Denmark Diaries:The Final Month Abroad

26/05/2026: written at the kitchen table of Oktobervej 14

I cannot believe I am in the last month of my study abroad year. 

Not because it hasn’t felt as though ten months have passed by. I am well aware of how the time has moved and how the seasons have slowly changed around me. I cannot believe it is my last month because, for so long, this was all I can remember thinking about. 

It began as my seventeen year old self filling out a passport application to finally travel to a new country for the first time. Then it was my eighteen year old self on a university campus tour asking if a study abroad year was possible for my potential degree path. It was a dream in my first year of university at nineteen as a glimpse of what life could be like. It was a vague hope, then it was a tangible goal in second year that my twenty year old self thought of constantly. It was starting a personal statement and creating pro and con lists. It was researching countries and figuring out visa applications. It was travelling to the Manchester Embassy and waiting in a queue for my turn to hand in paperwork. It was hours in the library. It was praying for exam results to not let me down. It was patience and a whole lot of emails. It was applying for accommodation and paying a deposit. It was working all summer to save enough money. It was saying goodbye to friends who would graduate without me. It was booking a flight and packing up a life. 

It was finally arriving in Denmark and realising, after all that time, it was happening. 

It would be hard to express all that has happened in these months away. To be honest, I have no idea where to begin. Other than the fact that, after all, it was worth every moment of struggle, stress and sheer determination that led me here. Actually, truth be told, I never even imagined myself living in Denmark – it wasn’t a place I knew all that much about, nor a place I had ever been to before. Yet now, I can never imagine a life where I hadn’t experienced this country or, as cliche as it sounds, the person I have grown to become here. 

There is so much I will miss about the life I have built, made up of friends from all over the world who will, in only a matter of weeks, return to their own lives back home. I cannot take much of the credit for the time I have enjoyed. For it has been, for the majority, the people that have surrounded me for the past ten months that have influenced so much of this experience. Somehow, those who were once strangers have become stories I will tell for life, friends I will visit in years to come and those I will always share this adventure with. I have met incredible people – those who have overcome cancer, who run marathons, who travelled miles to begin a new life, those returning home to fancy internships and high-paying jobs, those who continuously seek new adventures, those who bungee-jump naked off a bridge for charity, those who every day spoke a language different to their own, those who sat with me through all the good and the bad, who cooked meals for everyone and made sure to include the gluten-free bread, those who lent their bike to visiting friends of others, those who every day made a place I once never knew into a place I never want to leave. 

It truly is the people I have learnt so much through, though I have to admit, there is an awful lot to love about Denmark. I can certainly credit the place for a few things… For one, it has made me into a cyclist. Not only that, a cyclist who enjoys the ride, who has learnt the hand signals I wonder whether I will have to unlearn when home. I have grown to love the ‘hygge’ mindset that I read about before arriving, but experienced only fully once here. There is a slower pace of life, an appreciation for the smaller moments and I have observed more intimate connections between family and friends, waitresses and regulars, teachers and students. I find myself feeling more present here than back in the UK. Students will knit scarves in lectures, the intellectual mind calmed by the creative hand. Children will run around the streets and cycle themselves to school, babies are left in prams outside a cafe whilst parents grab their coffee or kardemommesnurre, and trust is always there. Landlords will invite tenants to dinner, will listen to their stories and share their own, and will show them the best places to go. Even when rooms are replaced with new people, I have seen my own landlord still take the time to keep in contact, with emails transversed between those who once rented a room in Aarhus and now have moved back to a flat in Australia or Portugal or Canada, anywhere really.

