36 hours in København

Wanderlust. This is what I´m left with after 36 hours in Copenaghen.

Friday, 23.00, my bus leaves from Berlin. I love stations. They smell of expectations, tiredness,ill-concealed frenzy, human emotions in general. A glance at the timetable and I am sure this bus station will see my presence again: buses leave for everywhere in Europe, to Norway, to Moscow, to London. It´s not as cozy as an airplane, but I´m not sure on a plane I´d bump into drunk Macedonians curved under their enormous backpacks or into ever fresh-looking Russian women able to put on lipstick no matter where they are without smudging it. The night is moonless and windy, my eye rings feel like iron rings dragging me down to earth, cooperating with gravity . The journey is about 7h, including the ferry from Rostock to Denmark.

I am so drowsy I can´t really realize it´s not me not keeping the balance, rather the ship itself rolling onto the waves. I challenge the freezing wind and try to stay on the deck as long as possible, feeling Scandinavia finally approaching me, after years of sighing waiting.  I actually feel it whenever I breathe, inhaling the mist and scanning the obscurity hoping to see something. When I set my foot in Copenhagen, my body is numb with cold and accumulated lack of sleep, but I smile like a child. I am the queen of Denmark for 36 hours, even if I have no crowns. I had no time to change my money.

All I need fits in my beloved backpack, and my survival kit features J´s address (my host) and the bus number to take to get to his place. I try to match the recorded voice on the bus with the actual name of the stops, amazed at all the Ø and å. I get to J´s place, open my sleeping bag and sink into a deep sleep for a couple of hours.

Then I´m ready to meet this city. My bag reveals some staple food to keep me going through the cold day ahead, and I get some crowns at the bank. These Danes have a receipt collecting bins just at every ATM, and some of their coins have a hole in them. Neat, environment-friendly people.

I feel a dwarf walking among these tall people, and all the stereotypes about Scandinavia prove just too accurate. I stare at towheaded people, alabaster-colored faces and amazing deep blue eyes. And the children! Danish children are just lovely, wrapped up in their warm baggy tracksuits, their delicate colorless cheeks challenging the ruthless wind. I walk around, my antennae stretched to listen to this never-heard-before language.  Reading it I can survive, you can see they are somehow related to Germans, but the sound I catch in  the air is so foreign to me, it sounds like a bunch of turkeys heated up in some interesting argument.  (Someone will later on enlighten me: Danish foreign words come from German, as their nobility spoke it, whereas Swedish nobles preferred French and took their foreign words from it).

I have no map and no idea where I am going, I just follow the flow and my feelings. I end up in a market, the best smelling one I´ve ever been to. Even if they sell fish, they manage to let instead the fragrance of bread fill the air. And, amazingly enough, the cappuccino and all the bunch of Italian stuff they sell is really good tasting. The last time I had such a perfect cappuccino was….I reckon 3 months ago, before leaving for Germany. These Danes seem to know their way around the cookers, I might get why lately they´ve been awarded so many prizes. It´s only a pity prizes rip you off, otherwise I´d be more than glad to rate all the Italian and French things they sell.

I merge with the human flow on the streets, all intent in buying Xmas presents. I´m not sure I´ll buy any this year, people back at home are already calling me ingrate and cold, turning into a damn Krauterfresser. I climb up the oldest observatory in Europe, stumbling upon an art atelier where painters work under the eyes of the visitors. I´m fascinated by an illustrator for kids stories, I stuck for countless minutes spying on his rapid sketches and flickering eyes, while he masters his work. He is illustrating his girlfriend´s story, where a child chases after the fox who killed his beloved bunny and ends up turning into a fox himself, worn out by rage and revenge.  

