For my STEP signature project, I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark for three weeks. I studied at a University in Copenhagen, DIS, and took a class called Roskilde Festival: Culture, Creativity and Community. The course was designed around one major cultural event that occurs in Denmark every summer, the Roskilde Music Festival, which is an 8 day long festival that is an experience unlike anything else in this world. The course dove in deep on what it is like to run a festival, the community that goes into it (it is run almost entirely by volunteers), and the different challenges that we face when putting on an event so big. Throughout the course, I was specifically assigned to a project on sustainability and how a festival the size of Roskilde can be sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Of course, the saying always goes that travel changes your worldview and I experienced nothing short of complete culture shock while in Denmark. It may be a Western city, but the way that the people live is completely different than people from the States. My three weeks in Denmark pushed me outside of my comfort zone, whether it was the overwhelming amount of work on sustainability I did at the Festival, the language barrier, or the other multiple personal life problems I was having while there. This study abroad experience challenged me. It challenged me to make new friends (something that is hard to do for me), to live in the moment, to learn different ways of doing things, or to be in a classroom with only 20 people (something almost unheard of at Ohio State).
This entire experience showed me there are more ways to live than the way we do in the United States. In Copenhagen, they bike everywhere, their grocery stores are more like the typical American Dollar Store, finding over the counter medicine is extremely difficult, and they have different priorities than people in the States. I cannot say I liked the culture of Denmark more than my home country, but I can say that they are extremely different. At first it was hard to adjust to this difference in living. They lack the amount of competition in the market place that we have, they rely so much on the honor system, and in general they go about things in a different way.
Where I saw these changes were mostly in my personal endeavors outside of the classroom. Wandering around the streets of Copenhagen or in the festival site, I learned so much about the culture that I was visiting. I learned so much about trust from this experience. The public transit is based on an honor system and, if you get caught, it’s a hefty fine. They leave their children and dogs outside of stores when picking something up. All in all, it was a very strange experience for me to witness, but it also opened my eyes to how untrusting we as Americans can be. Why are our first thoughts that someone is going to steal something of ours? Why do we expect the worst in people? It’s a question I do not have the answer to but I wish to someday figure out.
The lack of competition was most prevalent in the grocery store. Copenhagen has a law that says grocery stores cannot be bigger than a certain size which resulted in many little grocery stores. The small grocery stores do not all carry what you need and, if they do have what you want, there is only one brand. That is so completely different than the United States and it could be frustrating when I was shopping.
During my course I specifically learned about the cultural differences between the United States, Copenhagen, and the way the Danes act at the festival. I got to experience how a cultural event such as the Roskilde Festival is able to transform a group of people. Danes tend to be very reserved and quiet but at the Festival they transform into a more American type of culture. The festival turned the Danes (and other international attendees) into the typical American college student. They strike up conversations with strangers, are more outgoing and focus on having a good time. I talked to more Danes at the festival in the first 3 or 4 days than I had in the 2 weeks I had lived in Copenhagen before. I think this showed me that people aren’t always who they appear to be and that cultural norms have such an impact on how we interact with one another. It opened my eyes to the seemingly unfriendly cultures and how it may be that they’re friendly they’re just restricted by these unsaid rules of their culture. All over the world people have the same desire – to be accepted, and in certain areas of the world that means being ‘unfriendly’ in the American sense, being overbearing or whatever it is that separates the two cultures from one another.
This change in outlook towards different cultures has made me more aware of my own tendencies and preconceived notions. I saw in action that it is the situation that dictates how people act. This is an important realization for me due to my studies. I am studying Environment, Economy, Development and Sustainability, and through this multidisciplinary major I have constantly been challenged to see the larger framework behind why people/businesses/governments act the way they do. This is such an important lesson in the field of environmental economics (the field I wish to go into) because at its core the field attempts to explain why people act the way that they do towards the environment and how economics can describe that. However, I will also be able to go deeper than just economics and understand the cultural reasoning behind actions and how, for example, a community can justify cutting down an entire forest by analyzing their culture as well as the economics that come into play. Overall, this experience has left me with a lot to think about going into my future endeavors.
Friends made during my three weeks in Copenhagen
The Orange Stage – main stage at Roskilde Festival