Once again it is time to seal another diary, and so it is with an extra dash of sentimentality that I do so, for in 2008 the Danish capital that I have called home will be a memory.

In truth I will be saying goodbye to Vesterbro - a neighbourhood that runs along the west of the city, between the train station and its junkie/prostitute collective all the way to the industrial Carlsberg Brewery and the neighbourhood of Valby.

Vesterbro is also sandwiched between the more bourgeois commune of Fredriksberg (the town within the city) and the train tracks, across from which lies the small island of Christianshavn.

Of course I never befriended my Danish neighbours and I raise my glass to that - neighbours who mind their own business are friends of mine. There's a guy beneath me with a nose ring and dreads, a couple in the attic who party a lot and late, and the next-door crew who sometimes borrow bicarbonate of soda; all Danes, all comfortable strangers.

Yet Vesterbro is an ethnically diverse part of Copenhagen (albeit short of one nation now that Miss Malta 1989 is leaving the block). And with this diversity comes variety - Vesterbro's got everything and most of it happens around the street called Istedgade: For 90 Dkk you can get your hair cut by the Iranian charmer whose birds sing in the back of his peppermint green salon; for the rather hefty fee of 250Dkk you can have half an hour of Thai massage, which involves having a small woman break dancing on your back; at Ricco's you can get your "fair-trade" ground coffee at Bang & Jensen's café you get all day free internet service, filter coffee refill and bright faces; at Radisen, the Turkish greengrocer, you get sweet carrots, fresh herbs and firm potatoes, at Discount Ost the doctor and his Polish wife will slice up prosciutto crudo and pack six farm eggs into a cardboard box for you; Sara and Lea will make oversized sweatshirts for you; Thai Thai take-away will fix you up a dagens menu of red curry and sticky rice for 45Dkk; Pizzeria Benjamin also have homemade bread and cannelloni (you listen to Eros while you wait); the antique shops spill onto the street, luring you in so you always walk out with a trinket ornament or chair; Vega club has been a place to dance and listen to bands such as Fiery Furnaces and Gogol Bordello; and then there are the bodegas - smoke-filled no nonsense bars for men with no teeth and women with 'taches, not to mention Christin's ceramic window, Koh-i-noor's one-off exhibitions and the scallops at the fishmonger who only opens on Friday and Saturday.

In Vesterbro you can eat Vietnamese or Korean BBQ, you can catch an art film and a hot chocolate at Vester Vovvov cinema, you can buy second-hand boots and dresses, original pieces by local designers, curry powder and poppadoms, old books about Greenland, new clothes at Donn Ya Doll, you can eat with the Danes at the splendid Cofoco restaurant, eat with the new mum brigade on sunny afternoons in Halmtorvet, listen to records at Muchachos, take tea in a pink room on Skydebanegade, chow down a late night shawarma at Kebabistan, then grab an early morning wienerbrød (that's what you call a Danish pastry in Denmark) and coffee in Enghave plads... farewell Vesterbro, farewell.

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