Frederiksberg Fail

Owen Pallett plays here in a couple of days. Copenhagen listed many concerts I knew I wouldn’t be able to see booked anytime soon in the Midwest, so I resolved to go to at least this one while I’m here. As it turns out, nearly all international acts in Copenhagen perform at a venue called Vega.

The Vega is actually an assembly of two venues (Store Vega and Lille Vega) tucked deep into the folds of streets and parks that compose Frederiksberg, a district of Copenhagen east of downtown. It usually takes me a few tries to figure out where a place is, even in the states, so I decided it was safest for me to go to the venue to get my ticket and avoid spending the night of the show wandering around Copenhagen in the soul-sucking windstorm that inevitably strikes every time I leave the apartment.

Some Frederiksberg flava

It actually didn’t end up taking all that long to find the place. Though, as per my usual luck, it was closed. But I did find a blonde Danish girl by the entrance who was spectacularly helpful. In addition to being gorgeous, which is really all I would have needed to consider her helpful (tattoos, tight jeans, piercings, oh my!), she attempted to find tickets for me on her phone. I spelled his name with one T instead of two, so the search was a bust. Talking to her was a success in itself, and probably was the most cultured experience I’ve had in the past few days.

There really was nothing left on my itinerary for the day save a hundred or so pages of readings on Gallipoli, a battle during World War I that incited decades of scholarly controversy so interesting that it requires an entire course for me to know it even existed. (Did you know there was a company that attempted to create, copyright, and implement a symbol for sarcasm?) So, I walked around, as I usually do when I’m feeling scatterbrained and unmotivated.

Frederiksberg is a cute little ditty. I suppose that can be said for downtown Copenhagen too, where none of the buildings reach higher than the tallest church steeple, so about five stories. The difference is, in Frederiksberg there’s space. Well, more space. There’s a big park there, Frederiksberg Have, the biggest park I’ve seen yet in Copenhagen. And that’s saying something, because even though it’s the biggest city in Scandinavia, it’s got a lot of parks. The park encompassed a circular mote that had no ostensible significance other than to beautify the area for the aristocrats who hung out in Frederiksberg Castle. Spires marked all the points of interest in the park and included detailed descriptions of the sights they identified (conveniently written in Danish). There were illustrations on each posting depicting aristocrats enjoying the park in much sunnier weather than I’ve ever seen here as they pranced about in gaudy apparel, probably commenting on how great it was to be rich and live in a castle.

Frederiks Castle

It was cold and grey and the zoo I saw on the map was closed and under construction. Typical Copenhagen… It probably would have cost my soul and thirty dollars to get in if it was open anyways. There were a lot of birds there; geese, ducks, pigeons so used to being surrounded by bread-throwing criminals (there are signs at every puddle deploring the feeding of bird) that they challenge passersby on the side walk. I could get close enough to kick them before they began squawking, quacking, or otherwise acting like a belligerent avian drunkard before a bar brawl. The ducks are especially sassy.

Sassy birds

Hunting for Monies

After jumping through the battery of hoops required of me to get a fully-functional print card for the university's libraries, I managed to print off ten copies of my resume and begin my (probably ill fated) job hunt in earnest. I heard rumors that the tourist center Stroget in downtown Copenhagen was the best bet for foreigners looking to make enough money to afford a pair of socks every once in a while.

I avoided restaurants on my search, although I heard they had some of the best chances of getting hired. They all seemed too Danish for me to get hired. I was scared off by signs I couldn't understand. I avoided many retailers for the same reason. Anything that looked at all authentically Danish was immediately crossed off my list because there is no way I could function if even one customer attempts to interact with me in his native language.

So, I ended up handing in applications largely to retail chains like Urban Outfitters who weren't hiring or probably won't hire me because I listed no relevant experience on my resume. The most promising lead I had was at Abercrombie and Fitch, where I felt self conscience even stepping foot in the door. I walked past the shirtless doorman whose Spartan abdominal muscles made me rethink my qualifications for the notoriously superficial job.

