My memory seems to be going with my age.

Okay. So I'm writing these blogs anywhere from 5-8 days after they happened which inevitably accounts for me forgetting some important pieces of information. After I posted the last blog last night, I realized I'd forgotten two crucial bits of information from the first night I stayed at Ben's, possibly the best parts of the night.
The first part isn't anything too special, but it's worth mentioning: I taught Ben, my Danish cousin, about the gloriousness that is the Beeramid. He'd never heard of or seen one before so we got a fairly decent one going between the two of us. I also described to him the glory that was the beeramid we made for Joey Yang's birthday party, how it was several feet (and cases) high, topped with a slightly larger sparks can, and how we had Joey destroy it with a headbutt. Later in the night, right as we were retiring, Ben was brushing his teeth and I was shutting down his computer and I accidentally hit one of the cans, causing the whole thing to collapse. From the bathroom I just heard Ben bust out laughing, not even saying a word for a solid minute or two. When he finally finished brushing his teeth he came out and just said "you didn't even have to say anything, the sound did it all."
And now to the second part. When Ben and I had shopped for groceries earlier we saw that coconuts were for sale. Naturally, we decided to get one because when are you going to see another coconut for sale in Denmark in January? Once we got back to his place we spent about a half an hour trying to get it open doing everything from trying to stab holes in it with a knife to slowly cutting of the layers of whatever vegetable-form surrounds the actual nut. (yes Joey, you can laugh right now, I did say nut.) Once we finally got it open, we had a little taste of it and thought, well that's certainly coconut milk. Then we got a brilliant idea: let's put some whiskey in it. Ben brought out a bottle of "whiskey" that he had which actually turned out to be scotch. Evidently they refer to scotch as whiskey here, which makes some sense as it says on the bottle "scotch whiskey". Anyway, we put a few shots of whiskey in the coconut, swirled it around, stuck two straws in it, and had ourselves a little party. Later we drew a face on it, pictures will be posted when I return.

Jaguars are for driving

Day 3 (Tuesday, 1/6)

When Ben left for school at 8, I got up and hopped in his bed and slept until around 1:30/2. I knew it wasn’t good for my jet lag but it really felt quite nice. I had planned on exploring the town of Lyngby a little that day but when I got up, the light was already starting to get darker and I just felt like relaxing a reading a bit as I was kinda hung over. So I read some of Jimmy Carter’s book and emailed my parents and a few other people until Ben got back around 3:30ish. At that point, Ben and I rode into the town of Lyngby (near the train station about 2 km away), parked our bikes, and walked around for a while. It was a nice little town it reminded me of something between a suburb and a small town, which is really what it was. Copenhagen proper really isn’t a very big city with the tallest building I think being a Radisson hotel about 20 stories tall, and numerous church steeples. The metro area, however, is around 2 million people making it the second biggest city in Scandinavia after Stockholm. That number doesn’t count Malmo which is just across the water in Sweden, now connected by a bridge which for a brief period of time was the longest bridge in the world.

Anyway, Ben and I walked around, I got a Squash at the SuperBest—a grocery store with a hilarious name. Oh yeah, a Squash is a Danish soft drink made by Tuborg. It’s an orange soda, sorta like European Fanta but I like it better. It’s actually one of my favorite sodas. Ben and I walked around a bit more and then showed me where he works which is called Joe and the Juice. It’s a juice bar in a department store that makes smoothie-like drinks from juice but they’re not frozen. We had a strawberry and lime mix and a ginger, apple, and kiwi (I think) mix. The second one was really weird at first but turned out to be really good once you got used to the spice from the ginger. We hung out there for a while and I realized I heard “Inside and Out” by Feist (from her first album) playing. Ben and I started talking about music some more and he told me that after I had bought him The Reminder by Feist the previous Christmas he had started playing that at the juice bar. Sure enough, two months later she broke out onto European radio and TV and she was on pretty heavy rotation everywhere. I think Ben got some serious props from his boss for knowing what the next big thing was going to be. We arranged a little trade with the manager where we put some stickers on cups there and got two macchiatos in exchange.

After that, we took the commuter train in to Copenhagen and then hopped on the subway over to Tess’s. I’m going to stop right now, again, to describe the subway in Copenhagen. It’s pretty new, not more than 5 years old and immaculately clean. It’s pretty far underground and all the walls and floors appear to be made out of granite. The trains are super nice and super clean and it’s really easy to use. You buy a little stamp card and stamp it for how many zones you’re going on the metro/S-train (commuter)/or bus system. Unfortunately, all transportation in Denmark is quite expensive. If you only go one or two zones on the metro it’s 20 kroner, which is a little less than four bucks, three zones is 3o kroner, four zones is 40 kroner, and so on. Ben and Tess live four zones away so every time one wants to see the other it’s at least eight bucks, one way. There aren’t any unlimited weekly or day passes like in New York or Seattle. But that’s the only bad part. There’s only two lines right now, one of which was opened since last time I was here, but a lot of people seem to use it. Seattle could learn a lot.

