66 posts tagged “denmark”
My French friend Clement is staying in my spare room for the next two weeks while he's between apartments. In lieu of rent, I told him he should just make me nonstop French food while he's here.
Today I woke up to the sound of duck crackling on the stove. Duck. All, like, l'orange and shit. And this was 10 in the morning.
On a normal holiday, hangover Thursday, I would be eating a Danish from the chain-smoking baker down the street, drinking microwaved day-old coffee to mask the Lucky Strike frosting. I could get used to this...
The arrival of warmth and sun in Copenhagen always completely re-introduces the city. I was biking the other day around sunset (8 pm now, and only latening until July), and I realized how pretty this place is. I haven’t been struck by the loveliness of my foster-city in eons, and I think it’s simply because I haven't seen it in six months. It’s been dark, or raining, or cloudy most days, and I’ve been walking around in my Gore-Tex burrito, trying to keep the climate out. The definitive image of winter for me is always the top of my front bike tire, because it’s often too cold or too windy to look straight ahead when I’m on my way somewhere.
It turns out, though, that Copenhagen exists above the first story. And I own clothes that perform more than heat-trapping mummification. And there are colors in this city beyond the gray and sepia. These things only strike me when we finally get all full-spectrumy in the spring.
I’ve been reading ‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson the last few weeks. It’s a slow, dusty kind of book, one that should be read to you by your grandpa in a rocking chair. It starts out
I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren’t very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you’ve had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don’t laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.
I know, right!?
The book continues in this vein, a dying father writing to his adolescent son, through a few decades of the postwar Christian midwest. I’m not quite finished with it, but I feel a ‘Dancer in the Dark’ caliber moan-and-cry is waiting for me on the last page.
So this has been my spring so far. Long bike rides in the low-watt sun and droning geriat-lit. By the time summer rolls around, the only thing heavier than my mood will be my quadriceps.
This is what my apartment courtyard looked like at 4 pm this afternoon, four days before spring:
... But name me one European country where a half-Kenyan dude who spent his childhood in a Muslim country would even have a chance of becoming president.
In Denmark, Obama would be referred to as a 'second-generation immigrant.'
I'm just sayin'.
It appears that the world's longest round of 'Are You Smarter Than a Suburban Danish Policeman?' is finally over. I got a buzz and a knock this morning, accompanied by a grocery bag heavy with my laptop and a Medusa of router, modem and power cords.
'We hope you're telling the truth,' the Grande cop said.
'You really should secure your wireless connection,' said Venti.
I wholeheartedly agree, and plan to spend the afternoon reconnecting the various bands, broad and otherwise, to my Criminal Command Center. I'm making sure my network is teenager-proof from now on, and I'll set my password to something like 'Electric Light Orchestra' to make sure they can never crack it.
Lessons Learned:
Secure Your Wireless: Naming your network 'Oi! Unhand my shit!' is apparently not enough.
Push The Cops to Do Your Bidding: On Monday, a friend told me, 'In Scandinavia, the police won't do anything unless you make them do it.' Since then, I've called the Hvidovre Police every morning, serving up a jumbalaya of pleas, righteous half-truths ('I work from home!)' and requests for managers in an attempt to kick-start their IT department. I was always nice during these calls, but the whole world knows that there is nothing more obnoxious than a 1.5-lingual American calling you all the time. Even invoking the spectre of our customer-servicely wrath tends to get things moving.
It's Not All Bad: Yes, the Danish police de-Internetted me for 10 days. But they also found my stolen wallet last week, sans cash, and sent it back to me. And once helped me up when I drunkenly Howard Hughes'd into a wall on my bike. And let me off the hook sometimes. This whole incident was the universe correcting my cop-karma.
Seriously, Secure Your Frapping Wireless: For Hell, I'm not gonna forget this one anytime soon.
Remember last week, how a three-blessing combo had me thinking that terrible things must lie just around the corner? Well, this week was the corner. Not only did the neighbor fracas escalate (Him, leaning out his window: 'Close your Goddamn blinds!' Me: 'No!' Him: 'Typical American!'), but I had my wallet stolen at an Australia Day party last weekend. 'Shit,' I thought. 'That's two. For this to really even out, at least one more crappy thing has to happen to me.'
Then the cops came.
At 7 am last Wednesday, I got a door-buzz and a 'politi!' from the little door-phone. They were from Hvidovre, a non-place somewhere out in the suburbs. Thinking it was about my stolen wallet, I let the mid-40s, ripe-bellied officers into my apartment, the whole time thinking, 'Wow, your wallet gets stolen in Denmark and the cops visit to make sure you're OK. The service.' After they sat down in the kitchen, I asked what was up, and was told, 'Well, you stole a credit card and ordered a bunch of shit online. And we know about it.'
Coppa what?
'What? Wait. Wait. What. What?!' I said. 'Can we do this in English? I thought you just said I stole a credit card.'
'Your Danish is fine,' the dough-faced one said in Danish. 'We know you stole it, we know what you did. We're here to take your computer.'
'My computer, why?'
'We traced the transaction back to the wireless network in this apartment.'
'But we have an open wireless connection. It's unsecured.'
'The internet doesn't work that way.'
'What? Wait. What?'
This conversation repeated itself three or four times, and somehow moved into the bedroom, in front of my laptop.