When I offered a copy of my resume to one of the beautiful employees, she directed me to a crevice in the wall upstairs where I was forced to complete a long winded application on a mouseless computer while standing up. A girl folding clothes next to me told me they had an opening on the overnight shift, so I allowed myself a bit of optimism while drudging through the application, inventing any information I couldn't remember or couldn't be bothered to retrieve.

What was nice about the Abercrombie application is that everyone who applied automatically gets an interview. They hold the group interviews for times a week and I had mine today. The session was supposed to begin at two in the afternoon. When I got there a couple minutes early another beautiful employee directed me to the bottom floor, where I found three bored looking twenty-somethings taking up the furniture.

I silently contented myself with browsing the stock. Not one item there went below the hundred dollar mark save a pair of sixty-dollar thong sandals. There were probably less than twenty items stocked in the area, and I had paced through the sparse selection twice before a woman with a clip board walked down the stairs toward the sitting area and instructed us to take a seat.

My competition was an Eastern European girl, a couple of Brazilian soccer players, a shy Slaavic guy, and a Pakistani who said his favorite sport was cricket. As far as looks went, I was confident that I was closer to company standards than the other males, but I'm not sure how the assistant manager interviewing us took to my ball-busting skinny jeans and crew neck sweatshirt. I forgot the preppy vibe the store has and went in full-out hipster garb.

I thought the interview went OK, although if I get called back I'll think of it as a miracle tantamount to finding the bike that was stolen from me six months ago in bed with me tomorrow morning. The girl interviewing us made a couple of examples illustrating work procedures saying things like "If we hired you as a model..." It wasn't much, but it was a hopeful hint.

I'm never really sure how to act in interviews, so I usually think I'm doing it wrong. In this case whenever the interviewer posed a question, I answered in the fewest words I thought would make me sound like a good candidate. I was attempting to be professional. But I think I would have been better off shmoozing in every answer like the Brazilians, who talked about the friend they had who already worked at the store. "Oh my god I love him," said the interviewer.

She was from Chicago, and told me her parents lived in St. Paul. I could have related to her on those terms, perhaps even made her like me. Alas, brevity prevailed, and I think my interview suffered because of it. I really need to get this shmoozing thing.

Drain Season

For the past week or two, every time I've taken a shower at my apartment the bathroom flooded. it would have been nice, sort of, if the problem was just the German girl's hair getting caught on the grill that covers the drain. Unfortunately, the unholy mess causing the drain to clog was below it, rotting.

This became a shallow pond every time I showered

I managed to catch the landlord yesterday during his conveniently brief office hours. I explained to him the drain problem, and the refrigerator problem (it doesn't close), and the radiator problem (it was on the highest temperature setting and the control knob was missing). He told me he was going to come up to my apartment at eleven o'clock yesterday to show me how to fix the clog myself and fix the other problems. I went back to my room and waited. At a quarter to twelve there was still no sign of him, so I went back down to his office and asked if he was still coming. "I did, I rang the doorbell and knocked and no one answered." I couldn't be so mad, my door was closed and is practically soundproof. But doesn't he have a key? And informed consent to enter the apartment? Whatever.

So the guy, who spoke in a tone a little more disgruntled than I would expect from someone who gets paid to deal with this shit, told me he would come back today at nine in the morning to fix the problems. I said OK, although I was actually pissed that he was forcing me to be up and waiting for a door buzzer at that time.

I set three alarms last night, so I was ready at nine, but after nearly an hour passed I went down to his office again. "Uh, so are you going to come up to my apartment?"

"Yes I have already come by once today and no one answered. I have wasted my time twice now." Jeez... I asked if he could come up again to actually do something and he said he would after he finished whatever complex administrative bullshit he was doing on his computer. It took another hour for him to come up to my apartment, but I had my door wide open and no music playing. I made sure I could hear him as soon as the elevator door opened.

He did arrive, finally, and wasn't nearly as surely as he was the last time I saw him. But his spirits may have been up because he knew something I didn't. After installing a new knob on the radiator in my room and telling me the refrigerator needed to be defrosted, he lead me to the bathroom. I had my own theories about how I would unclog the drain with the tools at my disposal (i.e. a flathead screwdriver and my hands), but I was hoping he was going to bring some fancy equipment or dangerous acids that would fix the problem as indirectly as possible.

