One thing after another
Sorry, updates have been so spotty but so has time and access to the Internet.
I'm now in Göteborg, which is known in the English-speaking world, as Gothenburg. Personally, I prefer the original version but it's so hard to pronounce. It sounds like "you-ti-burgie" and you say it as if you're the Swedish chef. Göteborg is known for being Sweden's second city, the home of Volvo and Ericsson (the cell phone maker) and the biggest indoor mall in Scandinavia. It's not that big but they all have outdoor malls here.
Tomorrow I'm in Oslo. I'd write more but there's a 15 minute limit on the free Internet at this hostel and all the machines are broken save the one I'm on. So there's a bit of pressure. Later.
In Stockholm
Hi readers, the last time I wrote, I was in København but now I'm about to leave Stockholm for
Göteborg or Gothenburg as we English-speakers say it.
This trip is becoming a whirlwind tour by necessity because I got so greedy in my scheduling. Basically, I spend a day on the train and two nights and a day in each city before moving on. But I don't mind because it was always meant to be a recon trip before the really big Scandinavian visit down the road.
The confusion of the first couple of days have passed and I think I've finally gotten into the rhythm of backpacking. Language isn't the problem it was because, outside of reading a menu, I don't really need to understand exactly what the signs say any more. The procedure for doing things like making a train reservation or finding a map are the same here as it was in Copenhagen. (For some reason, I've never seen maps sold anywhere. I have to go to the tourist bureau for them.)
The other part of finding my rhythm involves somewhat detailed planning, the sort of thing that my mom does that drives me a little batty. Since I'm only spending 36 hours or so in each city, it's the only way to make the best use of my time. Yesterday, I made a list of things I thought I could see in one day and drew a little map of Stockholm to decide the order in which I'd do those things. It worked like a charm.
In something like eight hours, I managed to squeeze in a walking tour of the old city, the changing of the royal guards, finding a great view point of the city for a photo, a stop at a nice restaurant with traditional Swedish dishes, a walking tour of the harbor, the Vasa ship museum and a stop at a little farmer's market for fish soup. I would've done more but I only got three hours of sleep the night before having drank too much coffee.
Anyway, I'm losing patience for blogging since there's so much planning and traveling to do at the moment (It's 8 a.m. and my train leaves in two hours.). I'll leave you with some photos, which are available on my
Flickr Web site, as usual. Some of them are a little dark because the LCD screen on my camera makes everything look brighter.
Actually, you'll have to see the pictures at my
work blog. Blogger's being an ass and won't display my photos.
It's all Dansk to me
I thought traveling in Denmark would be a cinch because everybody here speaks English. They do, but a lot of traveling involves reading signs and following directions, which, in this case is written in Danish.
How can a Germanic language be so incomprehensible? At least with French, Spanish and Italian, I could guess the meaning of words but Danish only has a few grammatical and basic vocabulary terms in common with English, or it seems that way.
Here's a few examples of how the two are alike:
- "Fra" and "til" means "from" and "to" when used with dates.
- "Hej" is pronounced "hey" and serves roughly the same function in greeting people.
- "Tak" means "thanks" and sound a little like it, too.
- "Ja" is pronounced "ya" and means "ya," well, "yes."
But that's about it. At least with the Romance languages, you can guess more meaningful vocabulary terms. If you see "zupa de pesce" or hear a waiter say it, it's not that hard to conclude correctly that "zupa" is "soup" and "pesce" means "fish" or "piscine." I can't even read a can of soup at the Danish supermarket. It could be anything in there. Fish balls, chicken nuggets, matzo balls, who knows? I ran across a sign in front of somebody's garage this morning and it looked like it could've been poetry or a declaration of love or "don't block my driveway, assclown."
I blame Bill the Badass, which is what William the Conqueror would've been known had he been alive today. Old English and the Scandinavian languages used to be closer until Bill showed up with his army of, ironically enough, French-speaking Scandinavians and changed the English language by fire and the sword.
In the way that few native English speakers can speak Danish, all Danes speak English and very well. Oddly enough, most Danes I've spoken with have American accents and not British despite the proximity. As I've mentioned elsewhere, some Finns told a friend of mine that Scandinavian TV does not dub American movies and, consequently, that's how a lot of Scandinavians learned their accent.