When my stomach growls with hunger, I fetch some ristede mandler, roasted almonds. They are very filling and sold at every corner. I drop by churches, my catholic, baroque eyes criticizing the naked, raw white walls of these Protestant places.  But my lust for colours is more than fulfilled when I finally reach the seaside: piebald, neat, little houses overlook the sapphire-blue water. Whenever the sun blesses us with some feeble rays, it all looks like in Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tales. I can sense quiet, maybe a gloomy quiet.  Green, soft hills encounter the sea and I´m just amazed. The little mermaid is really LITTLE, though being the most-sold touristy thing in the city. But I envy her, melancholically sitting where land and water blend, carelessly un-ageing while inhaling the algid breeze and dreaming of the prince for whom she died painfully and cursed for 300 years. (Walt Disney fed us with a mitigated, “happy ever after” version of the tale, where Ariel drops her tail and stands on her feet to finally kiss his beloved one). Worth reading the real plot, if not the text itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid

Around 4 the pale sun is setting already. Suddenly I feel my legs stiff and decide to walk back, eventually relying on the map I stole at J´s place, and I  make it back home. He just moved in and his house is very empty, a large, candid flat he shares with a Spanish student and a Danish girl. I try my best and switch to “social mode”. But the guy is as granitic as his endless legs, he barely speaks to me. And as it always happens, I´m intrigued by the lack of smile on his face: I sit on the floor reading, while he does whatever on the PC.  Every now and then I lift my eyes from the gripping story and throw oblique glances at him, framed by the yellowing pages of my book. Is he sad? Annoyed? Dislikes me a lot? I will never know, all my attempts to melt his icy surface are like a shoot in the darkness, with no echo. Still, I find him interesting.

At around 6 we head to S´s place. He´s the very reason I am in Copenhagen. He´s a good friend´s boyfriend and has his birthday. I´m thrilled as after not even a day in this southern corner of northern Europe, I´ll be surrounded by Danes, attending a Danish birthday party. I can´t help thinking of Festen, and I wonder if any murderous truth will be revealed.
J. strides away and I nearly jog to keep his pace. We try out the local metro (only 2 lines, no driver) and he carries his bike, too. If I thought Berlin was the bike heaven, Copenhagen must be the  climax of this divinity. J. doesn´t even lock his bike, at my surprise he explains “this is Denmark. Nobody would ever steal your bike”.

S. rented an anonymous room somewhere in the city, I have no idea where. About 30 people gathered there, and my human-spotting starts immediately. First of all: EVERYONE speaks English here. The oldest, most traditional looking people easily put on a nearly Oxford sounding English and leave me stammering with surprise. I sit next to S´s girlfriend, to make the Italian laughing tandem, the stronghold of Latinity among Northerners. The first small talking is as per expectations: where do you come from, oh so you have blondes in Italy, how do you like the city. Notwithstanding the lavish alcohol, people are well behaved and speak in low voices. After some glasses of delicious home made Øl (beer), my voice raises up and I get clumsy. 

I notice a tiny man, Genghis Khan looking. A Greenlander! I am overwhelmed with curiosity. Now I get why S´s mom has hazel shaped eyes and a shadow of exotic look. Now I realize the people I thought Chinese on the streets are from this huge piece of frozen land on the other side of the world, which recently claimed home rule and might, eventually, just say farewell to old fatherland. The only bit of planet colonized by Danes, so that the few locals have to put off the moment when they utter their word (it seems Danish kids averagely start speaking one month after all others). I stumble into S´s aunt, neatly shaved head, metal glasses and frank blueish sparkles coming out of her eyes. And she tells me everything, as if I were a member of the family. She tells me how S´s mom was adopted from Greenland, then accompanied some sick people over there and eventually met his biological mom. These introverted Danes freely tell you all the details of family life, the so called “dirty laundry” an Italian would stubbornly keep just for “la famiglia”. They aren´t the least embarrassed in topics which hypocrite, Catholic-raised countrymen (including me) would blush about.

S´s father is there with his third wife and I can´t guess who is in couple with whom. They sit apart from each other and rarely display anything “couple-like”. So the black-red-purple haired K. is together with the priest-looking guy at the other table, the stout Icelandic is together with the golden-wrapped smiling girl, and K. is here alone, but his wife is home. And yeah, they do have children so young, they make me feel I need to catch up, but I somehow lack the raw material.  i wonder how they manage that, as they don´t seem to be too socially interactive. S´s niece sits in front me. Her name in Italian means “dwarf”, I wonder if she´ll grow so much as everyone around her and will need to change her name.

