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