Scandinavia for Under Five Falafel a Day: Introduction and Day 1

Regina started this: I suggested we meet up in London, while she was there. She offhandedly suggested Scandinavia, instead. Sounds good. Tickets were purchased, guidebooks ordered, and reasons, well, the reasons to visit came later. The important thing was to travel.

I started in New York City.  Meeting up with a new friend Regina had introduced me to during my last Big Apple excursion, I was given a grand four hour tour of Central Park by an honest-to-goodness real-life Central Park tour guide, recently retired. If you get the chance, I highly recommend wandering through the entire park, as each section really does have something different and splendid to offer. Bring hiking shoes.

The next day I lugged my bag from Manhattan to Newark and boarded a direct flight to Copenhagen. A window on my right, Danish computer consultant on my left, I could barely sit still. The flight was short (compared to flying to Australia) and before I knew it I was flying over the surreally flat Jutland, the main land of Denmark connected to Germany. If you're not familiar with exactly where Denmark is, you can find a map here.

Landing on the island of Zealand, Denmark, at Copenhagen's international airport was like landing anywhere.   Although this was my first experience finding my way in a non-English signed world, I was easily able to find my way to the train to Copenhagen Station. Getting the train door opened required a little help.  It seems the Danes have three kinds of doors: manual (think knob and wood), automatic motion sensor (think Kwik-E Mart) and semi-automatic.   This third type of door comes in two flavors: glowing button and magic hand. The glowing button variety can be found on the outside of many of the trains.   In order for the door to open, you must know to push the glowing button. If you wait too long, the train pulls away and you look stupid.   The second flavor, magic hand, requires a special martial arts like move where the opener places a hand flat, palm down, two inches from the door at some specific-yet-undocumented height and slowly (but not too slowly) moves the hand as one would over a magic fortune telling ball. Sometimes magic hand doors are glowing button doors without the glowing button (look for a tiny blue dot to push). Either way, I found it best to watch someone else open each door before highlighting the deficits of the American education system to bystanders.

Back to the trip. I climbed up the stairs of Copenhagen Station into a sea of bicycles.   Literally, two hundred kick-stood bikes lined the main street in front of me. The street lights changed sending a shoal of cyclists past me.   They were fast enough to keep me glued to the sidewalk, but slow enough for me to recognize that they were the most attractive group of people I have ever seen in one place.   (This feeling, repeated at every turn, would not wear off for me until much later in the trip - much to Regina's chagrin.)

The hostel I stayed at in Copenhagen is nothing more than two converted apartments on the fourth floor of a massive block long building. There are about 18 beds, most of which were empty during my stay. When I arrived, the hostel owner, Ian, was two beers into his morning, eager to befriend me and tell me all about himself.   It seems Ian, originally from England, ran booze illegally between Poland and Sweden to raise the funds to buy this Copenhagen hostel; he has children on two continents, most of his teeth, a chip on each shoulder, and as I left was declaring, in all seriousness, a one-man war against Australia.  

Nine A.M., Regina was sleeping.   Get up!  She gets up. This replays each day, but I understand her motives. I am sprinting through a three week adventure, in search of beautiful people to party with and art and architecture to photograph; Regina is in a marathon six month European life adjustment. The hostel showers are broken, today, so my first official Scandinavian tourist activity is accompanying Regina and a Danish resident to the last bathhouse in Copenhagen. Giant white letters "BAD" greet us (translate: "bath"), but the facilities are clean and modern by Danish standards. A pensioner (retired person living off the guaranteed Danish social security) in wife-beater and boxers guides me past the weights and naked man arguing on the telephone, to the towels, the showers and  the shaving area. I can see big puffy clouds through a window twenty feet above me - it's going to be a wonderful first day in Copenhagen.

Back at the hostel by 10, my first three hours in Europe live up to expectations. Regina and I go exploring. We wander, map-less and aimless through Stroget, the world's largest pedestrian mall.  The people are beautiful.   We are hungry, so we find the first bagel place on a tributary leading into the sea of pedestrians and plop down on the cobblestone.  It is gently raining and blindingly sunny. I need to buy a towel, so we begin to wander back in the direction of the hostel, looking for a department store. (I would go without a towel for a week, not finding the time to look for a store again, until leaving Copenhagen.)

Regina and I begin what would be a legendary sleeping schedule. It is three in the afternoon, and we are napping in the hostel.  By the time we leave Copenhagen, a week later, Ian and some of the residents are vocally awestruck by our stamina and adventurousness - we seem to never sleep.  Really, we do.  I take a four hour nap in the morning, between my straggling in from a party and breakfast.  I take a few hours for reading or sleeping in the late afternoon, after sightseeing.  Regina scores a couple extra hours each morning while I'm out at a café.  

We already have plans to meet some Danish friends of mine (who I met one littered night in Seattle) that evening, under a "clock, a watch clock" in one of the train stations.  We only needed to go two subway stops, but we get confused and show up a half hour late.  But Kristian and Esben were excellent hosts and were still waiting, under a giant wristwatch-like clock.  Esben spirits us away in his Slavic Volvo to Vesterbro, a district known for students and night life.  We sit at a dive bar two doors down from a touristy place that my guidebook suggested.  We drink Tuborg, the best beer when you're trying to avoid drinking Carlsberg, the monopoly brewer.   Kristian is a big, round grad student with a baby face and booming voice.  He croons and howels and cheers, his friends know to cover his mouth sometimes, and where Kristian is, fun is being had.  Esben is a world traveler entrepreneur; softer spoken and skilled at driving conversation into interesting areas and making everyone at the table feel welcome and interesting. The four of us laugh and yell and trade stories, political opinions, dreams, plans, rounds until after two am.  On the drive home, Kristian invites us to a post-football match party on Saturday.   Day one is complete; Regina and I stagger into the hostel, I fall asleep quickly and deeply and dream of the adventures day two will hold.