Something Rotten

After Oslo, I headed southward though Sweden and into Copenhagen Denmark. The hostel I stayed at was a "five-star" -- there really were five stars on the sign-- hostel with something like 700 beds. It was brand new, clean close to the station and busy. I shared a room with three other people, two girls who were always asleep or out and a guy who slept about 16 hours a day. We shared a bathroom with the next dorm room, where a Polish student named Sylwana (Sylvana) was staying. She talked a lot and if you started a conversation is was impossible to get what you were doing. It seemed amazing that she was there at all considering she is a student who works part time at a supermarket giving out food samples for 2 Euros an hour. She was there to go clubbing in goth/industrial clubs and see the city. She gave me a long speech about how she hated wearing too much makeup, specifically black around the eyes. This puzzled me because saw her putting on loads of makeup every morning.

As I arrived in town about supper time on a Friday, I thought it was a good night to go out. I wasn't going to suggest going to the venues Sylwana was headed for, so I went out on my own. I ended up meeting a group of telecom company workers who were having some kind of whole office out party. Some of them spoke perfect English. I chatted with one woman in particular, Gitte who seemed really happy and excited to be out. At 30, she was easily the older person in the group which made her some kind of mother figure to the younger staff. She told me how her and her fiance additively play World of Warcraft together and that he is curiously why she wants to go out all the time. Her answer was that she just lost 20 lbs on the Atkins diet and she feels great. I was impressed at 20 lbs, but couldn't understand why she kept on emphasising the figure over and over through the night. It turns out that she was converting from metric by dividing 40 kg in half instead of multiplying it to the correct figure of 88 pounds. I was really impressed by the new figure and could see why she was happy and wanted to go out. We all danced and drank late into the night. All of the songs were in English save for one popular Danish tune. There was a round of shots that i was told were made of Fisherman's Friend through losenges and lots of Danish beer, which wasn't very strong. At about 3 am I stumbled back to my hostel and slept late into the next day.

The next day (Saturday), I headed across the river to the islands of Christianshaven. There was a famous Lutheran church with a spiral shaped steeple. It was fun to look at for a sec, but the real reason I headed in that direction was to see Christiana. Christiana or "free town" is a group of barracks and old military fortification taken over by Hippies in the 70s. The resulting commune is registered as one entity which pays for gas water and sewer, but with in the commune there is no private ownership. I heard about Christiana a year ago on CBC radio, it may have been on"As it Happens." It seems that a conservative government had been voted in in place of the socialist government who tolerated the anomalous freetown. The radio programme was all about how the conservatives were going to force the inhabitants of Christiana to register as individual property owners. I'm not sure what happened in the end, but I do know that the commune strengthened the role of their local government. In particular they closed the open hash markets, and started an awareness campaign to save their community.

I walked in from a back entrance with my camera stowed (photography isn't allowed). As I climbed over a riverbank I found a group of three story brick buildings with tons of added skylights for attic apartments. There were countless structures build from a variety of recycled materials. I knew that the police were no well liked by he locals, and within 5 minutes of entering he compound, witnessed a police raid where about 10 officers on foot (no way to drive into Christiana) drug a guy out of a cafe and out toward the streets. Everyone nearby was yelling and I saw a guy throw a rock. I initially didn't know that these were Danish police. I thought they might be a local band of law enforcement kicking out an unwanted person. Then I thought, maybe some guy was taking pictures and they are throwing them out. Then I figured out they were the real police.

Near the entrance of Christiana were a group of shops most likely set up for tourists. They sold tie-dye, knit sweaters, pipes and bongs. I bought falafel on pita from a campervan canteen. I enjoyed my vegetarian snack, but regretted saying yes to "with spicy?" as I took the last few bites. All the spicy sauce hit the back of my throught and it took ten minutes for my eyes to stop watering, my nose to stop running and my mouth to stop burning. I as the discomfort subsided, I decided to walk out of the commercial district and into the more residential area.

There was "stuff" everywhere: Piles of cut up wood from fallen trees and branches, old wooden boats rotting between houses, piles of smashed up furniture, presumably to be burned. There seemed to be a reluctant to throw anything out, and any reusable item appeared to be saved and stored in plain view of anyone passing. If found a playground with children playing and saw a mom teaching her daughter how to ride a bike. The girl was riding while her mom was holding the end of a long broom stick wedged under the back of the seat. It seemed to be working for the little girl and a rough looking man on a souped up "hot-rod" bicycle stopped and cheered.

Further from the centre of the town, I found that there was nobody around. There was just the odd house along the canal shore of behind the embankment. I decided to take chance taking a picture and managed to capture a cool houseboat that had small water fowl houses on rafts for the ducks or geese they had for pets.



Back in the more gentrified section of Christianhaven, I walked up a canal build by dutch traders, and being in Amsterdam typing at the moment, looked like it could have been in be in Holland.

