copenhagen day 2

I awoke in the morning to one of the roommates quietly getting ready for the day. It was dark outside, but then again I have yet to figure out what time of day the sun rises on this side - was it the same? Does Fall arrive earlier here? It was while I was contemplating this that I came to the stark realization that I wasn't going to be able to get any more sleep than what I had already been granted. The body had spoken. With a sigh and what would have been interpreted as the "look of death" towards my not quite quiet enough companion, (who would have been cowed into numerous apologies had it not been pitch black), I trudged out of bed and jumped into the shower. Of course it wasn't until I put on my final accroutrement - my watch - that I discovered it was only 3am.

So what does one do when he is fully dressed at 3am and wide awake in Copenhagen? Grabbing my backpack, I made my way downstairs to the common lobby and picked a chair to make my own for the next few hours.

Its a fun game to guess nationalities of people who are drunk. The Germans started loudly filtering in at 3am, empty beer steins in hand, singing "Mein auto ist kaput, ja ja ja!". The two American girls who made it in at 4 weren't so much really drunk, rather it was their Britney Spears at 4am look that gave them away. And the English, well I still haven't seen them come back yet. They all seem polite enough, but why is it after a night of hard drinking (or a life of it) do half of them look like they've spent the better half of their years playing "face meets frying pan?" Anyway, by the time 6am rolled in, a stroke of genius hit and I was soon walking in a generally north-easterly direction towards the Copenhagen Opera House.

I'll spare you the details (really, if you are interested its a wiki search away), as the most interesting part was easily the walk over. I have a theory that it doesn't matter how dangerous a city gets, but unless its Las Vegas I doubt the local PD are getting a lot of mugging calls at six am, Saturday morning. And such it was with Copenhagen. The walk would take me about an hour, long enough for the near blackness to turn into a hazy blue. No adventures, but there was one drugged out lunatic yelling obsenities and screaming like someone killed his childhood friend as I walked by. The situation wasn't helped by the local kids hanging out at the 7-11 across the street who were taunting him. Actually, as I walked into the 7-11 for a much needed latte, I discovered that these were the employees.

I crossed the Knippesbro (Knippes Bridge) into the district known as Christianshavn - or Christ Haven. Christ Haven is best known for its hippy enclave, a small acre of hipsterdom (in the truest sense of the word) amid the capital of Denmark. It would be like taking 2,000 Evergreen graduates and dropping them off in front of the Lincoln Monument. I soon made my way to the Opera House, snapping off pictures, then sitting on a bench to greet the morning sunrise. The thought hit me that just one week ago I was sitting at work and for the millionth time since getting here, a smile crossed my lips.

The trip back was just as much of an adventure, albeit a quicker one as I decided to test my luck on the municipal bus system. Miraculously, I picked the right bus and got off at the right stop, back in front of the train station. Encouraged by the morning success, I made my way into the Vesterbro neighborhood. Its here that I encountered a series of needle drops. Scattered throughout the neighborhood, these metal boxes with curved pipes on top were overflowing with needles. One infact was so stuffed that the needle itself was sticking out of the pipe. It would seriously ruin my day in my already ruined life if I was throwing away my heroin needle to stay relatively clean, only to get infected with someone elses hepatitis. These are things that cities get sued for, leading me to conclude that either all these needles were just from the previous night or the city government decided you are fucked regardless if you require use of the needle drops.

I found a grocery store and picked up a few apples for the day before finding myself back in front of the tourist office I found yesterday. Inside, probably the only open coffee shop this early on a Saturday morning and serving me was a gift sent by the Nordic God of all things great, a dark haired girl as tall as I was who sent me off with a smile - I'm not sure if the hop in my step afterwards was more due to the coffee or the smile, but in any case I skipped the entire three miles to the Statens Museum.

What a fantastic museum! Two exhibitions stood out; two galleries devoted to landscapes (yaaaaawn) and a sculpture exhibit by Jorgen Haugen Sorensen, who not only won the museum's award for artist of the year, but also for the most Scandinavian name ever. Look up some of his work...his mother must have thought she was stuck in the Omen. Twisted, disturbing, and powerful - I was uneasy to the point of having to escape to the pastoral seaside paintings much saner people have created.

After the museum, I walked around the city hoping that the shivers I had experienced earlier was more a result of the gallery and not an arriving fever. I hiked to Nyhavn, Copenhagen's fishermans wharf, and was dismayed to find it as crowded as its cousin in San Francisco. I decided I needing to do something drastic - I needed a beer. The beer fever in my mind, I swept aside a horde of ice cream fueled children with a maniacal laugh and ducked into a side street to find myself confronted by a series of tatoo parlors and run down stores. I was happy to discover that at least some of the city had managed to stave off gentrification so close to one of the more popular tourist locations.

I jumped down into the first open bar I could find, which wasn't so much a bar as it was someone's living room. A faded red carpet sat under a series of benches and yellowed wooden tables. Paintings - hundreds of them - competed for space on the smoke stained walls. What used to be the bedroom was converted into a larger dining room, but it looked as if it had sat unused for sometime. This was as close to ye olde inne as I had ever stepped foot in. The barkeep, a cheerfully older woman with breasts that competed for space with her knees, looked up from her magazine to offer my choice of two beers on draft. From the corner a couple eyed me warily, uneasy that a tourist had intruded into their den, where they were currently engaged in a nonspeaking marathon. The whole time I was there, they uttered a total of 21 words, no doubt discussing the weather, the beer, and their general loathing for the other. Hungry, I ignored their looks to use the facilities before ordering.

"Through the kitchen," I was directed. I walked back to find a single hot plate, a rusted oven, and a chalkboard sign with the words, "Special: shrimp and egg". Lunch would have to wait. The men's toilet had a "do not use" sign placed on the seat (at least, that's what I guessed it said. It could just as easily said, "PEE HERE", but I doubt it). I proceeded to release a morning's worth of urine, akin to what a hydroelectric dam does to vent the pressure. And to my general dismay, I discovered that this toilet too, was broken. I retired meekly to the living room, each time holidng my breath when knee-lady went to the back. Each time however, she quickly returned with a magazine in hand. No, the pleasure of the discovery was left to the wife, who quickly returned, muttered words #19-21 to her husband, and departed. I'll admit to taking a small amount of pleasure in providing what surely will be an entire weekend's worth of conversational material.

Comments

[Jayson]

Funny Stuff. Sounds like terrific time. I am having a lot of fun reading your posts.

[Jacob]

Thanks! I am having a lot of fun writing these!