Navigation 101

Imagine if you will, upwards of five hundred foreign students converging on the streets of Copenhagen. They have been armed only with DIS marked messenger bags, and the kind of cryptic directions that you can only understand if you are familiar with the area: “Locate the 7-11 when you exit the station.” Now, that’s all well and good if you come out the main entrance. The only problem is that Nørreport Station has at least three different exits, only one of which will allow you the required view of said 7-11 (whose storefront is currently covered with scaffolding anyway).

Imagine then, the confusion at being told to keep walking, and that you should pass Gammeltorv and Nytorv on your right. Never mind that the map you’ve been given shows no such places— you’re more concerned about the fact that Copenhagen appears to lack street signs of any kind. It is only after an intense ten-minute search of the area, that you discover not only that Copenhagen does indeed have street signs (they are brown and plastered about twenty feet up the side of a building), but also that Gammeltorv and Nytorv are not, in fact, streets.

Factor in the fact that this is happening from all sides of the city, with students who don’t know each other. There are, of course, clumps of students who do know each other, and sometimes, one of them is even carrying the DIS bag. Most often though, you can only identify them by the fact that they look as clueless as you do— and the fact that they are the ones getting run over by absent-mindedly standing in the bicycle lane. The Danes, for the most part, seem to take this all in stride. Whether they are used to this happening, or have simply been trained to display nothing but complete impassivity on their faces as the herds of bewildered and oblivious foreigners pass is not known. What is know, however, is that this means none of them feel particularly obligated to help out (understandably , considering the sheer volume of confused students).

The frustration is such that you give up and latch onto a fellow student, who’s lucky enough to be guided to the meeting place by an actual Danish person.