As it turned out, all he brought was a flathead screwdriver and a pair of latex gloves. He did me the favor of unscrewing the grill to the drain, and took out an tube that looked like it might have been white when it was first installed, but was nearly completely covered in grey decomposing hair. The second he lifted the tube from the drain the bathroom took on the strange, sickening scent of brimstone that nearly made me gag. He lifted a small clump of hair from the tube and asked me for a plastic bag that he used to disposed of the ancient hair like he would fresh dog shit. He took off his glove with a smile and left the extra one for me. Teach a man to fish... right?

Yeah, I was scared too.

On Losing Oneself

So, I've been getting lost on the daily lately. It's been causing some problems, but it's also led me to some worthwhile discoveries. Honestly, it's caused more harm than good, but still, I've found some pretty cool places.

I heard that the S-tog, a regional train system, was free on the first Sunday of every month. Since my plane crossed Copenhagen city limits, I have not left it once. I took my opportunity for a free ride by deciding to get on the first train I saw and take it to the end of the line. I did this with some trepidation because the train lines were not unknown to stop running for maintenance (or something) without prior warning.

From the Noreport station, I ended up taking a train going north to Hillerup. I had never heard of the place, but it wasn't Copenhagen and that's all I was going for. On the way there the train passed by many construction sites and abandoned buildings that were covered in a less entertaining variety of graffiti. It looked like I was going towards a desolate wasteland. But wastelands probably had good deals on food, so I didn't get too worried.

As it turned out, Hillerup was a cute little suburban community whose prices weren't much better than than Copenhagen. I was a bit disappointed in the place. It had a couple malls and some casinos, but nothing too original. After wandering around for less than fifteen minutes, I decided that I was completely lost. I tried to make the best of it and started following a trail I stumbled on. It led to a lake populated by countless ducks and seagulls. Off in the distance, though, the was a big building I immediately knew was worth checking out.

I walked a long, dog poop covered, route that traced the coast of the lake. It was a cold day, extremely windy too, not that that's unusual Danish weather. I was losing initiative every second more I spent in the elements with nothing more than a jean jacket and the skinniest jeans I had seen since entering the country. When I got to the the entrance, I saw a sign and realized I was at one of the biggest tourist destinations in Denmark, Fredricksborg (Fredrick's Castle).

I couldn't believe how many people were there. I was sort of hoping to find something tourists didn't flock to like paparazzi. it was a sweet deal though, I was going to have to see this eventually anyways, and this way I got a free train ride there! There was a lot to look at there, but I didn't get a very cultured vibe. I mean, sure, it was built in the 17th century, cool. But all the statues were done of Greek gods and felt like the product of a very rich man falling into a kitschy fad. I guess that might be an indicative feature of Denmark's castle architecture. I don't know though, it didn't seem very original to me...

Originality aside, the castle was spectacular. There was an enormous garden in the back yard. The Baroque Garden had shrubbery expertly sculpted into designs shaped like crowns and flowers. I had never seen anything like it. It kind of sucked seeing it from the ground since you couldn't get a good look at what the whole thing looked like. I guess that's what the goal was, because the palace was right across a wide moat from the garden, giving the high windows the perfect view of the giant plant formation.

It was still cool from the ground, but seeing it from this angle made me sort of regret skipping out on the paid tour of the inside. I'll save it for a sunny day, which come as a scarce commodity in this place.

Future Normal

I made another attempt at getting to an event organized by the university's international get-to-know-each-other club yesterday. Even though I was joined by all my roommates, we managed to arrive at the venue before it closed. In addition to the Irish girl, Orla, and her requisite home girl Donna, we were joined by my Danish roommate and the new, somewhat reserved roommate from Germany, Sarah.

We started out by pregaming at the apartment, naturally.

