Days 5 & 6 (January 8, 9)

I woke up pretty late this day, I think around 1:30 or 2 which thoroughly pissed me off. I didn’t sleep very well until probably about 5 or 6 which is probably why I slept so late. It’s not like I had a whole lot planned for the day but it still was disappointing to waste such a big portion of the day like that. Anyway, I got up and rode my bike several kilometers around town until I got to the Lille Haven Frue, also known as the little mermaid in English. It’s a life size statue and the statue takes its inspiration from a Hans Christian Andersen story. No kids, Disney didn’t invent the little mermaid. Its one of the biggest tourist attractions in Denmark and also one of the biggest disappointments. I saw it the first time I came to Denmark back in 1999 so I figured it was time to see it again. It’s not that the statue is bad (it’s actually quite nice) it’s just sorta small and very over-hyped. Anyway, I was prepared for this and actually enjoyed seeing it again. Like the other 5 or 6 tourists there, I snapped a couple pictures of my own of the most photographed topless woman in Denmark. Oh yeah, the lille haven frue is topless, so it wasn’t a completely fruitless journey for me to go out there.

After that I rode around a little more, got lost, and ended up in the Nyhavn area. During the summer this place is swarming with tourists and last time I was here I couldn’t even get in anywhere to get a cup of coffee. HC Andersen lived here when he was alive and it used to be the sailor quarters of town, kinda seedy and right on one of the harbors. Now, however, it is super upscale and posh. And I can see why, it’s really a very beautiful area. Three and four story buildings of different bright colors line both sides of a fairly wide canal that acts as a harbor, boats are docked along the sides of the canal, very picturesque. Anyway, I parked and “locked” my bike outside a café and went in to grab a cup of coffee. I stayed there for about an hour reading and then took off.

I got back after Tess, probably around 5ish. We heated up a little more pasta and relaxed for a while. She wanted to take me out to a bar she really liked called “The Moose” (or Moosen in Danish). Just the name alone made me want to go. She started describing it to me and it sounded like my kinda place so we hopped on the subway and jumped on over. It was a little bit off of the walking street and also right next to another bar everyone refers to as the “LA” bar, though I’m told its actual name is La Tequila Bar. The “La” is apparently a great deal bigger than the rest of the writing, hence its name. Anyway, we didn’t go there but instead went into the Moose. As soon as I walked in I knew I was in love.

I guess the closest equivalent I’ve seen would probably be Cha Cha in Seattle. The bar is two tall, narrow bar rooms and then way in the back is another room that opens at 10 o’clock. On the walls and just about every visible surface is tagging and graffiti of every kind. It’s really quite astonishing to walk in there and see people’s names, Danish slogans, and American catch phrases everywhere. Some names are somewhat artistically done while other things are etched in what looks like chicken scratch. Probably one of the coolest bars I’ve ever been to, definitely in the top 5. Oh yeah, and the distinct haze and smell of tobacco was in the air. I feel like we miss out on a real bar experience in the U.S. with the smoking bans and everything. Sure it’s nice to not have to wash your clothes after every time you go out but it is better to not have to push smokers to the margins of society, especially their society of which bars are one of their biggest gathering places.

The bar was about half full when we got there, mostly filled with hipsters, travelers, or a group I’m increasingly beginning to notice here that I’m starting to think are down-and-out Danish anarchists. I’ll explain more about my contact with them in a later post. As we were there, though, it slowly kept filling up more and more. I had a couple half liters of a beer called Jacobsen to start off with. It’s a very smooth Brown Ale (so you know I’ll like it) and I think it’s made by Carlsberg, or some subsidiary. Quite good. Then, though, I realized Tuborg was 3 kroner cheaper (about 50 cents) so I switched to that. At 10 the back room opened and the bartenders grabbed our table to move back there so there’d be more room for people to stand in the front. We went over into the back and had a few more beers before leaving around midnight because Tess was hungry and also had work the next day.

