This year a group from year 7 and year 8 got the chance to participate in an exchange with students from Denmark. We as a group of 5 (Makara, Nils, William, Paul Tim) were assigned 5 students from Denmark to take care of them for a week in Graz, and after that we would visit them in Copenhagen for a week. We visited them in Copenhagen from March 31 till April 7th. We each stayed in our exchange students’ families and we got to experience their culture, the school system and many more.
The first days we went to school with our students, most of us took the bike to school because Copenhagen is big bike city, in the morning there are hundreds of people going either to work or to school with their bikes, so you see them everywhere. We also noticed that the system was quite different, their schools are way bigger with much more students and they used a course system. So, they can choose the subjects they want to deepen in. The next days we used to get around in the city and see the sights of Copenhagen, for example we took a boat trip through the harbor canal, and we also got out on the sea. On another day we did a bike trip out to the sea and walked along the beach.
On our 3rd day we took the train to Sweden, we wanted to visit Malmö and get a few different glances into the Nordic life. But we missed our station and landed in Lund, it’s a tiny city near Malmö, even though we weren’t supposed to be there we walked through the city and were surprised by its laid-back student town beauty and relaxed atmosphere. After that we also went to Malmö, we visited the beach and went to a few stores.
On Friday we got the chance to look at history project that the school we were going to was working on, it was about German history like the first and second world war. It was interesting to see what they worked on, they decorated the whole school, and each class was set up like a museum. The whole morning, we spent our time walking through the classes and looking at their projects, and at night we went out in the city with our exchange students. We got to experience the nightlife of Copenhagen which was quite fascinating because it’s quite different from Graz. The city was quite lively, people where everywhere out on the streets. We were out till 1 or 2 am and even at that time people were still all over the streets. They also use their bike to get back home which we found kind of weird because what if they drank something? Turns out there isn’t an alcohol limit for riding with your bike, it just says “if you aren’t a threat to others you can ride on your bike.
On Saturday we got to see the Parliament because the father of one of our students worked there. It was a nice experience to see where the politicians worked, and they had drawn pictures of all prime ministers of Denmark hanging everywhere which was exciting to look at.
On Sunday we left, it was an eventful week and we all were really thankful for the opportunity and the experience we had in Denmark, and we would recommend everyone to go there a least once in their life.
