12 posts tagged “pictures”
- 21 cups of coffee, including a moral-weakness latte at Copenhagen's only Starbucks, at the airport.
- 27 beers of dubious, umlautey brand origin.
- An empire's worth of Britpop at a club called London Calling. Pulp! Blur! Oasis! Goldfrapp! Stayed til 7 am, dancing like Rudyard Kipling.
- About 25 East German memorial statues commemorating individuals, social movements and assorted earthtones.
- The smells, sounds and particulates of about 2,000 animals. The highlight of our afternoon at the zoo was Knut the baby polar bear, who is now idle and surly and spends his days rubbing himself against a tree, just like every other teenager I've ever known. The monkeys were shit-fightingly entertaining, the big cats were emo and the predatory birds looked like they were waiting for you to die. All in all a successful day, even if I am still trying to wash the nocturnal house out of my beanie.
- One plate of currywurst, while trying not to think what's in it, three kebabs, while trying not to think how long that lamb-spit has been rotating there, and two rabbit steaks, while trying not to think of 'Watership Down'.
- 8 to 12 megatons of diesel exhaust. This capillary genocide was thanks to the Berlin transport union, which called a ten-day strike the day before we arrived. Instead of dealing with taxicabs and sore feet all weekend, we just rented some lady-bikes and circulated the city in the empty bus lanes. This was mostly charming, but biking right in the center of the road has you sucking some serious tailpipe. I've been suffering from Grandpa Laugh ('ha ha ha ha cough cough hack') ever since I got back to bike-lanes-a-la-mode Copenhagen.
It's been an action-packed week here at the Summertime Ranch. Two days after my arrival I was treated to a visit by a buddy of mine from my halcyon Aarhus days, and we promptly took off on a roadtrip together.
Among the highlights:
Penguins (cute!), albatrosses (huge!), geologically mysterious glacier-rocks (round!) and a colony of sea lions (whiskers!) on the beaches north of Dunedin;
A trip to Milford Sound, which is actually not a sound but a fjord and features the verticalest fucking scenery I've ever seen;
Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki (yes, it sounds exactly like 'bukkake'; no, that never stops being funny), two glacier-fed stopoffs in the middle of the South Island's interior, which has roughly the population of a homecoming dance;
We frosted it off with a big night out in Christchurch, a 300,000-strong minipolis on the west coast. None of the shenanigans were documented (they sell Red Bull and Jaegermeister together here. That's not fair.), though that's probably for the best. One sleepy bus ride later, I'm back in Dunedin; laid back; with my mind on my dissertation and my dissertation on my mind.
In my 18 months of Copenhagening, I had almost forgotten how much I love Aarhus. A mini-reunion of some old friends put me on the Trans-Denmark Railroad last weekend for the first time in almost a year, and I spent most of the weekend marvelling at what a great college town Aarhus is. Sure, it takes a little more effort to find the awesome than it does in Copenhagen, but it's there if you really want it. And besides, any city of 200,000 people that includes 90,000 students can't be all bad.
Yesterday, in a fit of tourist-showing-around, we borrowed a car (thanks Lasse!) and drove to Denmark’s verticalest attraction, Møns Klimt.
We were varying shades of hung over from the previous night’s utterly baffling rave, but managed to exit the vehicle and wander around under the chalk cliffs for a few hours before taking the REM express back to Copenhagen. Realizations:
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Denmark is absolutely gorgeous to drive through. The picturesque agri-nothingness is only interrupted by two-speedbump towns, fruit stands and bridges that are way too advanced for their surroundings. Somehow you feel like you should be using a library-voice the whole time.
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I don’t miss driving. I didn’t mind driving to Da Klimt and back, but it was strangely inert to be behind the wheel again. Driving-stress is a relic of the American lifestyle that I don’t remotely miss, and I like to think that the part of my mind that knows how to get a good parking spot, or which streets never have traffic, can now be used for something else.
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My mood is about 4 percent based on what's actually happening in my life. The rest is just weather. When it’s clear and sunny outside, I’m completely indifferent to the fact that I'm broke, nearly deported, thrice divorced, whatever.
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I love getting older. I know I’m supposed to lament the things I’ll be losing (rootlessness, looks, optimism), but when I look into my 30s, I just see the rapidly expanding ability to choose how, where and with whom I spend my time. Bring on the pot belly and ear hair, as far as I’m concerned.
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This summer sucks ass. Yesterday was the *second* day of sunshine since fucking May. I’m not exaggerating. This country needs to seriously rethink its latitude.
Bands I ended up seeing this year:
Arcade Fire
LCD Soundsystem
Band Ane (plinky!)
The National
The Flaming Lips (costumey!)
Oh No Ono
Loney, Dear
A Hawk and a Hacksaw (hammer dulcimey!)
The Who (elderly!)
Goose
Bonde Do Role
Grizzly Bear (Seattley!)
DJ Diplo
Tiesto (throbby!)
Beirut
Suspekt
Electrelane (pretty!)
Arctic Monkeys (acne!)
Wilco
Pelican (needlessly headbangy!)
Muse
Laurent Garnier
Basement Jaxx (Simply! The! Best!)
Background: The first proper festival day was the wettest Roskilde day ever. From sunrise to sunset it rained. And we're not talking some light sprinkle shit. I mean RAIN. The festival grounds, which were already a mudpit from previous days' drizzles, became a full-on lake. The grass Holocaust covered every flat surface between Sweden and the Netherlands in two inches of mud, and created ponds of brown/yellow goo around every vertical surface.
I lasted until around 10 pm Thursday night before I gave up and went back to Copenhagen. I realized I was in way over my head when I stuck my hands in my pockets and they overflowed like a fat guy getting into a bathtub.
I returned to the festival Saturday to find wet ground, dry skies and rejuvenated festivalgoers. I knew the festival was back on track when I saw my first passed-out dude, outside the spaghetti bowl stand, using a paper plate as a pillow.
Highlight of the festival: Weepingly singing along to the following song, which is by far the best thing I've heard in 2007:
Also, I saw this band alone, and no one believes me that it rocked. How can you NOT want to dance Belgianly when you hear this?
So the last few days here have been in the 80s, which for Denmark is the downright bayou. This, combined with the 11 pm sunsets, means that of the last 48 waking hours, I've spent roughly 47 of them outside. Here's a few pics from the first sprint of Danish summer.
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