Hilsen fra Danmark

[originally posted Wednesday 5 April 2000]

Hi Everyone!

It's been almost a week now since I left for Denmark, so I thought maybe I'd try sending you all an e-mail. Still haven't completely recovered from my 7 hour flight across 9 time zones. My flight was oversold, so naturally I volunteered to fly later in exchange for $800 in SAS travel vouchers, but as it turned out they didn't need my seat after all. I did manage to get a free upgrade to Business Class out of the deal though, simply for being a good citizen. So the flight was a lot more comfortable than it might have otherwise been wedged into a center seat in coach, although with all the free drinks and food and movies I was offered, I didn't get as much sleep as I might have otherwise either, and thus arrived in Copenhagen slightly less rested (and more "dehydrated") than I'd hoped. Picked "The 13th Warrior" as my personal in-flight movie: it's an adaptation of an early Michael Creighton novel "Eaters of the Dead" which plagiarizes an actual Viking-era historical document describing the adventures of a 10th or 11th century Arabian Moslem among the "Rus" (Swedes) who traded and raided along the Volga river, and then combines it with the Beowulf epic and Creighton's own imaginative Sci-Fi plot twist that "the Wendel" (Grendel) were actually a tribe of surviving Ice Age Neanderthals/cannibals who raided the Vikings for/as food! Whatever. I'd been curious about this movie for a long time, having read both the novel and the sources which inspired it some time ago, but I wasn't about to spend good money to rent it, much less see it in a theater. Antonio Banderas played the culture-shocked Arabian poet, and all-in-all I thought it made for a pretty interesting introduction to my own sojourn among the descendants of the Vikings.

Copenhagen's International terminal looks like it has been recently remodeled into a huge, duty-free shopping mall (complete with a Danish version of Niketown), but the airport itself is actually much smaller than I expected: perhaps half the size of PDX, and considerably smaller than SeaTac. The domestic terminal (where I had to transfer to get my connection to Aalborg) is still waiting for its face-lift, and reminds me a lot of the airport in Midland, Texas. To get from the one terminal to the other I had to clear customs and take a shuttle-bus; fortunately, the line for non-EU passengers was considerably shorter than the other, and since my luggage was checked through all the way to Aalborg, I was able to breeze right through without any delay. As I went through Passport Control the official in the window looked at my name, and then grinning launched into a long stream of loud, rapid Danish just to see my confused reaction, which I'm certain was not a disappointment to him. >>Jeg taler kun en smulle Dansk<< I mumbled, and was waved right through.

The flight to Aalborg was open seating (like on Southwest Air), but since I didn't realize this beforehand I sat around in the gate area waiting for someone to show up and give me a seat assignment, and as a result was one of the last persons to get on the plane. We spent almost as much time on the ground waiting for permission to take off as we did in the air, but the entire trip from the time I boarded the airplane to the time I stepped off again was only about an hour. The nice thing about sitting in the back of the plane is that they let you disembark through the rear door, since the terminal in Aalborg has only one "gate" and it doesn't include a jet-way. The bad news was that my luggage was still in Copenhagen, and by the time I'd figured this out, I'd missed the bus into Aalborg Centre. The bus is timed to match the flight arrivals, so I had to wait another hour for the next one. The problem with my bag turned out to be that it had been coded to the wrong flight back in Portland, so it actually arrived safely just a few hours later, and was delivered by taxi to my apartment. Having already had some experience recently with lost luggage in NYC last Christmas, I was able to deal with the entire situation very calmly.

My apartment is only a few blocks east of the bus and train stations, so the address was very easy to find. It was also a little discouraging at first, since it is located in an older building that is being partially gutted and remodeled at the moment, so the first view from the street is of a muddy construction site and an old, apparently abandoned brick structure with most of the windows broken out. My apartment is in the rear section of the building, located away from the street. That section has already been remodeled and is actually quite pleasant, although the apartment itself is tiny. "Efficiency" describes it perfectly: one modest room with a kitchenette on one end and a window on the other, a table, some chairs, and a cleverly-designed couch that quickly converts into a bed about the size of a quarter-berth. There's a small closet next to the door, and a small bathroom next to that with an equally-ingenious compact shower that I am growing to love. But I probably wouldn't have been about to find it at all in the first place if my next-door-neighbor Tatiana (another visiting PhD student, from Moscow) hadn't wandered out the door in search of me, since she'd been told I'd be arriving that day and had volunteered to help me get oriented. She had my keys and my orientation packet, and after I'd taken the time to straighten out my luggage situations, we took a quick walking tour of the "Gamle By" or Old Town, which is just north of where I live. Aalborg is historically an old Viking settlement "strategically situated at the narrowest point of the Limfjord" (as one of my guidebooks so succinctly puts it), which allowed them easy access to both the Baltic and the North Sea. All that is really left from the Viking era is an old burial ground north of the fjord; I live on the south side, which still has plenty of interesting pre-modern buildings, including two very cool churches (one of which dates back to the 12th century). Lots of it has also been blocked off from traffic and turned into a pedestrian mall, so it is all very compact and easy to get around in by foot.