Doughface: 'That one. We're taking it.'
Me: 'Well, I just bought that one two weeks ago, so it's not going to be much help.'
Doughface: 'What were you doing the night of November 15?'
Me: 'Rented a car, fucked your father and played some backgammon. I'm sure I have receipts...' [OK, so I actually said 'I don't know']
Doughface: 'If you can't prove what you were doing that night, we're arresting you right now.'
Me: 'First of all, no you're not.' [Remember how I said I'm a dick when I'm speaking Danish?] 'You have no evidence against me at all. Secondly, it's not up to me to prove I didn't do this. It's up to you to prove that I did.'
Doughface: 'November 15!'
Me: 'Fine, lemme check my e-mails. I was probably at a concert or something.'
I sat down, opened my e-mail account and scrolled through to November, looking for invitations, confirmation e-mails, whatever.
Doughface: [audible gasp] 'If that computer's only two weeks old, how are you checking your e-mails from November?!' [Makes 'gotcha' face.]
Me: 'Wait. What?! These are on the internet. They aren't on my computer.'
Doughface: 'You just said it was two weeks old, but those e-mails say November!' [Gotcha Face intensifies to David Caruso Face]
Me: 'Internet!'
Doughface: 'If it's only two weeks old --'
Me: Internet.
The italics seemed to do it. Doughface backed off for a few minutes. We moved into my roommate's room.
She has an original iMac.
'We have your roommate's permission to confiscate her computer,' the Ichabod Crane one said.
'Whatever,' I said. They had already assured me that we would get our laptops back that afternoon, so I figured the damage had already been done. Ichabod started rooting around under her desk.
'Where's the computer?' he said.
'On the desk. That's the computer,' I said.
'No, the computer.'
'That's the computer, dude.'
'That's the screen.' He had lapsed into the voice you use when you explain to your 6-year-old cousin how the toaster works. 'I mean the compuuuuuter. Understand?'
'Dude. That's the whole computer. Right there. The blue object the size of an armadillo.'
'No. Where the daaaaata goes. The computer part.'
'That is the computer. For Hell!' Danish swear words aren't as satisfying.
'So that's the entire computer, right there?'
I was standing there with a look on my face like I was watching a dog walk on its hind legs.
'New technology, huh?' he said.
I blew the dust off the keyboard and handed it to him. 'Do you mind if I check your badge again?'
Once I figured out the italics thing, it went a bit smoother.
'Could one of your friends have committed this crime on your computer, when you weren't looking?'
'I have unsecured internet. That means anyone can use it.'
'You mean your neighbors can log on to this internet connection?'
'YES THEY CAN. UNSECURED.'
'Oh. So maybe this wasn't done on your computer, just on your wireless network.'
'Will wonders never motherfucking cease. Yes. It could have been anyone.'
They still took my computer. And my roommate's state of the art iMac 1.0. And our wireless router. I got a phone call two hours later ('Thank god,' was my first thought. 'They're actually cops.'), and was informed that there is a 'mountain' of police work for their IT department to do, so they don't know when I'll get my computer and router back. This was a week ago. I'm writing this at a smoky yet frigid internet cafe, blinking from the nicotine and ignoring the pube-scalping death metal coming from the overhead speakers. I blame you, suburbs.
There's an interesting report making the rounds about how American Southerners have begun to use the word 'Canadians' as a synonym for 'black people', a la 'The food's great at that restaurant, but it's always full of Canadians.' It's a way of sounding benign during conversations in public, but it gets across your meaning to people who know what you're talking about. Check this dude out:
Earlier this month, an e-mail that had been circulating since 2003, written by a Houston assistant district attorney Mike Trent, resurfaced. The e-mail was short, only about 100 words, and was sent to the entire office. It started out by praising a junior prosecutor for a job well done. Then the message continued:"He overcame a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing."
I was reminded of this when my new officemate reminded me today to keep the door locked when we're both out of the office: "I've got my laptop in here, and there are a lot of foreigners in the building," he said. Considering that he was speaking to a guilty-as-charged foreigner, he clearly didn't mean just anyone who's not from Denmark.
Whatever, I'm used to this shit by now. I just want to thank this news story for putting the words 'Canadians' and 'black people' into the same paragraph. I think that's the first time that's ever happened.
One of the quirks of my apartment is that it's in a little alley, really close to a bunch of other apartment buildings. This, combined with the big windows in my room, means that I can look into my neighbors' apartment like a big-screen TV; they can look into mine.
I got a weird note in the letterbox this afternoon.
Text: Hello US Citizen! It's your neighbor speaking... I have a problem with your 'window manners' -- It's quite problematic having you sitting in facel(?)-front many hours a day without making it cover or anything. I feel overlooked [this is Danglish for 'watched'] and compromised. XXX, Mel.
First of all, how did they know that I'm American? It's not like I'm sitting in front of my computer, draped in an American flag.
Second, what's the etiquette here? They can see me as well as I can see them, and I just sort of thought this was one of the quirks of urban living. You hear other people's music, smell their cooking, and glimpse them through the window every once in awhile. I don't really see why I should be the one to close my blinds and sit in my room in the dark all day, since they're the ones that have a problem with it.
Am I being a total dick here?
