Danish mornings

[Insert whining over allergies and hotels with wall-to-wall carpeting here]

The trip to the IT University starts slowly, a mental as much as a physical process. I need to track down something I can eat, and I watch the quiet street I live in through breakfast. It's daylight, and the streets are dry. I am obviously in a foreign country. Then down to the metro, the bright, clean metro, and of course there's no such thing in Volda - but it's different from New York, Washington, London and Vienna too: the four subways/metro's I have been riding this year. Most importantly: it managed to brake down gently. I sit until it's stopped, being used to the sudden bumps of the NYC subways, the clunky, noisy inferno of the R-line. But here I could easily stand up, the train docks with a polite stop, and it's time to be out of here.

The University is not at the stop called "Universitet", but at Islands Brygge. It's the logic of a small country: Everybody know about the sensitive issue of which buildings were built where, so why bother to change the names of the stops? So I head up one stop before one should think, and walk through the wind towards the brand new building in the middle of the active construction site which is ITU.

What else do I love? I love the open, free and generous WLAN, I love the airy, clean foyer, the Christmas tree and the electronic design elements. I also love the over-efficient coffee machine at the Game center - I don't really like coffee much, but when I need it, I'd prefer it to come from such a shiny, black machine that starts with grinding the beans and works from there.

But it's all flat. I feel naked and exposed, no mountains holding the sky up, and the wind throws my hair in my face.