Danish election, sightseeing and a weekend in Denmark (English recap)

This is just a recap in English of the last four posts on my blog.

Much of my time is obviously spent at work because there is always plenty to do. So far it is still about representing Denmark’s interests the best way possible, but we are also doing a lot to prepare for the Danish Presidency and figure out what policy areas are more likely to result in successful political agreements. I mainly attend Council working parties where legislation is prepared for the higher-level meetings of the Permanent Representatives and Ministers of member states. It is very interesting to attend these meetings and get a flavor of international negotiation and diplomacy. For instance, I went to a working party, which was preceded by three different informal meetings – just to give you an idea of how much work takes place behind the scenes.

Thursday, September 15th, there was a parliamentary election in Denmark. I voted by mail last week. Since all of us at the Danish Representation work for the government and are likely to be affected by a change of power in Denmark, we were very interested to see what happened. The Danish Cultural Institute in Brussels hosted a large party for the Danish expats at a nice hotel downtown. There was live streaming of the two major news channels in Denmark and it turned out to be quite a close race. The leftist opposition parties defeated the current government – to some people frustration and others’ joy – so it will be interesting to see if (i.e. how much) the change in government is going to affect Denmark in general and our work here in particular.

The day after we went south of Brussels to Waterloo (as described earlier), where we were seeing a Belgian production of Les Misérables – a show very dear to me since I did it with my American high school back in 2004. It turned out to be the play version, not the musical, but it was a really cool experience nonetheless. It was done in fast and slightly French which made for a linguistic challenge, but it was very captivating and authentic altogether. Also, it was an open-air theatre and the surroundings of the Waterloo Lion Mound were spectacular.

Last weekend I went to Denmark for a couple of days where I got to spend some time with friends and family and take a little break from my new life in Brussels. Sunday night I saw Josh Groban in concert in Copenhagen, which was amazing! He is definitely one of my all-time favorite artists. It’s the first time he’s ever given a concert in Denmark, so I had done my utmost to be in Copenhagen for that.

This past week I joined a gym and started taking weekly French lessons before work. Thursday night I went to a “Eurocrat”-event with free champagne – very fancy! Friday night we hung out with some of the other interns and had homemade sushi. Look at the picture below – gorgeous, right?

On Saturday I went shopping and sightseeing in old downtown Brussels with my roommate Tone and an intern named Charlotte. We went to the overcrowded shopping street Rue Neuve and roamed the streets around the impressive city hall square Grand Place. Charlotte and I found a nice Italian restaurant and finished off with a bit of barhopping and Belgian beer tasting.