And,  ventually, its majesty the food makes its long-waited entry. I was fearing some badly pimped version of German daily food, sampling tasteless meat and potatoes. The buffet proves me totally (and happily) wrong. Bread is home-made and I´m still regretting not having stolen a loaf of the best black bread ever, meat is served with yeah, of course, Kartoffeln, but also with lots of different veggies. Starters include salmon, which I never eat, but which I swallow greedily this time, and the dessert is also very nice. I am not sure what exactly I eat, but everything tastes just fine.

After unwrapping his well deserved presents, S. opens new bottles and after various skål the youngest finally warm up a bit and a round table starts off with cozy conversations. Skål is how they cheer over here, and I still don´t know if it comes from the skull the Vikings were said to drink their beer in, or if it´s like someone told me, the  acronym of “beauty”, “happiness”, “success”. I´ll stick to the first option, it fits more to my bunch of clichés and the raw, but somehow pleasant hospitality of these people forged in wind and rigid temperatures. S´s father teases me with an interesting dilemma: Denmark is not the liveliest place in the world and Danes aren´t the funniest people either, but they definitely have democracy and things run smoothly. Italy is the place to go (according to him) for ever-happy people and fun, but we don´t like democracy and we prefer our politicians to be just as trouble makers as we are. I can´t really think of an anthropological explanation, but my mind quickly goes to the Germans, undoubtedly Nordic and not exactly hilarious, and nonetheless so keen on having someone to rule them rigidly .  

J. and I leave the company, I try again to connect to him, but not even alcohol makes him any looser. At home I sink in a sound sleep, my belly full and glad the gathering didn´t resemble Festen. Unless murderous truths were revealed later on.

Second and last half day in the city. J. left the house and I find myself feeling sorry of being so unwanted.  I stroll to the Kirkegård next to J´s place. Parks here are ancient graveyards, and they are just beautiful.  Ruined graves emerge from grass and bent, nude trees stretch out their branches begging desperately for the sun to come out.  A simple sign directs me to two illustrious graves: Andersen´s and Kierkegaard’s. They are absolutely plain, just an engraved plate. Most of the misters-and-misses-no-one in Italy have much more glorious graves, with statues and flowers and gold all over. My camera, overwhelmed with emotion, dies out when I´m trying to take a picture of Kierkegaard’s grave. No wonder he wasn´t too much of a funny fellow, due to his surname.

I have a hard time trying to get out of the cemetery; somehow all the exits are closed. Once out among the living ones, I decide to reach the world-famous Freetown Christiania. It will be just a touch and go, but I can´t miss it. I obviously get lost, but I love that. I end up in a park bordering the sea and I curse Kierkegaard’s jinx at my camera. When I get to Christiania, I just like it. It´s nice to see lips blue with cold singing Bob Marley´s as if they were stranded somewhere in Jamaica. And, above all: diversity. There are families having their Sunday walk, youngsters sporting dreadlocks or spikes, old men sawing wood. I roam around so spellbound and carefree, that I completely ignore the warnings coming from behind me. I find myself on the ground, run over by a guy on a bike. He bursts out in apologies in Danish, then gets me a falafel roll.

My last hour is all about wasting my last coins, just keeping a single one which will end up together with a Czech crown, a Ukrainian hrvynia, an American dollar and so on, my private, casual collection of remaining coins. Food is the best and easiest option, as I can´t afford anything else. I also dared getting “en flamske vafler” in Danish. “med sukker?” “Nej, tak”.

When I reach my bus, I am determined to come back.  The sweet taste of raspberry melt on waffle blends with the somehow melancholic atmosphere I bring back with me. I want to keep my eyes set on the horizon just like the little mermaid , and swim or walk or drive to new places soon.

I am pretending to work here in the office and this afternoon I´ll have to catch up with what I didn´t do this morning. skål to the next trip.