I had no problems getting to the airport bright and early on the 20th. I stared out the window at the severe, but hypnotic Icelandic scenery for the hour trip to the airport. I checked in and saw a pretty funny sign in the airport: "Notice: Sleeping, Camping and Cooking are forbidden in the airport". I found that amusing, was there a problem with people pitching a tent and busting out the camp stove?
Anyway, I slept for most of the three hour flight to Copenhagen. My cousins, Ben and Tess, met me at the airport and it was really good to see them. I'd last seen Tess the previous autumn in Seattle but with Ben, I think it goes back to 2010, when I went to Denmark during a short vacation from Cameroon. Our original plan was to immediately go to Ben's place and drop off my stuff but I suggested we go to the "free city" of Christiania and grab a bite to eat as I was pretty famished. Well, it was a beautiful sunny day, a little chilly, but gorgeous. We each grabbed a falafel or kebab in Christiania center and then got a few beers and sat down by the lake. After maybe an hour there we gathered my stuff up and hopped back onto the metro to go to Ben's apartment. Leaving the gate of Christiania back into Copenhagen, there's a sign that says "You are now entering the EU," which always makes me smile. At Ben's apartment I got to meet Camilla, Ben's girlfriend, and the four of us made burgers that night. Tess was feeling pretty tired and went home not too long after. Ben and I then decided to go down the street to a smoky, old timer Danish bar. I believe the only beers they had were Carlsberg and Tuborg, and everyone inside was at least 50. Well, that place closed pretty soon after we got there, so we went for one more beer at another place down the street. The crowd was a bit younger, and the music less ABBA-based, but it seemed to lack a bit of character that the first place had. Anyway, after a beer we both rolled back to Ben's and went to sleep.
On Sunday, Ben and I took the metro into the town center and first went to a mall. My mission was to find a new Danish soccer team jersey, as my last one (from five years ago?) was in tatters back home. Well, no luck at the sporting goods stores in the mall, the only sizes they had were for kids or very wide people. After the mall, we walked back to the walking street but since it was a Sunday, most things were closed so we eventually gave up and went to a permanent and somewhat upscale farmer's market a little ways away. Ben works in a little coffee shop there and we were able to get a couple cappuccinos on the house. Right outside of the market they were celebrating what Ben directly translated to me as Cow Days. It seems that April 21st is the first day that the farmers let their cows back out into the pastures after keeping them all winter in the barns. So there was a big promotion for a milk and cheese company, a cow was standing there in the street, and there was a big screen with a live feed from a farm on the Jutland peninsula, showing some cows lazily grazing in the pasture. The whole celebration of the Cows coming back outside seemed a little ludicrous to me, but it certainly made for a good cultural experience. Ben and I then went back in the market, got some duck sandwiches from a French stand and the sandwiches were very savory and delicious.
We'd been walking around a lot so Ben and I went back to his place to relax a bit. I tried and eventually succeeded in streaming the Tottenham vs. Manchester City game, and the Spurs came back from two goals down and pulled off quite the upset. That night, Tess met up with us and we went to an Italian restaurant not far from Ben and Camilla's place. Camilla had found it online and there was some 20% discount with a diner's club she was apart of. Well, the food was amazing but the service was quite possibly the worst I've ever had in my life. He never cleared any plates, willfully ignored us and refused to give us tap water, instead telling us that we could only get bottled water because he "had to make money somehow." Regardless that our bill was around a hundred bucks. I'm generally pretty forgiving for mediocre service if it seems the person is at least trying. This guy was making it known to us that we were a nuisance to him and that he was intentionally trying to make us feel unwelcome. Camilla wrote a two-page email the next day to the restaurant, the dining club, and posted the review on yelp too. Take that!
Sunday night, though, Tess and I went to Rub-a-dub sundays. I can't remember the name of the place but every Sunday night they do a dub and dancehall night. The venue was like something out of a punk rock movie from the 80's. Graffiti on the walls, cheap beers, dark, dingy, a room upstairs where people smoked, and tons of characters everywhere. I talked with a Ugandan guy for a while who was getting his masters at a Danish university, and Tess and I split most of our time dancing downstairs and mocking the emcee who was a pompous, inebriated asshole who the DJs eventually had to tell to get off the stage. We left around 3 and caught the metro home, where I promptly fell asleep and started snoring on Tess's couch while she was still sitting next to me and checking her email.
We woke up around 1:30 the next afternoon and quickly got up to go meet Ben who was getting off work at the coffee shop. He had a few different types of coffee prepared ("cupped" he called it) so we could taste them and see the differences between the different beans and roasts. After that, we grabbed some pizza down the street, Tess caught a bus home and Ben and I walked back to his place. He and I watched some TV and then I got ready to go over to Tess's for dinner. I went over there just as Tess and her boyfriend Emil were finishing making a chicken caeser salad. Tess's friend Krista also joined us for dinner and the four of us had a nice time eating and talking. At around 9pm, I hinted that there was a soccer game coming on soon that I wanted to watch. Emil, though not a huge soccer fan, was into the idea and we ran down and grabbed a six pack of beers and ran back up to Tess's to watch Manchester United defeat Aston Villa to secure the title. I then took the subway back to Ben's, though Ben and Camilla were already asleep.
Ben had Tuesday off of work so he accompanied me downtown so I could get train/ferry tickets to Bornholm to see his parents, my Uncle Pete and Aunt Maibritt. Then, the two of us were finally able to find a Danish soccer jersey for me on the walking street. After that, we went to the Carlsberg brewery which had changed a lot in the six years since I was there last. It looked like they had renovated the old brewery to make it more like a museum and then in the tap room, the selection wasn't nearly as good as last time and they weren't giving away nearly as much free beer. Oh well, we still had a fun time and I was really tempted in the gift shop afterwards. (Side note: genius plan, put the gift shop after the tasting room, so all the tipsy people want to drop all their money!) We walked back to Ben's through some nice parks and next to the Copenhagen zoo. We had dinner with Camilla that night and then Ben and I went back out for one last night on the town.
We stopped by one bar that had incredibly cheap beer, but nobody inside. So we sat out at one of the sidewalk tables, played some dice games, and had a beer. Then we went to one of my favorite bars in the whole world, The Moose. It's not far from the walking street but the beers are still pretty cheap and the atmosphere there is awesome. Graffiti and currency from around the world peppered the walls, hipsters and anarchists peacefully coexisted and, best of all, they had some soccer on TV. Places like this, and Christiania and the Rub-a-dub venue are why I love Copenhagen. On the surface, it's a beautiful, historic, cosmopolitan European capital, which has great museums, expensive food, and amazing views. Once you dig a little bit, though, you find an underbelly unlike any I've seen elsewhere. Anarchists squatting in abandoned army barracks and proclaiming a "free city," with a self-sustaining government independent of the laws of both Denmark and the EU is just a slice of what Christiania is like. And a bar like the Moose existing so close to the tourism center always threw me for a loop. I started a conversation with a guy next to me about soccer and it turned into a long conversation about sports, Europe, traveling, tons of things. He also had a couple friends who showed up and professed to be big Minnesota Vikings fans, which I found hilarious. Anyway, Ben and I didn't linger for too long once our beers were done, and we hit a 7-11 and then hopped on the metro home.
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