I was a little better about getting up on Friday. I was supposed to meet Ben around 3 at the Lyngby train station so I set an alarm for 11:30 (I actually slept pretty well the night before and was able to get up!). I had some food and then went to a café to do a bit of blogging and reading. Then I dropped the movie Tess and I had rented back at Blockbuster and headed up to Lyngby. Ben was waiting for me when I got there and we took a bus up to his school (I had left my bike at Tess’s, he at his apartment) so we could do some climbing at the climbing wall there, in the student center.

It was pretty different from the climbing walls I’ve been on in the U.S. where the emphasis is going up, where here the climbing wall was much more horizontal. A much bigger technical aspect resided at this climbing wall as you were supposed to climb to the side and follow roots, etc. It was pretty fun but also very tiring so we took a little break and went to a café downstairs and grabbed a beer each. We took ‘em back up with us and climbed a little more before retiring and going back downstairs for a cup of coffee and a cinnamon role. While there, I showed Ben the glory of the SNL skit dick in a box. Simply awesome. While down there, Ben got a call from his girlfriend, Randi, and apparently he’d forgotten to go meet up with her when we were done climbing about an hour before. So we packed up out stuff and went to one of the 5 bars on campus and met up with her and her friends.

Now apparently each of the majors at the university have their own bars, or share them with other majors. Pretty freakin’ sweet if you ask me. The bar was completely hoppin’ at about 5:30 when we got there. It wasn’t a typical bar but something more between a games room, a lounge like in a dorm, and a bar. Everyone there went to school there so it was all like 19-25 year olds. The music was a pretty diverse mix mostly consisting of contemporary Danish pop and mid-90’s American music. We definitely heard some Chumbawumba, and Ben and I were essentially screaming the lyrics to “Don’t Look Back in Anger” with our arms on each other’s shoulders by about 9:30. Oh yeah, there was a beer special that night which was 4 Tuborgs for 30 kroner. That amounts to a little more than 5 bucks for 4 beers. Schwing! Ben and I kept getting up and getting more beer for he and I and Randi and a couple of Randi’s closest friends, a guy named Kim and a girl named Michel. She was pretty cute and I talked to her for a while. And though her English was pretty good, there were a few barriers to proper communication including (but not limited to): drunkenness, loud music, lots of other people, drinking, and the occasional sing-a-long song. Oh yeah, and I couldn’t really figure out until after we left whether or not she was together with that Kim guy. Turns out she wasn’t. Oh well, I still had a fun time teaching everyone High-Low, Red-Black. There was some other really cool people I talked to as well and this really nice guy who seemed really interested in the U.S. and what America was like right now, especially with the financial crisis (which is also affecting Denmark) and with Obama. Not sure how good my explanations were as the Tuborg was flowing like water (and almost as cheap) but he didn’t seem to mind too much.

Ben and I ordered a pizza at around 8 and it was glorious, just what we needed. We got Hawaiian. It makes me salivate just thinking about it again. Tess showed up around 9 but the bar closed at 10, which I guess is standard protocol as everyone usually then migrates to the main bar in the student center. People were saying that bar was closed, though, and kept blaming the “economy” though I’m beginning to think they were misusing the word. For instance, if a bar doesn’t sell enough beer and loses money, you don’t blame the economy, you blame the managers. Anyway, Ben, Tess, and I headed over anyway but it was closed. So we ended up getting a taxi back to Ben’s place where Tess went to sleep on Ben’s bed but he and I stayed up talking about music and drinking Carlsberg until about 2. The taxi ride is a little hazy but evidently I asked Tess to take our pictures with my camera in it. Dunno why, but I did.

Ben had just rented a few CDs from the library and I picked up one and he goes “oh yeah, I got that one because I liked the art work.” I looked at him to see if he was joking because I was holding in my hands one of my favorite albums of 2007, None Shall Pass by Aesop Rock. We put that on and I think we listened to a lot of stuff throughout the night including Portugal. The Man, which Ben and some of his friends are pretty into, Minus the Bear, and a little Kashmir as well. Anyway, around 2 Ben went out to sleep on one of the couches in the kitchen/lounge and I slept on a mat on the floor and Tess was already fast asleep on Ben’s bed.