vivi torontali

Not caught up? Read Episodes 1-5 here.

Now that we’re fully moved in and things haven’t been moving as quickly as they used to these past couple of weeks, I’m finding myself struggling to find material to write about. I didn’t expect our lives to develop this fast here– I figured I’d have at least a couple of months of riveting blog material. I won’t say I’ve been bored, but I sure as hell haven’t been busy. Because we’ve been sending job applications and hearing nothing back, I spend my days working on puzzles and painting my nails. As I’ve said in previous posts, these are good problems to have. I really can’t complain.

There’s one major issue that I haven’t mentioned previously because there have been more interesting things to write about. We don’t have unlimited WiFi, we pay for 100 gigabytes at a time. Streaming shows drains those gigabytes so fast that we’ve cut ourselves off from watching movies until July 7th when our new WiFi plan activates. All we can do is play on our iPads, do our Duolingo, and work on puzzles my dad has promised to put together over ten years ago. I started a display I like to call the Shelf of Corruption. So far, I have put together a 3D puzzle of the Hungarian Parliament and the United States Capitol building. The next puzzle lined up is the White House. You may think I’m incredibly funny or just a hater, but it’s all in good humor. My brain is quite well-rested since I’m no longer the subject of a corrupt government, and also since I’m still unemployed. Aside from all the puzzling, the next most interesting thing that’s happened in my household is giving the dog a full spa treatment, including a mani-pedi, a haircut, and a dental cleaning.

Most of our logistical stuff has been set up pretty easily and entirely digitally. We have doctor’s appointments and bank accounts now, and we didn’t even have to get off the couch to set them up. We also signed up for language school. Classes start in August, and it’s essentially free. We had to pay a 2,000 kroner deposit (roughly about $300), which we get back if we complete the course. There are six modules, each taking about 12-20 weeks to complete with an exam at the end. My parents were put in Level 2 and I was put in Level 3, based on our level of education and expected speed of learning. I have also just reached a 200-day streak on Duolingo, so hopefully I’ll be speeding through the first few modules. In my off-hours from Duolingo, I’ve been practicing some Danish tongue twisters. There’s one that I’m getting pretty good at, it goes “fem flade flødeboller på et fladt flødebollefad,” meaning “five flat cream buns on a flat cream bun dish.” The letter D is soft, pronounced similarly to an L.

Since we’re done building furniture, my dad has taken it upon himself to build my sister’s room. We’ve been using it as a storage room until now– it’s been a hot mess. Now it looks like an actual bedroom, ready for her to move in whenever she’s ready. Our orders have once again been giving us trouble, which is a developing trend I’m really not happy about. My dad ordered a bike on Ebay and the seller cancelled it because the bike was too heavy to ship. He then ordered another one off Amazon and they cancelled that order and didn’t tell us, so now he ordered a third one that’s supposedly coming in a few weeks. Third time’s the charm, right? My mom received her bike a few days ago– it’s very fitting for her. There are three wheels, one on the front and two on the back. She broke her foot by riding an electric bicycle in 2021, so this is a nice stable solution for her. Additionally, there’s a perfectly sized crate in the back for Nudli to ride in comfortably.

Speaking of issues with orders, we bought a shelf that we received two of, and it’s been the biggest pain in the ass to return. We didn’t receive a return shipping label, and if we were to send it back ourselves, we’d have to spend more money than the shelf itself cost. So we decided to list it on Facebook Marketplace instead. My mom has all the experience with Marketplace because she was the one selling everything we owned back in the States, but this time I was the one dealing with the potential buyers. We got no interest for two weeks, and then one day I suddenly woke up to at least 20 messages. At the end, we got almost 10,000 clicks and 800 saves, a record that was only exceeded once before, when my mom sold a handmade fountain she and my dad built from pallet wood.

I’ve been writing so much about boring logistical stuff, but I promise I’ve been getting around the city. One day, I biked all the way from my apartment to the city center, almost to the ocean. It took exactly an hour, and it felt amazing. It was so much like driving a car, complete with music (specifically Everybody Needs a Hero– Extended Edition by Orla Gartland). I cruised past King’s Square, the famous Nyhavn, and the beautiful Fredrik’s Church, all the way to Kastellet, a star-shaped 17th-century fortress. I’m such a local now that I got mad at the vast amount of tourists that couldn’t navigate the sidewalks or the bike lanes for the life of them. Why did I bike all that much, you may ask? I’ve been seeing a lot of museums, specifically the Museum of Danish Resistance and the Immigrant Museum. 

The Resistance Museum educates visitors about the German Occupation of Denmark in World War II, and I got a private tour by some brilliant history students who let me hold a gun. The Immigrant Museum was my parents’ first museum experience here– it’s really quite fitting. Danish immigration history isn’t very different from that of America, except for the way it treated Hungarians. After the 1956 revolution in Hungary against the Soviets, 1,400 Hungarian refugees were welcomed to Denmark with horn music and pastries. Based on what you know about my family’s experience in America, I find this incredibly poetic.

I also visited the Rundetårn, or the Round Tower. It’s a tower that doesn’t have many stairs– instead it spirals upward on cobblestoned ground. The top offers views of the entire city of Copenhagen. There’s something transcendent about gazing upon the city I never thought I’d call home. Age-old buildings built with so much grandeur, a culture that has developed over many centuries, and a government that works to serve the interest of its people, are all ready to accept me in all my foreign glory.