almost 1000 students are locked in the library watching the sunset while they read books and power points to prepare for their exams. This scene might seem quite dramatic but it would be worse if the library was not as comfortable as it is. DTU's library ("Bibliotek" in danish) is super special and makes student want to stay longer than they would in other libraries. This post will try to explain what makes this library so interesting and different from the previous libraries I had been to. DTU's library is located in the 101 building where the canteen, the gym and the bar are so it has a hard competence. It is more appealing to eat, exercise or drink a beer but our duty is to learn and study so we have to do that every once in a while. The library can host up to 1000 students and is open 24/7 with the DTU card. Once you enter the library (automatic door) the first thing that you see is a pane...

You can't understand danish lifestyle without thinking about bicycles and biking. Go to any road, any school, any station or any forest at any time of the year and you will see danes of all ages and conditions driving their bikes. You will find this in Copenhagens most crowded streets and also in the agricultural towns of Jutland. They use their bikes for everything. They go to school, to work, to the supermarket and even to clubs (be careful) by bike (cykler, in danish language). Of course, the whole country is prepared to make life easier for bikers. Every road has a biking lane while every station, big shop or school has a bike parking. The public transport is also prepared for passengers with bikes and it is very common to see people with their bikes in the train if their daily displacements are too long. Most people have indoor parkings in their apartments in order to protect their bikes from windy and stormy nights. Everything is ready to make bicycles the main mode of tran...

Before starting with the real story that I want to explain today you have to know that I work as a tennis coach at Gentofte Tennis Klub so that is why I can tell you about Dansk Tennis Klub and Rovsinghall. In a future post I will try to explain how I got the job, what it is like and a lot more. Denmark holds the honor of being the third country in the world with the highest acceptance rate of same sex marriage (89 %, just behind Sweden and The Netherlands). But as you know times have changed and this was not the case some years ago. Leif Sadi Rovsing was a tennis player that represented Denmark in the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympic Games. Besides being one of the best players in the country at the time, he was kicked out of all the tennis clubs in Copenhagen because he was homosexual. He didn't let discrimination stop him. He used his family's fortune to build his own tennis club that consisted of one single indoor tennis court in Rygards Allé in Hellerup, one of the fa...