COPENHAGEN

“…if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.” (Kierkegaard)

 

I was told to start my first day in Copenhagen by walking along ‘the lake,’ a neat canal-shaped body of water north of the urban core and long enough to be crossed by four broad bridges. Though cold, the day was sunny, clearly one of the best the city had seen in months, and a fine excuse for a bike or run on the dedicated trails or just a sandwich with a view. 

My destination was the National Gallery, a massive institution combining collected European art from the 13^th to the 19^th centuries with an only slightly smaller collection of modern visual, conceptual, and video art in two distinct buildings fused by a glass atrium. 

 

The gallery was a short stroll from Rosenborg castle and the manicured King’s Gardens, where groups of attractive (and obviously hardy) Danes sat on dead grass drinking beer in the sun. 

It’s true what you’ve heard: beauty may be subjective, but there is considerable agreement that the Danes have more than their fair share of it. Spend the day walking around the city and you’re bound to experience whiplash at least twice and distraction more than that. The symptoms may be more extreme should you suffer from the particular philia for men in sweaters that ails me. Le sigh.

It is also true that bicycles are the preferred mode of transportation and that Denmark is the birthplace of LEGO.

Model from the Copenhagen lego store

In much of the city core cars are entirely absent. It’s all narrow cobblestone streets that every so often give way to lovely town squares.

 

Each square has a handful of cafes where outdoor seating is an option even when the temperature is just a few degrees above freezing. Fleecy blankets draped over most every chair made these seats look slightly more appealing (though a fire pit would have been much more so).

I spent much of my second day in Copenhagen enjoying the exhaustive collection of the National Museum. The museum possessed huge quantities of bones, shards, and artifacts and more information on bogs and Viking burials that you could possibly hope for – surely an archaeologist’s dream come true.

After touring room after room of medieval reliquaries and exquisitely carved altar pieces I was too drained to hit the top floor with its middle east collections but I did love this PG-13 mosaic.

I lost my camera in Berlin, so on my second day in the city I had only my ancient smartphone for documentation. I think you’ll still be able to appreciate the canals bordering the island of Slotsholmen

and the views from the 17^th c. Rundetårn (Round Tower)

I did not take this picture

achieved through a spiraling ascent up a helical corridor from which the views changed at every turn.

 

 

From another angle you can see Sweden

I was graciously hosted in Copenhagen by my new friend Jeppe, whose lovely sun-filled apartment provided views of the city designed to infatuate.

But that was hardly necessary. By the time I gazed out this window I had already firmly decided to accept a job offer extended to me in Odense to start in the fall. I had already picked out food for Zelda:

been urged to take a personality test by a missionary to whom my inability to speak Danish provided no obstacle:

and identified the consumer goods necessary for blending in to this new national stylistic milieu:

I will have to start budgeting for avant-garde leather shoes, felted wool ponchos, a sturdy bicycle, and of course, a new camera. Wish me luck, and please come visit!

BERLIN

 “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” (Kierkegaard)

When I tumbled out of my overnight bus onto the hazy streets of Berlin it had been thirteen years since I’d set foot in that splendid city. I have grand memories of the month I spent there at the end of 1999, exploring, cocooning, falling deeply in love with the place and all its scars and possibilities. It was Berlin I thought of when I went to China for the first time and knew I wanted to spend my life trying to understand it.

While there were plenty of places I thought I might return to I didn’t feel a burning desire to tour the city. The main reason for the trip was to see Henrike, a friend I’ve known since high school and to meet the family she has built.

Henrike has held onto the English she acquired as an exchange student in Seattle almost 20 years ago but my German is in a sorry state, any and all space in my brain’s language center now dominated by 普通话. While I can comprehend a good bit my ability to communicate is limited to scattered nouns and a handful of poorly conjugated verbs. It was easiest to communicate with 19 month-old Paul, who speaks only baby (but tolerated me reading books to him in exaggeratedly guttural Deutsch) and had christened me “Gika” by day two. 