I drank gin and tonics until I nearly felt like I was going to vomit the spaghetti I have been living off of lately. We ended up leaving the apartment at half past eleven which made me anxious since the price to get into the event was supposed to go up by 6 dollars after midnight. Call me cheap (everyone does), but the entrance into Discotech In was already 24 dollars, and I was not about to get financially raped any more than I could help.

I don't know when we finally stumbled our way there, but we ended up waiting in a line that stretched around two sides of the block. Jesper the Danish roomy and I had to piss. I ran over to the biggest pillar I could find at what looked like a centuries old cathedral while he ran off into the darkness. He told me he found a tree because it's legal to urinate on trees in public, I guess...

We stood in gale force winds and teasing rain as we waited for the slow conveyor belt of varying drunkenness move to the entrance. Homeless men paced the stretch of the line, collecting cans and bottles that they can redeem at a supermarket for around twenty cents each. A guy from Montreal stood in front of us in line and showed us a breath-alyzer he takes with him whenever he goes out. Donna tried it and blew a .43, then the guy showed her how to use it correctly. More like .043.

I tried to talk to the bouncer when we got to the door. I noticed he was wearing a brand of jacket (Canadian Goose?) that was popular in Copenhagen. I pointed to the oversized emblem, "I like your jacket. What kind is it?" Jesper pulled me into the door before I could get a response and warned me, "Don't talk to the bouncers."

"OK." We got thought the entrance after midnight, but because we volunteered to the front of the line when someone asked for all students, we got charged the original entrance fee. Lucky thing, because coat check was 30 kroner and that was all I had left. A coat on that dance floor? Death sentence. The place was so crowded I had to modify my usually inappropriately flamboyant dancing because a girl complained to me in broken English that I was hitting her with her elbow. Fog machines went off throughout the night in conjunction with sensory assaulting strobe lights every time the DJ decided to loop a song for less than a second. It was a great way to get strangers blindly dancing with each other, but it added a humidity that made the rain soaked patrons even sloppier.

There was free wind, beer, and a curious mix of wine and soda they called champagne. I was sloshed when I got there from the five gin and tonics I had downed before leaving, but the people there were really drunk. The girls went to the bathroom immediately after checking in their coats and Jesper and I waited by the door. A guy walking towards the men's bathroom swooped his head down to the floor like a receiver dropping for a low pass and let out an epic splooge of chunky yellow vomit. He continued to the bathroom as if vomiting was something he often did while walking. I couldn't help but laugh as he silently walked past. It got even better when a guy, not thirty second after, stepped in it. He wouldn't have noticed had I not laughed loudly as his Adidas sneaker left a streak in the muck. He checked is foot angrily and kick what was loose on his shoe at me, leaving specks of vomit all over my pants and shirt.

I didn't react until he quickly turned down the stair. When he was out of sight my passive alpha male instinct came in and I described lustily to Jesper what I wanted to do with the overweight piece of shit who got vomit all over me. "Don't mess with him, you'll get your ass kicked." Fuck you Jesper...

I danced around feverishly until all of my roommates had been gone for more than an hour. I was ready to collapse before I even made it to the Metro station. I've never stayed out until five in the morning before, and it was a hell of a trip being that drunk and tired at the same time. All I could think about was sleep and how badly I wanted salty food.

When I got home I absently prepared to make spaghetti with meat sauce even as I was fighting back yawns and subtle but nagging nausea. After half an hour of torturous cooking, I ate the noodles in the pot, realizing that I was not actually hungry at that point. When I finished I tried to go to bed, but my stomach was too rowdy for me to fall asleep. Not willing to walk the extra ten feet to the bathroom, I stepped out to the balcony and shoved a finger down my throat. I think I hit nearly every floor below me with the barrage of badly chewed pasta. Sleep came easy after that.

It's A Long Story

Last night I went to my first bar crawl. Well, I tried to. The university organized it as a sort of get-to-know-each-other activity for the beginning of the semester. I was a bit apprehensive about going because I was planning on going alone, but I figured there would be many people in the same situation who probably aren't half as charismatic as me.

