Around The World – Copenhagen, Denmark
My goal on this leg of the trip is to get to Copenhagen, Denmark, my 39th country, and meet up with my travel buddies from Cambodia Rikke Wichmann and Simon Kreuzfeldt Christensen.
After the amazingly wonderful visit I had with Kimarla Kass, the ever-disappointing wonders of jet-age travel kicked in. When I got to my gate in Birmingmam, I found we were flying on a wee Bombardier Dash-8 turboprop, holding about 60 people, and I was two rows from the back. I always worry that the propeller will come off and slice right into the fuselage, so I never sit directly on the line of the “slice of destruction.” We flew up through some very turbulent air in the little plane, I had to hold onto the seatback ahead of me as we bounced around. We landed safely in the rain in Brussels, happy to have survived the flight but not happy to be in Brussels again.
Oh Brussels airport, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. I grew to hate this airport when I was flying from Hannover to Manchester and back every week for 4 months for an HSBC project at the end of my IBM assignment in Germany. The weather was always bad, delays and an outright cancellation one time where they bussed us all to a cheap hotel overnight. Also, even though I was going from Germany to Belgium to England, all in the EU, I had to go through passport control each time due to the Schengen Agreement. This thing needs to be scrapped, it’s antiquated and costs travellers time and money and aggravation. I could have driven the trip without being stopped at any national border, how does flying the same trip make it any different?
Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” series and my personal friend and hero, must have had similar experiences as he created The Rory, a movie award for “The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word ‘Belgium’ In A Serious Screenplay.”
Anyway, today I land, walk miles underground from one terminal to another past construction that’s been going on since my last time through in 2000, and then through immigration and then through security screening again with a pull-out-the-laptop, take-off-the-belt-and-shoes and bag scan. I’m a transit passgenger, there’s no need for any of this. I get through and find my gate won’t be assigned for an hour so I hang out in the terminal. I sit down at a row of seats with a Euro power plug and two USB charging jacks, yay, I need a bit of a top-up on the phone. I plug it in and nothing. I try the other jack. Nothing. I try another bench, nothing. A man sees me and just shakes his head no. I can see the soul-sucking sadness of being in Brussels in his eyes. I flick on the Wifi to check the airline app to see if my flight is still on time. They have Wifi and you get a very generous 1 hour (!) for free, or you can pay for longer. Who makes you pay for Wifi anymore? I’m already paying a huge tax just to land and take off at your airport. I try to access the free wifi but you have to log in with your Facebook or Google ID. No fucking way. The site could be hacked, the credentials could be recorded and later stolen, and it’s just stupid. Then I decided I was hungry again so I looked for a terminal directory, looking for a money change kiosk to buy some Euros with some leftover US dollars. No directory to be seen, but I spotted an official Information desk. I walked up and asked the girl “Is there a money change kiosk in the terminal?” She said “What do you mean.” Um, this has got to be a very common question, this is an international airport with people coming and going with 100 different currencies, every airport has money changing kiosks. I said “To change US dollars to Euros.” She said “Do you have the US dollars with you?” I couldn’t help but laugh and say “Yesssssss.” Why would I ask for a money changing kiosk if I didn’t have money to change? She then pointed me up the terminal to the distant money changing kiosk. Wow, we could have just avoided all of that. I get to the kiosk and the buy/sell spread is wallet-rape-worthy. And then they charged me 3 euros “Service Fee”. I looked at the guy and said “It’s good to be in the money changing business, eh?” He said he used to work at the money changing kiosk at the main train station and the rates were much fairer but a company called Travelex came through and bought everything up and jacked up the rates. I walked over and had a cheese sandwich and DC for $9.10. Ugh. I’ve had hotel rooms for less than that. Welcome to civilization. I walk down to the gate and get on an Avro RJ100 short-haul jet to Copenhagen, quite nice and smooth with unusual droopy wings and four wee jet engines but it’s so old it still has little ashtrays built into the armrests. We arrive without incident. See how long it takes me to describe the hell I went through just to make a change of planes in Brussels? Aargh.
I met Simon at the Copenhagen airport and we took the train back to his place. The train was delayed by border control issues with refugees coming up from Germany and going into Sweden. No matter the reason, the locals are resigned to the fact that the Danish trains are always, always late.
We got back to the flat and saw Rekke and I met their new English Bulldog puppy Hermann, 13 weeks old and still figuring out the world by mostly peeing on it. Just before sleep we saw breaking news about the Paris shootings and bombings. Ugh. How can we stop this? My plans take me through Paris and much of France, will have to stay on my toes.
We woke up the next morning and had a Danish breakfast of hard bread, nutella and several cheeses. The Danes are crazy for their cheese. Oh, for those who have expressed interest, Danish Bacon (imported en masse into England) comes from Danish Pigs who live in the Jutland, the very large island on the west side of the country. Interesting note: Sex With Animals was legal up until about 6 months ago, so I’m sure the pigs are happier and a little less nervous now. Enjoy your bacon.