Henrike’s 9 year-old son David is learning English in school but preferred to correct my mangled German and drill me in proper pronunciation. For conversation more complex than where to find the gelato shop we turned to technology. After I picked him up from school one day he used google translate to ask me if he could use my computer to watch a Harry Potter movie online.

I joined the family in leisured, nutella-rich brunches, park strolls, and museum visits and had two afternoons to myself to wander Kreuzberg and Schöneberg while Henrike and her husband ran errands. I sat outside at cafes strategically built to catch the afternoon sun, bought tea, browsed bookstores, and covered as much territory by foot as I could. 

This really is what it says it is (click for bigger)

It was just enough to take me back a decade and some – not to get nostalgic over how things were but to reflect on how very different, thank god, things are.

And of course I reveled in all the German and all the Germanity, eating fancy yogurts

  marveling at a shop entirely devoted to mustard

and giggling over personhood-ascribing marketing messages in translation. 

 lit: “Here I am a person, here I shop”

It’s always a treat to travel when you have a home base that is really a home and I enjoyed getting to know Neukölln, a lefty neighborhood with a visibly activist population and beautiful art nouveau architectural details.

Just two and a half blocks south of Henrike’s home is Tempelhof airport, the historic site of the Berlin Airlift and now an enormous public park. You can bike or roller skate down the old runways, till a plot in the p-patch, or just take in the wide horizons and growing collection of public art.

The old terminal, formerly one of the twenty largest buildings on earth, now hosts a dance school, a mini golf course (!), and events of all sorts.

I did not take this picture.

Rents are quite a bit higher in Berlin than they were 13 years ago but the city remains a place of enormous creativity and considerable possibility. I can’t wait to go back.

ODENSE

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”

(Kierkegaard)

“What is your final destination today?” asked the elfin old man at passport control in Copenhagen airport. “Odense,” I replied confidently and with some pride. He looked up from my passport. 

“Do you mean ˈoðˀn̩sə?"

I nodded with sheepish bewilderment. 

“You had better know what town you’re going to or you might never get there,” he winked, sending me off to baggage claim.  

Thus began my first day in Denmark, a day on which I was not infrequently reminded that the considerable time I’ve spent living or traveling outside my home country does not mean I can parachute into any foreign context and expect smooth going.

Au contraire imbécile! Within an hour of my arrival I was baffled by an ATM that offered Danish Kroner rather than Euros, perplexed by train platforms, and attempted in all earnest to pay for a bottle of water with a coin half the needed value. Once on the train I sat in first class till kicked out by a conductor, required assistance in opening the automatic doors into the next carriage, and finally, finding all the standard seats filled (some with better-prepared visitors nose-deep in their Lonely Planets) resigned myself to sitting on my suitcase in the vestibule.

Luckily the ride was not long. We crossed the sea to the island of Funen and shortly reached its jewel, the town of Odense.

Odense is best known as the hometown of Hans Christian Andersen, reportedly born in this cheery little cottage:

Here are his dentures:

Here is the rope he always traveled with to assuage his neurotic fear that fire might trap him on a second or third story:

Here is the screen he painted to gaze upon from his deathbed:

What a fantastic weirdo. 

Odense is also the home of the decidedly Gothic Saint Knud’s cathedral (the saint himself is viewable in a glass box below the altar).

I’m not sure if the cathedral was built before or after Odense was the home of a successful cattery. [Any cattery experts among you please step forward and explain this.] 

Here is the cute historical museum where I learned not-nearly-enough about the town and its historical catteries. 

I was in Odense (I expect you are still saying oðˀn̩sə in your head as you read along) to give a talk at the local university, a gig set up by the excellent Jessica, presently employed there as an assistant professor. 

I had nearly a week between my arrival and my talk, giving me ample time to savor designer diet coke and sweet mint soda

 hang out in a borrowed apartment above a flower shop

cook and watch tv with Jessie and Rick, and explore the exceedingly cute downtown.

The talk went fine and I enjoyed the town and its phantom consonants very much. But the story doesn’t end there my kittens…

(to be continued)