Schiopol airport is confusing; so confusing that my wife has sent me an email with some advice on how it can best be navigated, There are three main terminals, each with a set of sub-desks with no clear indication of what airline is where, and I go to ‘3’ first, see my airline is not there, then head to ‘1’, and self check my bag, which goes into something that looks like a dumpster, and presumably magical elves carry it to its destination. I pass out as the plane takes off, and when I awake, I arrive in Copenhagen, where my wife is waiting by the baggage claim. We hop a taxi to our hotel, and we take a deep nap.
The next morning, we’re off on a bike tour, in what feels to me like subarctic conditions, but in Copenhagen are probably ‘springtime’. At one point it literally hails. But despite that, it’s all fairly interesting. I have not ridden a bike in a million years, but the bikes are nice, and Copenhagen is as flat as a smørrebrød, so it’s easygoing. We learn sort of standard bike tour things, a potted history of the city, the affection Danes have for the Royal family, smørrebrød, and cycling. We zip around Copenhagen’s semi-famous Christiantown, a sort of hippie experiment which both sounds interesting and a nightmare. There’s a bit of a controversy going on there as the community is attempting to evict drug dealers from its famous “pusher street” and I hear about it in the background from time to time during my visit. I would have probably returned there to take another look around, but we had a fairly full itinerary.
There are bridges, cafes, and churches; there’s a state religion in Denmark, which nearly everyone ignores except for baptism, confirmation, and death. It’s a good way to get our bearings, and at the end of it, we go to a place I begin to refer to as “tourist row” which probably has some other name, with about 10,000,000 restaurants all packed next to each other, and have some smørrebrød, which is, from what I can tell, Denmark’s contribution to world cuisine. It’s an open faced sandwich, usually with fish, and mayo. The Danes love mayo even more than the Dutch, and don’t restrict its use to just fries.
I have some gravlax smørrebrød and a salad, and my wife has some other variety of smørrebrød and some new potatoes, and I will say that even at these very obvious tourist places, the food is excellent. I come back to tourist row a couple of times, pick a place at random, and walk away happy, for a semi-resonable price. If you want to argue that it would be hard to fuck up an open faced sandwich I would say that you might be surprised; but no one fucks anything up here.
It’s another tour the next day, billed as the “hygge” tour. Hygge is a word without a whole lot of direct translation; I usually see it kind of translated as a sort of hot cocoa and cozy blanket on a cold day kind of feeling, but our guide says it’s “the absence of annoyance”, which is a concept I can relate to. The tour itself is a lovely little walking tour, with stops for pastries, coffee, snacks, and the like. We learn that Hans Christian Anderson was as famous for being a mooch as he was for writing fairy tales, and we walk by a statue of Sørren Kirkegaard without the guide mentioning it at all, and I am reminded of the time I had to read “Either/Or” in college an how little I understood or retained about it. Sorry, Sørren. Maybe if I get that philosophy degree I have been contemplating…
My wife is feeling unwell at this point, so I wander off and have some smørrebrød, this time with fried fish on it. She has made a reservation at a couple of places I really want to try, and I spend a chunk of my lunch hoping she feels better quickly. She gathers her strength and we head off to a fish restaurant, where despite a service hiccup (and hey, they paid for my drinks and were super nice) we enjoyed some oysters and a delicious turbot.
Our last activity was a baking class. Taught by one “Fredrick Terrible” (his real name, pronounced ter-ee-blay), we learned how to make Danish pastries under the guidance of a wonderfully presice french baker. We made so much pastry, in fact, that we ended up giving it away to the hotel staff at some point, because there was an entire cow’s worth of butter in each one. I haven’t tried any of this stuff at home, but came away feeling I could, if desired. He gave solid advice about flour and butter and other things, and it was geared to both produce pastry and give you some skills to do it at home.
We also had lunch in the Parliament building. Meyers i Tårnet contains some giant sculptures, an amazing view, a good beer selection, and smørrebrød. It is also the only restaurant I have ever eaten at that requires a security check to enter, owing to its proximity to parliament. If you make a reservation there, you get to skip the line for “the view”, which is a platform above the restaurant where you can see all of Copenhagen. It’s neat, but I was happy to have lunch first. Approximately 15,000 smørrebrøds into the trip, I’m fairly confident that these were some of the better ones.
We also have cocktails at a few places— Ruby is a more traditional place, with a focus on classics, and Balderdash specializes in the weird and wonderful; when we are there they are doing a menu which focuses on African flavors, and I have a Jollof Rice Clarified Milk Punch which… tastes like Jollof Rice. It sounds gimmicky, but they nail it, and the other drinks I try there are both innovative and interesting. I love the mad scientist approach to things; and these guys are the maddest scientists. There was a third place that we hoped to try, but it didn’t open until “late”. Being from New Orleans, you expect most bars to just be… open, and fancy cocktail places to be open earlier. The hours probably make sense for Copenhagen, so I can’t fault them.
Our last big event in Copenhagen was a meal at Geranium, a three star restaurant housed in, of all places, a soccer stadium. You take an elevator to the 8th floor and are in a large, tastefully decorated room and eat many impractical and wonderful dishes– beets carved into tiny flowers. Celeriac served in intricate slivers. Foams. Sauces. All the kinds of beautiful artistic weirdness that you get in such a place, with some nice and relaxed service. Geranium is that they mostly serves vegetarian food– as I recall two of the courses had fish, and the rest were vegetarian, and a few vegan ones as well. It was outstanding and unique. The wine list was as thick as a very thick thing, and we went with the pairings, which were both interesting and generous, and I awaken the next day feeling a tad bleary.
All three of our flights home departed late. In Copenhagen, an unruly passenger was kicked off the plane. That was a first for me. I didn’t see or hear what happened, but I saw someone going up the ramp escorted by four cops. I imagine the rest of their day not going so well. In Ontario, there was some sort of random issue with a sensor. And in Chicago… honestly I forget, but we were on the runway for what seemed an age. I found the “border crossing” confusing as well; it appeared to happen in Canada, but our luggage went straight through to New Orleans, which runs counter to most of my international flight experiences. Minor quibbles, but a source of confusion on a stressful day. I like being in a place, seeing things, but getting there is not half the fun. It’s not even an eighth of the fun. The fun is in arriving, and the fun is in being back in your home, reunited with your dog, and using a good old fashioned American toilet. Sorry Europe, but while you do a lot of things right, I find your toilets strange.
I think that’s a good enough way to end things.
***
I read parts of “The Angel of Indian Lake” during this trip. I slept a hell of a lot more on the airplane than I thought I would, and just managed to finish the book this week. It was my least favorite of the trilogy, but I thought it wrapped things up nicely enough.
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