2018 Mission for Copenhagen...

It's been over one year now in Copenhagen. And looking back at my blog it strikes me that as I came here I rushed headlong into a very negative mindset about the country and city. I have begun to think that perhaps I am creating some of the depression and dreariness myself, with my set views from the past. A recent discussion with my Partner heightened that awareness and got me thinking more.

I looked back beyond the point we moved to Copenhagen, where, by chance, six months earlier we had visited for a long weekend break. At that time we loved it, and even commented we would love to live and experience the city for more time. So what changed between that experience and this past year?

I've analysed it a little and have come up with these points that were driving what we liked so much and triggered us to consider Copenhagen as a temporary residence (if I take obvious job and financial factors out of the equation);

• First & Foremost, we were on a vacation and had that "holiday" mindset. Which meant we were probably not looking at things like cost, living locations and other things that get to you over time.
• We loved the fact that Copenhagen was compact and that the public transport was so easy (i.e. read Metro running 24/7 from our hotel to the center). We ignored the other parts of the public transport system.
• We loved the Bike culture.
• For the most part we ignored the weather as we were determined to make the most of a long weekend and Spring is not the worst time of year of course. 
• Before we arrived we made it a point to have researched and have a list of all the places and things we wanted to do that weekend. This meant we never were short of things to do.
• We loved to friendliness we perceived from people at Bars, Cafe's and Restaurants we visited and the fact that English was widely spoken.

There are more, but I consider these to be the main reasons we found Copenhagen fun and considered it as a place to visit for longer. Having taken each one of these, I then, together with my partner sat down and came up with a plan to see if we could replicate this to some extent over the coming year in order to change our experience. So this is the plan we came up with;

• Most important, let's change our mindset. Let's try and make this as close to a long term working holiday as is possible. We accepted that given the costs in Denmark it's never going to be possible on our income to complete through financial caution to the wind, but we also thought it is important to save to do this at least once a month to some extent. But other things in our mindset we could work on for sure. For example accepting the weather is crappy and just living with it.
• There were things we loved about the place so let's leverage on those. As an example the Bike culture, so let's cycle more even in the cold. The friendliness, let's seek out those places where we find that and get more of it (whilst also accepting that generally Danes are very reserved and socially introverted).
• The weather is a big downer here during Winter. Which brings you into depression also for Autumn and Spring. Grey, Raining, Damp, Cold, with a very few hours of daylight - miserable in a word. So we decided, "let's try and recreate how we ignored that on vacation". Let's research, plan and find interesting things for us to see and do every weekend so we have a list of things to get through in the next year. We found time whilst working to do this for a vacation so why not now?!

My (our) hope is that by changing our attitude that perhaps 2018 will be more fulfilling and fruitful in Copenhagen and that we will truly get a sense for the city and have experienced far more than if we remained in our past mindset. 

Stay with me on this journey as I try to document how we get by and I'm adding a new Label for Travel so I can provide some reviews of key places either touristy or hidden.