Every morning I bike to the factory, watching the smoking chimneys. I work as an intern in the department of Innovation & Technology. My project concerns the mechanical properties of sugar beets, which are important for the transport, storage and cutting of the beets. Once a week I go into the fields with a spade to harvest beets for my experiments. A pleasant activity when the sun is shining, surely. Unfortunatley, Denmark has the same unpredictable weather as we do in the Netherlands.

There isn’t much going on in Nakskov, and the town is in a remote area of Denmark. The town fell into decline after the shipyard and windmill factory shut down. There are still abandoned restaurants and bars scattered across town. I usually go to the gym about four times a week, which is a number of visits I don’t even get to in a month at E.S.Z.V. Oktopus. On weekends I spend my money (my salary’s pretty good for an internship) in bigger cities like Copenhagen and Hamburg.

Denmark is a lot like the Netherlands. The landscape is identical, although the country doesn’t have as many cities. Most of Denmark is flat, but there’s a hilly area too, as well as people with challenging accents (comparable to the Limburg dialect in The Netherlands). The Danish language is hard, despite the similarities to Dutch. The pronunciation is especially difficult because all sounds are completely different. Fortunately English is widely spoken, and I know a few simple Danish words.How are things in Nakskov, Denmark?