Eesti
After finishing my first Erasmus semester in Italy, I went home to Estonia for a couple of weeks to spend Christmas with family and friends. As well as to eat all those missed dishes such as mom’s ground beef sauce, grandma’s greatest meat and of course, all those Estonian dairy products that cannot even be translated (KOHUKE AND cottage cheese!).
Spending some quality time at home was definitely needed after our insane travel season in Italy but the closer came January, the more excited I was.
My new adventure started on January 22nd 2017. That’s the day when I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. That Sunday came so quickly that I didn’t even have the time to completely unpack my huge suitcase from the previous semester in Milan. I was excited to start travelling and exploring the world again but I didn’t know what to expect from Denmark at all. AGAIN. I’d never been here before (except to the lovely CPH airport but that doesn’t count). I’d seen some photos and talked to a few friends who were at that time living in Copenhagen and maybe checked where the airport was located but that was it. I was pretty sure that nothing could impress me in Europe and no matter what, I’ll be fine.
I was more or less right, I’m here now and it’s not bad at all.
On that Sunday, I made it to Copenhagen Airport quite late so it was all dark outside and there was not much to see. At the airport, I was greeted by my buddy Laura-Line from Copenhagen Business School’s (CBS) buddy program who helped me with my luggage and took me to my apartment (that program is highly recommended if you ever think of coming here as an exchange student – makes your life so much easier!!). Since it was almost night-time and, of course, raining (as it always is), I had no clue what to expect from my new hometown or home. When I finally arrived to the apartment I was going to live in for the next 6 months, I was so relieved and happy. I actually found the place very randomly through a friend who is living in Copenhagen and whose another friend was looking for a roommate which means I was probably just lucky to know people from around the world. – THANKS, KEYT!
(Side note: getting an apartment only for yourself is super hard here. Firstly, it is SO expensive and secondly, a lot of students here are not originally from Denmark, so there is a scarcity of available rooms AND since CBS students need CPR numbers (don’t even ask what that is, I’m still on my way to figuring it out) we cannot live in one of those cozy airbnb apartments which do not offer that).
APARTMENT
I’m sharing my apartment with 2 girls, Anna and Jeanne, one from Germany, the other from France. And even though I have never been the biggest fan of sharing, I maybe have to reconsider. It is lots of laughter, endless discussions, cooking Sundays and the funniest workouts in our corridor with these girls.
Not to mention, Anna is probably the smartest young woman I know – she has been living in Denmark for quite a while, she is an entrepreneur, she volunteers, she has so many new innovative ideas and she has also been to CBS so she knows exactly how to help out whenever I don’t know how to enter to our CBS accounts or where to get the cheapest study materials.
And then Jeanne, I mean, with that lady, it is never boring. She is the oldest in our apartment yet the biggest party animal, always encouraging us to go out as well, she is also a person who helps you out whenever you need to reorganize your room or you just need someone to drink wine with and most importantly, the reason why she is in Denmark, she works for the World Health Organization (WHO) as an intern (not a bad place to work!!).
So to sum it up, don’t worry too much where you are going to get your apartment, let the life do the job for you and you might end up living with as awesome people as I do.
UNIVERSITY
Now to the real reason why I’m here. I came here to study. Yes, that’s right. As mentioned before, I didn’t know much about Denmark prior to my arrival but I knew about Copenhagen Business School and its very good reputation among business schools all over the world.
- CBS is one of the largest business schools in Europe with close to 20,000 students (22,829 students in 2015)
- CBS offers world-class research-based degree programmes at undergraduate, graduate and PhD levels as well as executive and other post experience programmes
- CBS is triple crown accredited
- Ranked 13th among the most prestigious ang powerful business degrees in the world in 2017 (according to Business Insider)
I could carry on for a long time bringing up all the great facts about this university BUT the main thing is that I’m now here as well. What is life?!
FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL
Life here has been great. The first week in the end of January was meant to be an introduction week at CBS including all kinds of classes just to introduce what’s about to happen during the upcoming semester, where are the classes, buildings (they have so many different buildings where you might have your classes in and there is a chance that you need to bike between the buildings AND if you are as lucky as me, you have some overlapping classes in different buildings which means that you can skip your morning workout because you need to bike from Flintholm building to Solbjerg Plads very fast) and how to get an access to certain platforms etc. During that week we also had evening activities such as comedy night, movie night, Titanic dinner, parties and so on. As everyone had told me, it was a lot of fun and networking with new awesome people. I personally had the chance to take part of the comedy night and final dinner before I had to head back to Estonia for a couple of days to participate in EBS/VW project.
So, what can I say, life is an adventure. I have made it pretty busy for myself, therefore, right now I just try to divide my time between this new chapter in Denmark as well as work for the university project back in Estonia. Time flies way too fast when trying to do so many things at the same time but it’s all worth it!
This here is the first recap of my CBS-life and Denmark but trust me, it only gets better from now on!
Ciao!
Lisanna
Photos: Lisanna Pihlak
Editor: Kärt Mättikas
