Two travelers, four days, and numerous adventures

My last post left you at the arrivals gate of the Copenhagen airport so, as you might imagine, this post will be almost entirely occupied with the adventures of a pair of young American women in Denmark for a long weekend. In my defense, it's holiday season here- everyone disappears to summer houses (in this country or another) or elsewhere for 2-3 weeks, including several of my coworkers, so I took off most of Monday and Tuesday to join Jenny for our Danish adventures. 
[Plug: Though this post thus does not include news of my internship at Sensus, must keep in mind that my grant from Dickinson, which covered my travel expenses and a fair bit of living expenses while here, still made this little vaca. possible by getting me here.]

Back to adventures with Jenny, whose mini vaca. was wedged between 4 weeks of archaeology field work in Tuscany and her return to the US and our hometown in good ol' northwestern Penna.. Really, though, it can be quickly summarized: I retrieved her form the airport on Saturday and we made a vague plan for the next few days, our train rides often spent with her reading my Lonely Planet guidebooks (for both Denmark and Copenhagen) and me reading David Grossman. Weather forecast suggested Tuesday as the nicest day and thus best for exploring Copenhagen, so Sunday was designated for Roskilde and the Viking Ship Museum, then Monday for Helsingør, Kronborg Castle, and taking the ferry over to Helsingborg for a few hours. The plan worked out surprisingly well, especially given our similar trends towards travel misadventures, and we spent Tuesday night at a hostel in downtown CPH so as to get her to the airport on time for an 8:30am flight out on Wednesday.

A few highlights: Jenny temporarily discarding her "no eating organs" rule in order to try the ever-popular "liverpostei" on smørrebrød but making up for it in generous quantities of pastries, flødebolle, Toblerone, gelato, etc. Being approached by two Afghani men (who first guessed us to be British which we, admittedly, took as a compliment) while we talked and laughed our way through another train ride, and the next day approached by a drunk older Danish man who Jenny scared off with what we dubbed her "Eastern European look." Wandering Hamlet's beach outside of Kronborg Castle, watching fishermen and enjoying the sea breeze while Jenny indulged her geologist tendencies and combed the rocks. And, ultimately, exchanging our gelato and canal-side seats in Nyhavn for a table outside a bar near the hostel, where we followed the Danish tradition of lackadaisically sitting around and chatting with a drink in hand.

Now that Jenny has safely returned to the shores of Lake Erie, you find me enjoying a bottle of quality Tuscan wine, a parting gift from my weekend travel buddy, and finishing up Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express before returning to Grossman's latest, To the End of the Land. [My tactic: always carry something to read, but when possible have various options for various moods. Both are fantastic.] In Patagonia and nearing the end of his travels, Theroux writes, 
"If one of the objects of travel was to give yourself the explorer's thrill that you were alone, that after fifteen or twenty thousand miles you had outrun everyone else and were embarked on a solitary mission of discovery in a remote place, then I had accomplished the traveler's dream. ... Alone, alone: it was like proof of my success. I had had to travel very far to arrive at this solitary condition."
As I read this, I looked around my otherwise empty room and chuckled to myself. I haven't traveled to Argentina (yet), but plenty of things have been discovered in the world - large and small, tangible and intangible - without necessitating a trip into Patagonia, as I know Theroux would agree. 


Just over two weeks to go in Denmark, then off to Berlin and Munich for eight days, then back to the US. We shall see what happens next, eh?

*For a more complete album of Denmark adventures thus far, feel free to check here.