Jeg Savner Kobenhavn

The above subject line means I miss Copenhagen in Danish.  It's now been almost exactly four months since I left Copenhagen and I've spent a large portion of those four months missing Denmark and the people that I met there.  I miss going to dinner with my visiting family, learning about the wacky world of politics from Jacob Butski, going out dancing late at night with friends, and a trip to a new and exciting European country always being just weeks away.

I'm hoping to find a way to return sometime soon - either through an internship with DIS, my study abroad program, or just for a visit if I can save up the money.  But for now, until I can make it back to the magical land of the Danes, I will reflect on my time abroad and what the entire experience meant to me.

I absolutely loved and cherished my time in Denmark.  I relished each new bit of information about Danish culture and each new winding street or beautiful park that I found myself exploring in Copenhagen.  I got to know and love many wonderful Americans and Danes who I met there.  I so enjoyed the new knowledge I gained of the European Union and the Danish political system, and will never forget my travel to Brussels, Russia, the UK, Spain and Italy.

I also got a new perspective on how big the world is.  Smith College is a world that I have been living in for the past three years, and it is a world that I love, but spending time abroad made me realize how Smith is a small and self-contained world.  It is one way to live and interact with other human beings, but it is by no means the only way.  Being a student at Smith often becomes an all-encompassing, all-important bubble, and getting outside that bubble for a significant amount of time was great for me.

Getting to live somewhere else and travel to so many countries just made me want to travel more and more. This is a good thing, but now I am practically trying to figure out how I can structure a life for myself where I get to see as much of the world as possible.  That sounds like a pretty cliche, lofty goal, but that is how I envision myself having the richest and most meaningful life.  I don't know if that means interning in Copenhagen, doing research or a volunteer program in another part of the world entirely, or just taking vacations as much as the demands of my life will allow, but I like that the travel bug is now in me.

I put a one kroner coin on a necklace (they conveniently already have holes in them!) and proudly wear the necklace around.  My room has a European Union flag as well as a Danish flag, a map of Copenhagen, a news clipping with the Copenhagen metro subway map, a photo sleve from pictures from my semester, and a string of ribbon on which all the postcards I collected are hanging.  It might be a bit much, but I feel immensely proud of the experiences I have had, and these feel like so much a part of who I am, or who I envision my best self being.  It also gives me a great excuse to launch into conversations about Denmark, at which point I begin rambling excitedly and the person I am talking with wishes they never asked about my time abroad.

Thank you to all the amazing individuals I met in Denmark, the supportive friends and family who made last semester possible and remained confident this experience would be an amazing one even when that felt impossible to me the first week, and THANK YOU to everyone who kept abreast of my experiences by taking the time to read this blog.

Jeg elsker kobenhavn og jeg elsker dig (I love Copenhagen and I love you),
Alana