Their use of the language is pretty clever, too, judging by the store signs I've seen. One is called "Kitsch Bitch," which I assume is a playful way to refer to their customers. Yeah, it looked like kitsch for women. Another is called "Golddigger" and if I were a golddigger, that's what I'd wear. And best of all, the Carlsberg beer advertising on Hans Christen Andersen Boulevard: "Probably the best beer in town." Who but inferiority-complex ridden Scandinavians could come up with that??
Buns of steel and guys in fur hats
The people in this town must have buns of steel and thighs of
aggregated diamond nanorods judging by the way they ride their bicycles. I had a chance to ride with them this morning having rented my own from the hostel. All day long, there were girls in high heels and old people racing by effortlessly. It's like they did this everyday.
Anyway, the damage to the ego was not grave. Bicycling in København was too much fun.
This is a town that's done darn near everything it can to accomodate bicyclists. Nearly every street has a bike lane so there's riders need not dodge pedestrians nor fear cars. There are bike racks everywhere. On the stairs leading up from an underpass to the bridge above, I even found a little ramp on the side to make it easier for bicyclists to walk their bike up.
Here, bicycles are not simply some sort of recreational vehicle for which there are few traffic rules. Cars and trucks in København recognize bicycles as a normal part of the traffic flow. On the other hand, this radical equality means bicycles and cars are equal so cars don't automatically yield. This equality also extends to traffic rules. Here, turning on a red is illegal, even for bicycles. I'm assuming that's the case anyway because nearly all the riders I saw waited for a green to turn. Still, like other big city denizens, some riders skirted or broke the law when it proved convenient and safe, such as riding the wrong way down a one way alley.
Anyway, having a bicycle was infinitely better than waiting for the bus or walking. I managed to get to the train station to make a reservation, consult the tourism bureau, check out a couple of churches, stop at the Danish Design Center, see the changing of the guard at the queen's residence, visit the little mermaid, check out København's
star fort, hang out on the
Nyhavn docks with a beer in one hand and a pop in another and have dinner in the
old town — all in one day.
The changing of the guard was an amusing event, mostly because the guards were so serious and the tourists kept threatening to ruin their little show.
The
Danish guards looked a little like the Queen of England's bearskin wearing guards, except they dress in navy jackets, sky-blue pants and what appears to be fully-loaded M-16s or M-14s (I don't know much about guns but the ammo clip was in the guns) but they weren't as stoic as the Brits. I always thought they were supposed to ignore tourists but they kept having to stop and yell at dumbass tourists. (I was one of them, trying to park my bike by the palace wall.)
Anyway, this was before the cops came out. I think this is a regular thing for these guys because the mob of tourists inevitably get in the way of the guards who walk a complicated route to relieve their colleagues at four different wings of the palace. There were so many tourists milling about that I bet we could've rushed the guards and taken the palace if we wanted. But all we wanted were pictures of guys wearing fur hats in 65 degree weather.
Wanna see my "ø" face?
It's been five airports, three airlines, three lousy airline meals and 18 hours, but I've arrived in København, Danmarks. That's Copenhagen, Denmark to you, but I'm enjoying this "ø" key on the keyboard. That rocks.
Much in the way that my trip didn't.
It's should've been four airports, three airlines and 13 hours, but I got stuck at a second security screening in Newark, N.J., missed my flight to København and diverted to Amsterdam where I didn't have any time at all to go downtown to smoke dope as my friends suggested.
By the time I got to København, though, I might as well have been smoking dope. I was in such a zombie haze that it took half an hour to figure out how to take the train downtown — all the train schedules were in Danish and the guy at the ticket office gave weird directions for taking the bus — and an hour to figure out where that the hostel really
is a five minute walk from the train station.
My temporary roomates are a bunch of East European types who apparently speak no English but do spend a lot, and I mean
a lot, of time speaking their own. (What are you guys? Women? Shut up! Haha. Sorry ladies. That was a joke. It's been a while since I slept.)
Since I can sleep at 5 p.m. and wake up in the middle of the night, I decided to scout around for a few hours. København is remarkably compact with everything a tourist might want to see within about a mile of the hostel. And there are a lot of tourists because I keep hearing American voices in the crowd. That's odd. I thought all the Americans were in London, Paris and Amsterdam (for the dope). Maybe they're here for
the women, who are svelte and fresh-faced from riding their bicycles all over town. There's a special bike lane on all the streets here so everyone rides. The parking lots are jam-packed with bicycles not cars.
Tomorrow, I'll go see the queen, or her palace anyway, and maybe some viking ships.
Now for a good snooze.