My new Irish roommate and her best Irish friend were also planning on going out, and when I told them about the bar crawl they wanted to join. So, I finished a bottle of wine as they each nursed their own bottles of Smirnoff. The crawl was scheduled to start half past seven. By the time the girls got changed and we were out the door it was eight o'clock. We had some trouble with the metro (the machines only accept coins and cards) which ate up a little more time. Ultimately we made it to the Buddha Bar at 8:30. I had hopes that the group would stick around for maybe half an hour at the bar. By the time we got there the only customers were some middle-aged alcoholics who had already forgotten the big group of international students that had stampeded through the bar.

We ordered a couple of insanely expensive drinks and stuck around at the Buddha Bar for long enough to get bored with a game of Ten Fingers (or "Never Have I Ever" depending on your persuasion). We made a halfhearted attempt to relocate the bar crawl posse, but we had no idea where they were going. The obese bartender claimed that the group of university students made no mention of their next destination. Eventually our meandering route lead us to the biggest pedestrian street in town, Stroget. Since it was a Monday night, the majority of the stretch of brick road resembled the abandoned streets of a zombie apocalypse.

We happened upon a bar that lured us in with a guitarist who played Eric Clampton covers. I had a good time there. The singer appreciated my yelling enough for me to stay content, but my Irish roommate quickly became the object of lust for a man with graying black hair and a bulbous nose shaped like a flat balloon. Before we left I managed to coax balloon nose and his friend to draw doodles in my notebook.

Some more aimless walking ended at a bar filled with a bar tender and a small group of Turks having a drink. Orla, the Irish roomy, complained loudly about our situation. A Turk with a shaved head wearing a bright Adidas track jacket put out his cigarette and got up from the group. "I will show you good place. This place is no good for Mondays." He was right about that.

Usually when a guy offers to escort a group primarily composed of girls, I see only carnal intentions at work. I was no less cynical in this situation, and figured he was expecting at least a grateful hand job in the bathroom once we got to his recommended bar. I should have given the guy more credit, because he just dropped us off at the door and told us to have a good night with a smile that made me feel like I was in The Truman Show. We followed him to another live music bar called Drop Inn Musik Cafe.

The inside was decorated with many bronze sculptures and the wall were covered with black lithographs of European faces. Next to the bar was a stage no higher than a wine glass from crowd level. There were almost as many performers as there were patrons that night, but I loved it nonetheless. The music was all covers, which is usually not my thing, but the whole time I watched I was imagining myself drinking in a dive bar with Tom Waits in a stool with a guitar. The reality of the situation was far less gritty, but satisfying.

After the last performance ended and my two companions started chatting up guys at the bar. I was content with staring at the last singer as she packed up her guitar. She was one of those Danish girls I had been fantasizing about since I applied for the program in Copenhagen. She was as skinny as a runway model and had skin as perfect as a Greek sculpture. I managed to get in a line saying how good of a job she did, which naturally led to me fucking her in the bathroom until the bar closed. Of course, what I mean by that is it led to me going across the street to buy a pack of cigarettes at 7-Eleven.

As I walked back to Drop Inn a homeless man pushing a cart filled with two cases of beer asked me for a cigarette. He snorted loudly as he growled out the syllables. His request wasn't so charming, but he had a black dot painted on the tip of his nose that I just couldn't say no to. He was dressed like a neanderthal, wearing four different mismatched jackets. I guess I would dress that way too if I was trying to avoid dying of exposure on an island in Scandinavia.

We talked, or I tried to get him to talk, as we smoked together until the girls I came with came outside and introduced themselves to him. His mood shot up at the sight of them and immediately became deaf to anything I said after. I contented myself with standing with a group of Swiss vacationers as they made fun of America and the girls as they lead on the black-nosed hobo.

The hobo gave out beers to the girls, and began dancing flamboyantly in the street with my roommate. The comic dance routine transformed into the homeless man picking up Orla and setting her down. It culminated in a grand drunken hug that toppled the man to the ground as Orla locked her arms around his back. I winced as his entire mass smashed Orla's arms into the brick road. She got up in a fuss and we went into the bar together to take a damage assessment. We decided it wasn't broken and went outside to find the homeless man has completely disappeared, beer bottles and all.