I needed to use the bathroom badly and had couldn't wait long enough to get back to my hostel. I've been determined not to pay for washroom use, as has been required where I've been so far. I chose to duck into a cafe and order a latte, to use the washroom there and sit down for a break. I ended up chatting with the shopkeeper who turned out to be the owner as well. He was telling me about he and his brother travelling in the states, about going to Las Vegas, seeing the Grand Canyon and going through Louisiana and having their van break down. Apparently some guy named Bob fixed it overnight and then them for a testdrive announcing, "now we'll give yuh a free tour through nigger territory." It was really funny to hear this Danish guy do an impression of a Louisiana accent. It was excellent, and I couldn't help but think that Bob sounded something similar.

At one point we got talking about his family. I asked about them because he had mentioned that he needed to close up soon to spend time with them. He told me that he had a four year old son and a one year old daughter. I immediately got excited because I taught three and four year olds exclusively in Korea. I exclaimed how it is the most fun age there is for playing with children, which led him to talking about how he plays with his son. Apparently he does characters. There is the normal dad, who I was talking to, and then the other two dads: The grumpy dad and the christmas dad. The Christmas dad is always happy and everything is wonderful. The grumpy dad is a little negative but kind of cool. Of course his son always laughs when he plays these characters, which is why I love playing with four-year-olds. To them, you are the funniest person alive. They laugh at all your jokes!

I never did catch his name, but the cafe owner asked if I wanted a sandwich and then packed up the remaining chicken breast sandwich and threw in four croissants. He claimed that they needed to be thrown out because it was the end of the week. I was still grateful for his generosity, although I am sure he could identify with traveling on a budget.

I tried to go to sleep early that night, but got caught up in Internet research that made me go bug-eyed after 2.5 hours of staring at the screen. Some of you know what this research was for, but for the rest of you, you'll have to wait for two more weeks to find out what I'm planning :-P .... So, I finally got to bed and then had the worst sleep of my life. I tossed and turned and and woke up 1,000,000 times. I woke up between 4:30 and 5:00 with a crazy itchy feeling over my whole body. It didn't make sense. I had washed my sheets a few days before and had a shower before bed. There was no good reason why I should be itchy. Having poorly slept and being fed-up with itching, I had another shower and decided it was time to get up for the day.

I had made an 11:00 appointment with Sylvana to see the major art museum in Copenhagen, but since it was 5 am, I felt I had time for a half-day trip before then. I booted it to the train station and waited 10 mins to board a northbound train for Helsingor. Almost an hour later I could see from the train window that daybreak had almost come.

Helsingor was dead quiet at 6:30 am. If the name sounds familiar, it is the one and only Elsinore where Shakespeare set Hamlet based on a historical figure Amleth who actually lived nearly 1000 years ago. There is a castle built on the end of the point jutting out into the sea, which acted as a toll gate for passing ships in the narrow straight between Denmark and Sweden. This castle was built well after Shakespeare in the mid Renaissance, and Shakespeare never visited here, but Kenneth Brannah used it to film a full length version of Hamlet that I think I watched with James and someone else in my parents' basement. Regardless, I was feeling the Hamlet spirit and jumping like a little kid.

By the time the sun started to rise, the clouds were in perfect position to make the most beautiful sunrise I have seen in my life. I toll about 50 photos of it, of which I have posted a few here.







My friend Chris Song complained that there weren't enough pictures of me, so I took one of myself with some Hamlet like facial expression. Can you guess what scene is playing out in my mind? Am I depressed over the death of my father? Considering suicide? Plotting revenge? Or am I thinking about something else altogether?



Back in Copenhagen, I had a productive morning, I booked tickets to Amsterdam and mailed my winter jacket home. I met Sylwana at the hostel and fell asleep while she laboriously caked makeup on her face. She walked into my room in fully in conversation with me waking me up. We headed to the Museum where we was their collection of roman sculpture and french painting. She was scantily clad in a short skirt and with high heeled shoes. She remarked at one point about how guys in other countries thought that Polish girls were sluts. Strangely as we walked about town, she was the ONLY person wearing high heels, the ONLY person scantily clad. She might as well been naked walking up the street for the amount of attention she attracted. Sometimes I found myself drifting away from her side and the loud clicking of her heels.



After the museum we walked the whole length of town to a park on the other side. out destination was a stature of Hans Christian Anderson's Little mermaid. Erected in the 1920s, the popular statue is little named mermaid (no sea shell bra) sitting on a rock at the edge of the water. I didn't get a picture because my camera was dead. That night, I did a few more hours of research and went to bed.



The next morning I stopped by the City Hall (where I found my first free public toilet in Europe) to see an astronomical clack made my the famous Dane Jens Olsen. It started in 1928 with calculations he got from a famous astronomer and wasn't built, calibrated and up and running until 1955. The clock is amazing. It gives the exact time and exact date. It tells you the position of the starts, the planets and the moon. It gives you real time, true solar time, and sidereal time based on the position of the earth in reference to the stars. Every new year, the clock automatically calculates the dates of every month with the number of days the the exact timing of moving holidays like Easter. It is calibrated so that it can create accurate calendars for the next 3000 years. The clocks fastest wheel turns every ten seconds and the slowest movement lasts 25,753 years. It will only lose 0.4 seconds of time in 300 years. I spent a long time reading all the displays on the clock and learned what most of the dials and indicators were telling me. After and hour of being entranced by this clock, I headed over to the station to catch my mid-day train out of town.