Copenhagen, Part 1: Entering the Gene Pool

It didn’t take long for Olivier and I to make the drive from Hamburg to Copenhagen. That’s one thing that I still get a kick out of when it comes to living in Europe – just drive for a couple of hours and instead of crossing state lines, you cross borders into another country, where the language changes and the road signs become meaningless, crazy looking words.

In France, Olivier and I both understand the road signs. In Germany, I could make out a few while Olivier could make out the rest of them.

In Denmark, we were both lost.

Luckily, everyone there speaks such perfect English, that it doesn’t really matter.

Score: 1 for Denmark.

We arrived at the place where we would be staying. We had made a reservation while we were still in France. We walked up to the front door and found a note with Olivier’s name on it telling us to go inside.

Then we found a path to our room marked out with yellow post-it notes. We went inside and checked out the place where we would be spending the next few days. We had our own kitchen, so we made dinner and waited for our hosts – who were living in a separate house behind ours – to return home.

We continued to be weirded out. I mean, how could we not? It was beyond our ability to comprehend. Seriously… someone could leave the door unlocked? To a house? With shit inside of it?

Well, we had dinner. We had a TV with lots of programming in English and we had an internet connection, so I was able to access my useless Twitter account to tweet about how weirded out we were.

The next day, we walked to the train station to catch the train that would take us into downtown Copenhagen.

Inside the train, we marveled at how clean and shiny it was. There was plenty of room for everyone, including several bicycles… the seats were wide and upholstered in a soft, blue fabric. Clean. With room to breathe. No one elbowing me, rubbing up against me or pushing me.  This thing was worlds away from the Parisian train system.

Score: 2 for Denmark.

As we rode into the city, Olivier and I looked around at the other passengers. We saw several women with straight, blonde hair… pulled back in a ponytail. They looked oddly familiar.

Of course, there’s a good reason for that. When I stepped foot on Denmark, I was also stepping into my own gene pool. My name, Rasmenia… it’s a family name and yeah – it’s Danish.

We got out of the train and walked a short distance down the street to the Tivoli Gardens.

Before we went inside, we had to stop at a sausage stand next to where I took this photo. We watched with awe as the guy squirted mustard into golden-brown crusty tube-shaped bread, then stuffed a long, bacon-wrapped sausage into it. Olivier and I stood there, on the street, mouths stuffed with meaty mustard, exclaiming how incredible it was.

Score: 3 for Denmark.

Inside the Tivoli Gardens, I was out of my mind. There were things spinning and whirring about, a random mix of colors and designs, tiny trains buzzing by… flowers and ducks… my mind was so busy taking everything in that all I could do was shout, point & click my camera nonstop.

Olivier managed to keep himself under control a little better than I did. Ok… that might not be completely accurate. He did have his moments.

We spent the afternoon in the park before moving on. Walking around, we got the urge for coffee and snacks while we filled out some of the postcards that we had picked up over the last couple of days.

Imagine my glee when we stepped inside of a bakery to find… well, of course – a bunch of fucking Danishes.

Now, I’ve tried to explain to Olivier several times the deliciousness that is a Danish, but have thrown my hands in the air and given up each and every time, reassuring him, “you’ll just have to taste one yourself one of these days.”

Naturally, in Denmark, they’re not called a “Danish.”  That would just be goofy, wouldn’t it?

I ordered a kanelgiffel – you know, a cinnamon roll. I was pretty excited about because I hadn’t had any sort of pastry or bakery item filled with cinnamon goodness since I’d been in the states. French bakeries, as wonderful as they are, are painfully lacking in the cinnamon department.

I’ve been meaning to talk to someone about this.

So, we sat at the counter with our coffee and postcards as I stuffed my face with kanelgiffel, likely causing a scene with the way that I was vocalizing my delight.

Watching people outside the window of the bakery, we noticed that all of the bicycles parked along the street and on the bike racks had something in common: no locks. This brought us back to our host leaving the door open to a house and we were struck by the fact that thievery just didn’t seem to be an issue here.

Things were clean. People were smiling, friendly and no one was pushing or too busy to practice common courtesy. As if that weren’t enough, they were able to trust one another enough that they ignored something that most of us can’t imagine ignoring: locks.

All of this… plus cinnamon pastries and bacon-wrapped sausages?

I had stopped keeping score. It was Denmark and my gene pool for the win.

We finished our coffee and pastries, then headed back out to the street.  There was still plenty for us to do and we still had a couple of days here to do it.

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