Anyway, we got back to Tess’s and Ben and I made some pasta. We cooked some noodles and made the sauce from scratch. I put a little secret ingredient in it that was awesome: tandori spice. After Ben and I did the dishes we went to a little neighborhood bar across the street—evidently they call little neighborhood dive bars “Bodegas” here—and had a few beers. We got some dice and they taught me a Danish drinking came pronounced “my-er”. I’ll teach y’all when I get back. It started snowing a little bit outside but it was so cold that a lot of the snow blew around and didn’t really stick to each other and just turned to dusty frost. I later found out from my dad that the hi for that day was 26 and the low was 20. Last call at this bar was at midnight, as it was a Tuesday, and as we were chatting about some family stuff this really drunk guy in his 40’s came over, sat down and started talking with us. At one point he turned to me and said something to which I replied “Uh…What?” And then Ben explained that I don’t speak Danish. He looked at me and went “på engelsk?” (in english?) and I went “Ja.” He started rambling on about Denmark and drinking and his daughter and who knows what else. When he found out I spoke French he started rambling on in a mix of French, Danish, and the occasional English sentence. He gathered that I could understand a little Danish so he kept going “forestar?” (understand) to which I kept replying “nej.” He was a pretty cool guy and I think I gathered that his girlfriend/wife (not really sure which) was French and his daughter was in New York or Montreal right now. Pretty interesting. At one point he asked us if we knew the Jaguar (I think it was a bar nearby that was still open). He turned to me when he asked this and to emphasize it he went “You know what Jaguar is?” I replied “You mean:” and then I put my hands up like claws and roared like a jaguar. Luckily he found it funny and didn’t think I was making fun of him. Then I took care of our tab and Ben and Tess and I left. Tess had to get up early for work the next day so we all went to bed, Ben and I crashing on her bed and she on the couch.

Who knew Denmark in January was so cold and dark?

Day 2 (Monday)

I woke up the next morning about 11:45, which isn’t too bad. I ended up sleeping pretty well, only waking up momentarily a couple of times. After getting ready, I took the subway into the center of Copenhagen and walked around the walking streets for a couple of hours. It was really cold out so this might not have been the best day to walk around town but I really just wanted to get my bearings again and wander around. It was a pretty clear day so for the 4 hours of direct sunlight it was pretty bright. I walked past the Round tower, Erotica Museum, and then on down to the square where the Queen lives. There was a big fountain in the middle of the square (not running, of course) and directly around it was a little ice skating rink. Since I didn’t get to go ice skating in New York, I was thinking of going ice skating here. We’ll see if that happens. I grabbed a cup of coffee at this place called Baresso on the square, it’s like the Danish equivalent of a Starbucks. I know, I know, but the coffee isn’t bad and I didn’t see any other coffee places around.

There, I looked at my guide book for a while and then decided to go find the library and check my email. After that, it was getting around near 3ish and starting to get a little dark so I decided to walk up and see this church called Na Frue Kirke or something like that, it loosely translates to Church of Our Lady. I can’t remember if I’ve been there before or not but I wasn’t terribly impressed. I guess that’s why it was free and all the other ones cost money to get in. Oh well. Then I went back to Tess’s and got there a few minutes before she got back from work. We finished our pizza from the night before and watched a little TV. At some point Tess and Ben were talking via texting and it was arranged that I’d go up to his apartment/dorm in Lyngby, about a 30 minute train ride north of Copenhagen, and meet Ben after he got off work around 8/8:30ish.

So I got up there and sure enough, Ben was waiting with 2 bikes. We picked up a few groceries and when I suggested getting some beer he said, “no, we have a fridge.” I wasn’t sure if I was missing something or not so I asked him a little more about it. He said the fridge was always stocked with beer (and sometimes soda) and that all you had to do was put a little mark next to your name on a sheet of paper on the front and at the end of the month you got charged like 6 kroner (a little over a dollar) for each mark next to your name—it’s all on the honor system. I love a country that has this. Also on a side note, his dorm isn’t really a dorm and it isn’t really an apartment. It’s private, about 3 km from the university and reserved for students. There are several communal kitchens and each room is assigned to one and the rooms are small like dorms and with their own private bathrooms. But unlike the states, they have things like special fridges full of beer and on Tuesdays and Saturdays (this is pretty standard in all the dorms, on campus or not) there is a bar in the basement with relatively cheap drinks. Pretty cool stuff.

We got back to his apartment and grabbed a couple beers from the fridge and hung out in Ben’s room for a while, catching up and shooting the shit. Oh yeah, when we got back to his room it was FREEZING because he’d left the window open a day or two earlier. Ben doesn’t spend a whole lot of time in his dorm room because he spends most of his time at his girlfriend’s who lives much closer to campus. We quickly closed the window and turned the heat up, but it only went so high. Throughout the night we periodically kept leaving his room to warm up and went to the kitchen to hang out for a while. Next to the kitchen is a little living room with a TV, kinda like the lounges we had at SU. A lot of his neighbors hang out there pretty frequently and they all seemed like pretty nice guys. I was starting to get pretty drunk because Ben and I had kept going back for more beers and Ben can just be so silly. He’s so fun to drink with. Anyway, we went out to the kitchen at one point and a couple guys were just sitting around so Ben suggested we turn on his gamecube which he leaves out there and play some Mario kart. Naturally, I obliged, expecting to kick some serious ass after my many years of practice on an N64 with Jordan. Unfortunately, Mario kart for the gamecube has a lot of differences and I think I got last on all but one race. Towards the end, I started getting the hang of it and wasn’t losing by quite as much, though.

Finally, Ben and I got tired so we went back to his not-as-cold room and went to bed. But naturally, there’s a catch. Ben had this little collapsible hammock from his last school so we set that up and I slept in that. Needless to say, I had a pretty crappy sleep that night. My jet lag was hitting me pretty hard and after sleeping for probably a couple hours I awoke and didn’t go back to sleep until Ben left for school at like 8 am.

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.