Lest we forget, this is a small city. It is full of promising neighbourhoods, the images and the texts that invite you there loom large in the imagination. Then you arrive only to find that the energy you seek is concentrated in a few interconnected streets with a focal point, a café, a bar, a square, or a waterfront, and in this case, the harbour pool.

Ignorant as ever, I found myself in the neighbourhood of Islands Brygge staring up and around in this new "village" (see New York for this kind of village), not quite sure what to think, trying not to think, wondering why I hadn't been here before, soaking it all up as the village hummed in the sunshine (all is fine in the sunshine).

Island, for Iceland, Brygge, meaning dock, or quay, Islands Brygge was built on reclaimed land. Icelandic ships were discovered in the seabed below, hence the name Iceland Quay. Well, now I have to remember to pronounce the 's' in Island. Now there are images of Icelandic ships sinking beneath the waves.

The red brick apartment blocks remind me of side streets in Kensington, the façades are wrapped in rambling creepers, behind there are hints of gardens, in the basement apartments of each block there are cafés, boutiques, curios, ceramics, around another corner, a deli, a hub of local design products, a boutique with designer in situ, an Italian deli with fresh bread, hot potato pizza and provolone piccante and pecorino sardo for sale by the slice.

So this is Islands Brygge, a very hip part of town across the water from my neighbourhood of Vesterbro. Perhaps it was Fisktorvet, the horrendous shopping complex, which stopped me from venturing any further, perhaps it was my ignorance, not knowing of the footbridge connecting Islands Brygge to my side of town. For months now I have been taking a bus via downtown to get to the island of Christianshavn. Perhaps it just takes six months to feel at home in a place, to understand how the city is connected (or disconnected). To feel it is time to walk around this neighbourhood across the water.

Islands Brygge has flourished and is much romanticised, silos have been converted into futuristic apartments, and this is where the zany Danes swim in the summertime in the clean, harbour water. Will it be hot enough for me to want to take my clothes off in the middle of the city and jump into the cold, green waters with the hoi polloi? Have I been too spoilt with soaring temperatures and clear, blue waters all my life? Is the lure of water strong enough to have me in there flailing around with the locals, a choking pond of frogs waiting to spawn?

I hear there are beaches further along the harbour, with cool cafés and cool deejays, I am filled with dread at the thought of hanging out on a fake beach with cool deejays. I had fallen in love with Islands Brygge because it seemed so laid back, but upon further inquiry it became clear that it will be a crowded, bodied summer place, ten giant steps from the Freetown of Christiania.

But no matter, this is coup de foudre and I want to move here, I want to sit on a waterfront balcony and monitor the crowds, so I slip in between the bodies for the first swim and the last swim in the Havnebade pool. Of course it happens, the six-month itch, the job, the apartment, the streets around the apartment, the same cookbook, the frozen dinners... yet I know that all will be easily forgotten with the first frozen swim in the frog pond on Islands Brygge, my new love.