We walked outside and down a block to a rack of electric bicycles! Woo hoo! Simon entered his account information on the touch screen and away we went, guided by built-in GPS. The bike has 3 speeds and uses a pedal-assist method. You start pedalling and the motor turns on and gives you a strong assist, you just need to keep gently pedalling. If you stop, you get a nice regen and braking effect. We rode through the city over to a canal with a sightseeing boat and checked the bikes into another rack. Cost for the ride was DK25 or about $4. As we walked away, I spotted a VW plugged into an electric charging station, and a guy with professional camera equipment taking pictures. He said the car was on sale in Sweden now and would come here to Denmark next March, so he was taking pictures for the brochure to be used here. See the picture I took of him taking the picture. Very meta.
We bought our tickets for the glass wall and ceiling tour boat and were told to wait about 10 minutes. I ducked into a 7-11 (they’re everywhere) and bought a sprayer of Ortivin to combat the stuffy, runny nose I picked up on one of the planes or in the Brussels airport. Another reason not to like Brussels, it’s apparently highly infectious.
30 minutes into our 10 minute wait, we were led away from our dock two streets over to another dock, as the very high tide restricted the boat from getting through the classic very low bridges to the ticket dock. The eventual boat ride was great, showing off some of the larger canals and the harbor and surrounding buildings. We went under a bridge with about 3″ of clearance, leading to applause for the captain.
After picking up another set of electric bikes, we rode to, you guessed it didn’t you, you knew it was coming, the Tesla showroom! This makes I think #20 for me. It’s a very small storefront on a busy street, but they did have just enough room for a rolling chassis and a production 90D model running the AutoPilot software update. I spotted 4 other Teslas around town. Due to a change in government, the tax-free status of electric cars is going away soon and will now be subject to the same 200% tax levied on all cars. Maybe tax free is too much of a break but a little social engineering can help to move society towards a zero-emission, renewable energy future.
From there we went through town to a street food fair with food trucks with several countries represented. I had a vegetarian sandwich from the Mexican truck, with the onion worry in the back of my mind. We rode home and ate our mid-afternoon snacks, Hermann was very happy to see us.
After a good play with Hermann resulting in him peeing on my duvet and a rest for all of us, we went out to find a bar where we could play pool and watch the Denmark – Sweden football match. The first pub was so packed we could barely get inside, so we went to Frederick VI which started out as a bank in 1902 and then became a bakery and then a bar. The pool table was closed down for the football night but we got a small table where Simon could keep an eye on the match. We played a bluffing dice game, then we got cards from the bar and I taught them Gin Rummy. Sadly, Denmark lost 2-1 but scored an al-important away-goal which will help later in the tournament.
We woke up the next morning and had Smørrebrød for breakfast, hard bread with mayo, sliced hard boiled eggs, tomatoes and cucumber. This is a very common Danish dish. I then made one with mayo, cheese and tomatoes and they looked at me like I had broken a Danish cardinal rule about bread-based snacks. After they got over their shock, things went back to normal.
Preparing for my visit to Amsterdam, I requested no less than 3 Airbnb locations. I was rejected by all three, the first one without a reason, the second because she forgot to block off the days, and the third because “we can’t take anyone for that long” yet there is nothing on their site page that says this. Goddamn Airbnb sucks. I wish I could rate the people that I send a request to and get rejected. I hope Airbnb is watching their rejection percentage and kicking them out of the program. I finally booked an Instant Book location which of course is automatically accepted, but it’s a good 20 minute bus ride from Anne’s shop. Grumble grumble grumble.
We logged into some electric bikes again and rode over to a bar with several pool tables, including “Pin Billiards”, although the name is surrounded by controversy. Despite dead bumpers and a surface with not one hair of felt left, we enjoyed the game, although Simon dances a little bit too much when he wins. From there we went over to Rikke’s friend’s tea shop where they stocked up.
We came back for a rest and I watched the Formula 1 race from Mexico. I knew Nico was still pissed about losing the Championship and Lewis was under no pressure and therefore holding back, so I picked Nico for pole and win in my fantasy F1 league.
After sunset we walked to Tivoli, the famous food & entertainment park. I saw several rides that were too high off the ground that I definitely didn’t get on. I avoided most of the food but upon a strong recommendation, I got a curly-churro thing, labelled “Churro” with chocolate sauce poured on it. Not very authentically Danish but yummy.
Thanks so much to Rikke and Simon and Hermann for hosting me and showing me around their city. Quite a difference in climate from Cambodia!
In the morning, I’m off on the train to Amsterdam, the city of pot, sex and electric boats! Can you guess which one is most important to me?
