Streetlife - SPRING TO MIND
The seasons are doing what they ought to! Like the dream child that every once in a while is born, a gentle spring has arrived, in the blink of a rimed winter eye, the skies opened up, the days grew long and golden light now warms front rooms and...
The seasons are doing what they ought to! Like the dream child that every once in a while is born, a gentle spring has arrived, in the blink of a rimed winter eye, the skies opened up, the days grew long and golden light now warms front rooms and kitchens everywhere. The evenings linger, sunlight trailing in the skies until about 8 p.m., by which time you walk back inside for some pickled herring, washed down with a tall, cool glass of øl, (Tuborg or Carlsberg, depending on your slant)... or a cheese sandwich if you're not crazy for fish in jars.
And with the spring so come the migrants, the restless souls and curious vagrants... the American artist is always the first one to visit me in a new city, and so quick as an Easter bunny he booked his Easyjet ticket and rolled into harbour with his buddy Tim, over from New York City, for five days of "conquer Copenhagen" Viking style.
Tim, the buddy, turned out to be quite a colourful character, and within a few hours there were Danish ladies fawning at our table and soon there was an invitation to dinner at their home the following day. Tim would sleep all day long and surface at about 6 p.m., ready to rock the streets of Copenhagen once again. Numbers were collected, e-mail addresses and kisses exchanged, tequilas slammed with toothless Swedes in the cheap bodegas, and from twilight zones to A-list artsy fashion clones we zigged and zagged until we were utterly exhausted and ready to say adieu.
After four days of nocturnal prowling it was time to take a day trip out of the city to rekindle the calm and rest the mind.
On the island of Zealand where Copenhagen is situated, there is a small fishing harbour called Gilleleje. Situated at the northernmost tip it was from here that the fishermen smuggled Jews to neutral Sweden during World War II. Nowadays, the village dozes quietly on the coast, awaiting the summer when the air will be filled once again with the sound of children laughing and swimming.
After riding on a rickety, red train via Hamlet's castle in Helsingør, we rolled into Gilleleje bustling with Danish folk - the local girls wearing tracksuits and denim miniskirts paired with fake Gucci and Louis Vuitton handbags, the city-rollers cruising by in their Audi convertibles and shiny, black Range Rovers, the fishermen oblivious to it all, unloading alien-looking fish into ice-filled red crates while we all looked on in a Sunday idle kind of way.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was a frequent visitor here, and there is a stone in the harbour town inscribed with a line taken out of his notebook - "what is truth but to live for an idea". In his early 20s, Kierkegaard was said to have retreated here in the summers of 1834 and 1835, tormented by personal doubt - what to do with one's life. While in Gilleleje he wrote: "It is a matter of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Divinity actually wants me to do; what counts is to find a truth, which is true to me, to find that idea for which I will live and die".
Happy to say that I wasn't plagued with any existential musings that sunny afternoon, just a mild niggling hunger for fish cakes and smoked fish and juicy prawns proffered by the robust fishwives in the smoke houses, quite content to listen to the secretive sea, to the cries of the hungry gulls circling overhead, enjoying the emptiness, when nothing springs to mind.
And with the spring so come the migrants, the restless souls and curious vagrants... the American artist is always the first one to visit me in a new city, and so quick as an Easter bunny he booked his Easyjet ticket and rolled into harbour with his buddy Tim, over from New York City, for five days of "conquer Copenhagen" Viking style.
Tim, the buddy, turned out to be quite a colourful character, and within a few hours there were Danish ladies fawning at our table and soon there was an invitation to dinner at their home the following day. Tim would sleep all day long and surface at about 6 p.m., ready to rock the streets of Copenhagen once again. Numbers were collected, e-mail addresses and kisses exchanged, tequilas slammed with toothless Swedes in the cheap bodegas, and from twilight zones to A-list artsy fashion clones we zigged and zagged until we were utterly exhausted and ready to say adieu.
After four days of nocturnal prowling it was time to take a day trip out of the city to rekindle the calm and rest the mind.
On the island of Zealand where Copenhagen is situated, there is a small fishing harbour called Gilleleje. Situated at the northernmost tip it was from here that the fishermen smuggled Jews to neutral Sweden during World War II. Nowadays, the village dozes quietly on the coast, awaiting the summer when the air will be filled once again with the sound of children laughing and swimming.
After riding on a rickety, red train via Hamlet's castle in Helsingør, we rolled into Gilleleje bustling with Danish folk - the local girls wearing tracksuits and denim miniskirts paired with fake Gucci and Louis Vuitton handbags, the city-rollers cruising by in their Audi convertibles and shiny, black Range Rovers, the fishermen oblivious to it all, unloading alien-looking fish into ice-filled red crates while we all looked on in a Sunday idle kind of way.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was a frequent visitor here, and there is a stone in the harbour town inscribed with a line taken out of his notebook - "what is truth but to live for an idea". In his early 20s, Kierkegaard was said to have retreated here in the summers of 1834 and 1835, tormented by personal doubt - what to do with one's life. While in Gilleleje he wrote: "It is a matter of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Divinity actually wants me to do; what counts is to find a truth, which is true to me, to find that idea for which I will live and die".
Happy to say that I wasn't plagued with any existential musings that sunny afternoon, just a mild niggling hunger for fish cakes and smoked fish and juicy prawns proffered by the robust fishwives in the smoke houses, quite content to listen to the secretive sea, to the cries of the hungry gulls circling overhead, enjoying the emptiness, when nothing springs to mind.