Saturday I did a little more exploring, and discovered the local McDonalds, Burger King, and Pizza Hut, but (unfortunately) no Starbucks (which was the one American chain I would have LIKED to find!). I also did a little shopping for groceries, had the usual difficulty figuring out the money, and met my first real Dane who didn't speak any English: an elderly woman out pushing her equally-elderly dachshund in a baby carriage. I asked her >>Er Hund venlig<< and when she nodded , I let him give my hand a little sniff before I gave him a pet. No language barrier there! Sunday I attended services at Vor Frue Kirke (Our Lady Church) and received communion in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran State Church. The liturgy was fairly easy to follow, and since the Scripture lessons were printed in the Order of Service, I could figure those out as well: the passage from Exodus on Manna in the Wilderness, and the "Jeg er Livets Brod" ("I am the Bread of Life") pericope from the Gospel of John. Didn't understand a word of the sermon (which I suppose is an important lesson in humility for a preacher), although I was able to make up a pretty interesting one of my own in my head. The congregation in this beautiful old building numbered fewer than 40, almost all of them (with the exception of a young family who had brought their infant to be christened) white-haired.



Monday Tatiana showed me how to catch the bus to the University, and I got to meet some of the other people in the department here, including the departmental secretary Malene, who speaks a delightfully-accented British English and who set me up with my (shared) office and a computer account, a library card, keys and an after-hours doorpass, etc. I also got my first taste of smørrebrod at the Student canteen, which was even better than I had expected, and (I learned) is properly eaten with a knife and fork. Tuesday I was supposed to present my paper, but someone mercifully decided out of compassion for my anticipated jet-lag to postpone it until sometime in May, so Tatiana presented her paper instead. My office-mate is named Matilde and comes form Germany, so you can see we are quite an international group here. Everyone seems to speak fluent English along with their native language, as well as Danish much better than I can, so I really do feel like the dunce of the class a lot of the time. Probably another important lesson in humility.

My greatest linguistic challenge so far came when I tried to purchase my monthly bus pass. Was sent away the first time because I need to have a spare passport photo (and didn't have one), then once I had figured out how to acquire one from an automatic machine at the railway station, it took two more trips before I was able to figure out the kind of pass that I wanted, which turned out to be not the pass I should have purchased after all. So it's going to cost me an extra $20 more than it should have to ride the bus for two months here, but what the hell -- I left at least that much "value" on the bumper of my car because I couldn't scrape off the UO parking sticker in order to receive a spring quarter rebate. The bank, the post office, buying my telephone card, and signing up for the free "International Staff Club" (a special lounge in the Student Union building where one can play pool and supposedly watch CNN) were all relatively easy by comparison.

After my last encounter with the clerk at the bus terminal, I went back to the small pub around the corner from my apartment (the kind of place frequented by the working class Danes who are gutting the other wing of my building, rather than University students), and managed to order >>en grøn Tuborg Øl<< for 13 kr (about $1.85). As I sat there in this crowded, smoke-filled neighborhood tavern sipping my beer, I notice a presence between my feet: it was the bartender's terrier, who apparently figured out that since I was sitting alone I was probably a pretty good candidate for handing out some "free pets," and maybe even a treat. She got her reward, and I got mine...and for the first time since arriving here, that night I was finally able to sleep through until morning.

Today the sun at last is shining for the first time since I arrived here, and there are some very interesting birds (I think they are Magpies) outside my office window, and it is simply too nice a day to squander any more of it in front of a computer screen. I hope you all have enjoyed this letter; I'll try to write more as the opportunity arises, and look forward to hearing from you as well. Take care, do good work, and keep in touch (to quote Garrison Keillor.

Ciao! (for now)

Tim



My apartment building in Aalborg, Jyllandsgade 21