I went to Sweden not long ago, and visited another Sydney Uni-er who is on exchange in Uppsala. It was great to be able to compare exchange experiences.
It’s funny both of us have become closest to English exchange students. I think, although this sounds quite obvious, that it’s because of the ease of language. Despite the Danes and Swedes having great levels of English here, among the exchange students, it can sometimes be difficult to hold a conversation. A lot of the time normal conversation is fine, but as soon as jokes come into play a lot of meanings are lost or confused. There's some great acting going on here!
In Aarhus, we have a group of friends nicknamed “The Commonwealth”, because the group largely consists of people from England, Australia, Canada and Northern Ireland!
It was funny during my first class here, because literally half the class are Germans, and the other half Spaniards. During the class break, the class split into these two groups, with three of us left in the middle: me, the Aussie, a Turkish guy and a Chinese girl. It was very funny!!!
Actually being in Europe makes our language skills (or lack there-of feel very inadequate!). everyone here can speak at least two or three languages. I asked one guy how many languages he spoke, and he very modestly replied “Oh, not many”. When I pushed him further and asked “How many is not many?”, he replied “SIX”!!!
Hmmm, that conversation inspired me to visit France to try and get back some of my high school French!! Maybe that’s why the Commonwealth group has formed...we all feel inadequate with a mere one language!!