I found it was really hard for me to return to Denmark in January when some of these friends left. In semester one, my house became a home filled with ten close friends, ten people behind room numbers who grew to always leave their doors open, people that became so familiar and so much a part of my day-to-day life here. Saying goodbye to them was my first experience of watching distance grow longer until everyday hugs, shared coffees in town and spontaneous hangouts became scheduled calls, researching flight costs and exchanging “I promise to visit you”s. When I came back to Aarhus, I found I was returning to a place I knew so well, yet it was without all the people who I had built all of these past memories with. It was completely unfamiliar. It was the same house, the same university, the same streets, my same room entirely as I had left it. But, at least for the first few weeks, it felt as though I had to completely re-adjust, and start over. To be truthful, I really struggled. What had previously seemed so magical, all those feelings of novelty and excitement when I had first moved did not return the second time I did. It felt wrong, almost as though I was betraying my old memories, my old friends and the old ‘Aarhus’ by having fun with new people. The weather was bitterly cold and the sense of familiarity I once had vanished. Now, it sounds rather dramatic but it did truly feel all quite dramatic at the time. Something I knew so well had been stripped back again, I felt I had lost friends, comfort, a routine, old inside jokes. I found places I had been before hard to revisit because I already had a memory attached to so many parts of the city, but all of which were tied to people who would not return.  

But, slowly, as time passed, a new and different life began to form here. Just as the snow melted (after a long period of being too scared to ride my bike anywhere and wearing endless layers of gloves, socks and tights), the first glimpses of spring emerged in cherry blossoms and rare sightings of the always-hibernating sun, I began to re-immerse myself in the experience. It was hard not to compare, I won’t lie. I found myself searching for familiarity still but it began to fade as I met new people, shared the initial moments of beginning a new friendship and began to create new memories. Though I had been here before and established a sense of belonging, I realised I was in a positive position to replicate that again – I was, despite feeling so nostalgic, actually in a place where I could restart, experience a new kind of Danish life and I could reframe all I felt I had lost and said goodbye to into a chance to gain those kinds of connections to Aarhus again. 

Since then, semester two has been nothing short of completely wonderful. It has again been filled with busy days, trips booked to Germany, Sweden and Austria, shared meals, trips to the coast and Møns Klint (a place saved to my Pinterest board before I came that I finally was able to visit), late-night essay writing (I certainly didn't lose my ability to procrastinate between semesters), drunken beers at Friday bars, cosy mornings at cafes down the road. Between both semesters, not only have I grown even more in love with the city, having seen it transition between each season, I have really grown to see the wonderful cycle of the people around me. I have learnt that people in life may be temporary, that you may not always remain as physically close, you may not be from the same place or be at all interested in the same things, study the same subject or speak the same language but deep down, most people are similar. At least the ones I have met here, the ones who chose to travel and start a life in Denmark. Most people are good. They have ambitions, hopes, dreams and are searching for places to start. A lot of them saw Aarhus as this – an escape from their everyday life, a stepping stone into who they want to become, a place that allows them the freedom to choose each day how they want to spend their time. Living abroad has been ultimately a lesson for me, in having a kind of freedom and liberation my day-to-day life in the UK does not always grant me. 

I have grown accustomed to the slow pace of Danish life, the kindness of everyone from this city, but also the knowledge that people still suffer from the same problems, insecurities and doubts, still have good and bad days and that actually, the majority of people are fighting battles of their own all around the world. Though I have been immersed in Danish culture, and I have studied their history and their language, I have also had a rather unique experience through being an exchange student. To be honest, I would argue I have rather little interaction with the Danish community in comparison to the amount of other countries those I surround myself with are from. Denmark to me is a place I cannot find elsewhere. It is home to people from all over the world, a meeting point in the atlas of all our lives. Here, it feels as though there is no real expectation or responsibility. It has felt quite like a pause. A pause in the turbulent, confusing life of a student who isn’t really sure which direction life will go soon – where studying and academic responsibility holds such weight, where work feels rather inescapable in affording a lifestyle of renting, paying deposits and moving houses each year, catching trains from one end of the UK to the other, where the future is never fully known. In Denmark, I have found a place of release. I have been immersed into creating a life with people who will never know quite what my life is back home, who will never relate to quite the same things, but who have shown me a much wider picture of all there is left to discover. 

As I write this, I cannot believe I am in the last month. 

I cannot believe that I will soon be packing up my life here, locking the door of the room I have created so many memories in, and returning home. 

Ten months have passed by and I only have one left now. 

Yet, as little time as I have realised a year is, my time here does not feel quite so short-lived. I imagine this year will stay with me much beyond physically remaining in Denmark. The experience I have had will most probably, and perhaps rather insufferably, be all I can think and talk about for quite some time ahead.