Holla at ya Denmark

Plane + Day 1 (Sunday)

I flew out of Newark on Saturday (3^rd) around 5:30ish. I got to the airport around 1:30 with my parents because their connecting flight to Dallas left around 3. After saying our goodbyes, I took a train to my terminal and after passing through security looked around for some grub as I hadn’t really had very much to eat yet. Cut to me eating some horrible, horrible Chinese sweet and sour and slippery chicken with a side of “spicy” stir fry chicken; I ate what I could and a lot of rice before pitching about half of it—something I hate doing when on a budget and travelling around.

After that, I went to this little Brooklyn Brewery bar near my gate and grabbed a couple beers which would hopefully tire me out so I could sleep like a little drunk baby on the plane. Gave a couple calls to Corey and Mal to wish each one of ‘em birthdays and catch up a little bit. Read a little New Yorker too, one I’d bought the day before in the Port Authority bus terminal when I was killing some time with my cousin Tom.

About 45 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave I started wandering around looking for a place to charge my computer should I want to watch a movie on the flight. Surprisingly, gate C39 didn’t have any outlets in a 3-gate radius but I finally found one a ways away…but it didn’t work. I walked around a little more and finally found one on the ground near a window. While charging my computer I decided to give Derek a call because I’d told him a while before that I’d call him and I don’t think I had.

When I boarded the plane I found my seat (a window) and managed to cram my pack underneath the seat in front of me and get settled. For quite a while there was nobody sitting next to me and I started getting excited, thinking I’d have a row to myself. About 5 minutes before we were supposed to leave I was about to start spreading my stuff out when an older Danish couple came and sat down in the seats. They didn’t seem to speak much English which surprised me because, from my experiences about 98% (if not more) Danes have at least a mild understanding/knowledge of English. Not these two. The woman was ordering drinks and food for both of them and her English mostly consisted of holding up two fingers and saying “Coffee” or “Beef”.

After we got in the air (about an hour late), I put my seat back and then after a couple minutes realized I had to go to the bathroom. So I got up and after a little line got to what would be a poor excuse for a closet, did my business and returned. I put on a movie and realized my seat wasn’t as far back as the lady next to me so I pushed the button and back shot my chair. With lightning-quick speed the bald, almost elderly man behind me started shouting “Nej! Nej! Nej!” as did the woman next to them and they started pushing on my chair so it went back forward. I had my headphones on but I took them off and looked at them and they were just scowling at me, making hand gestures and holding up an empty Heineken can. I thought maybe I’d spilt it when I put my seat back but I looked and his table and lap were completely dry. Confused, I turned to the people next to me who were looking straight ahead, put my headphones on, and turned back around in my seat to face forward. Now this puzzled me. I obviously didn’t spill anything so why was he so pissed? And why the hell did the woman next to him care too? Was he just some crotchety old man who didn’t want me putting my seat back? If so, what an ass. Also, how did my seat get pushed back forward? Had they reached up while I was taking a leak and pushed the button to raise it? I finally gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe I was interfering with his drinking somehow. And besides, dinner was coming.

After a superbly mediocre meal of beef and flat noodles, I decided to slowly, very slowly, lower my seat. I pushed in the button and with a snail’s speed lowered my seat millimeter by millimeter until it was finally as far back as it could go.

The rest of the flight was pretty normal. I tried to watch “The Duchess” with Keira Knightley but it was pretty crappy so I turned it off. And the really bad thing was she didn’t even look that attractive in it. Probably the reason it sucked, come to think of it.

The plane ended up arriving only about a half hour late (I think a little after 8 am) and after picking up my bag I met up with Ben and Tess who were waiting outside security. We took the subway up to Tess’s apartment and I had some bread. As previously planned, three of Tess’s friends were going to take a road trip to the Jylland (Jutland Peninsula—the main landmass of Denmark) to drop one of them off at a graphic design school and I could come along if I was up for it. I was a little tired after only sleeping for about 3 hours on the plane but I thought, why not? I can always grab some coffee or sleep in the car. I made it almost the whole way to Arhus—the second biggest city in Denmark, the school was about 20 minutes outside of it—without falling asleep.

On the ride, though, we drove across some very gray, cloudy Danish countryside. We stopped pretty frequently for various reasons—pit stops, coffee, food, gas, etc—but I started to gather that each stop was really just an excuse to get out and smoke a cigarette as all 4 people I was with seemed to be chain smokers. I started reading Jimmy Carter’s book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid” during the trip but only got through about a chapter before Tess and her friend Mira (who was going to the new school) started giving me tips on how to pick up Danish girls.

We got to Arhus and had some tea at Magnus’s, Mira’s boyfriend, sister’s place and I was lagging pretty badly at this point. We stayed around for about a half an hour and then drove on up to the school which was basically in the middle of nothing. A forest surround part of it, some fields on the other sides and the whole place looked like a big living history museum to me. But I guess that’s how they do graphic design schools here in the DK.

After saying our goodbyes we got back in the car and started on the not-so-long trip back across the country to Copenhagen. I slept off and on the whole way and I think we got back to Tess’s apartment around 8, though I could be wrong about that, my sense of time was pretty messed up from the sleeping and the sun setting around 4:15. Tess and I ordered a couple pizzas and then walked a few blocks to pick them up and it was COLD outside. Probably about 5 or 6 below freezing but it felt damn cold to me. Not that I hadn’t noticed it all day but at night it felt so much colder with the darkness all around. I also picked up a 4-pack of tall cans of Tuborg. When we got back, we flipped on the TV and what was on but a football game, live. I think it was the Vikings and somebody else…Eagles maybe? I kinda stopped following football this year when the Seahawks kept sucking. We talked for a while and I think around 12 Tess got tired and went to bed. I wasn’t too tired at that point so I left the TV on sipped on a Tuborg, watching the game. Within about 30 minutes I realized my eyelids kept dropping so I turned off the TV and went to sleep.