As the plane was touching down And all I could think about was Monday...
The cryptic song references are strong with this one.
So, after taking off in Dubai with the sunrise on our backs, I was only 7 hours from reaching Denmark. I managed to land a window seat this time around (Suck it Ryan), something I think may have helped to hold off the motion sickness for the second flight.
From my brilliant new vantage point, I spent an excessive amount of time looking out of the window at the landscape. As we passed over some obscure middle eastern countries near Baghdad, I got my first real glimpse at snow, albeit from 40000 ft.
Window hogging aside, I also managed to take advantage of the A380's entertainment system and watched Dunkirk, Baywatch and several episodes of Doctor Who, as well as listening to half of Ed Sheeran's Divide album. The food was pretty good, and I had dinner and a show after Ryan managed to slice his finger on the packaging and proceeded to whinge about safety. I did discover that planes love to give chocolate based desserts, so I swapped my mousse for his "steamed veggies with one random black olive". Trade felt pretty fair.
As we approached Copenhagen, Ava and I suddenly became very giggly and excited. Our Final Destination was approaching. Looking out over what was to be my home for the next two or so months, I found myself thrilled that Denmark was living up the gloomy/ rainy stereotypes of Europe. For once I was living a cliché. We landed safely and I had to resist the urge to applause the pilot, my enthusiasm was that high.
We then exited the plane, and I was immediately thwacked in the face with Danish winter, which at 4 degrees Celsius meant my breath was visible. My marvelling at this phenomena amused seasoned traveller, Mhairi greatly.
We made it through immigration and customs and I earned my first ever stamp in my brand spanking new passport.
Next we spent an extraordinary amount of time at the baggage claim, where I sent up countless prayers that my luggage had not been lost. Apparently God was listening, as my suitcase eventually turned up on the carousel. We finally made it out to meet our host families and have a final briefing before we were off on our own for the next few months (except in the case of Ryan and one of the Victorian's, who had a 5 hour train journey ahead of them to get to their host family. I imagine that was fun).
As promised, my host mother Nina took a photo of me and sent it to my mum as soon as she saw me.
<Ryan looking très chic
As well as myself, Nina had arranged to take Felix and Amy (Victorian's, but we won't hold that against them) to their awaiting host families. As we made our way to the car, I was once again hit by the freezing temperatures that clashed with my Sunshine Coast acclimatised self. At just 4 degrees, the saying "pasty white-girl can't deal" properly applied.
Mercifully, when we reached the car, Nina had been very thoughtful and had warm blankets on standby. We left the airport and headed towards Kolding, which would be my home for the coming weeks. Straight away I was thrown by the cars, which have the driver on the left and drive on the right side of the road (when I mentioned that the cars were on the wrong side of the road I was firmly told that Australia was wrong). Every time I saw a car heading towards me on the left my stomach drops for a second and my knee-jerk reaction is to assume that death is imminent.
While listening to some 80s bangers courtesy of Mathilde, we dropped off Amy and continued towards our destination. While crossing the bridge between the island and the mainland, the extreme winds began buffering the car almost off the road, which was terrifying yet funny, as how ironic would it be to come all this way to Denmark to then die by falling off a bridge before I could even reach the house (Nina promptly put me in my place, saying "You stupid girl, this is not funny" ). Eventually we reached the home, which looks exactly as the 10 year old google maps image made it look.
I was greeted by the Frank-Jessen's two huge but adorable dogs, Timon and Pumbaa, the latter being very shy around guests. I also met the male Human's of the house, Fredrick and Uve. At this point exhaustion was setting in, so after an hours nap and dinner, I went to bed for real. Thus ended day one in Denmark.