thank you mr. bee

i got a bicycle. after a week of ownership, i can bike in snow, in the dark, kind of drunk, wearing heels. i cannot yet simultaneously smoke a cigarette, talk on my cellphone, and carry small children on my bike, but i expect to get there in a couple of months. i got it at police auction where, if i'd understood the description, i probably would have learned that it was the shittiest bike ever made. but it rolls and everything. just not very fast, which is a problem in a country where bike traffic is faster and scarier than car traffic. at about 4:30 in the morning this saturday, in a pitchdark tunnel about a foot wide and covered in ice, a guy tried to pass me.

anyway. friday night my european politics professor, rasmus, took us to a nightclub that he partially owns. it used to be the labor party headquarters, and they still meet there sometimes. prince has played there twice. copenhagen continues to be the coolest place on earth in almost every possible way. rasmus also bought all of us a drink. so did my russian lit professor when he took us to a student bar thursday night. why don't u.s. professors do this? on the other hand, danish music seems pretty awful. friday night was danish hiphop; saturday night was danish "alternative heavy metal," which i think is emo music you can headbang to. and people did. even in copenhagen, some people are stuck in the eighties. "i realized they were people too about a week and a half ago," my friend willy said, and i laughed but i don't think i've totally reached that point yet. everyone in denmark is so stylish and coordinated and perfect that it's like looking at pictures in a magazine. it doesn't help that i never understand what they're saying.

my roommate's family came home from cuba. i miss having time alone in the house, but they're great. they have about ten children that live there once in a while; i think it's sort of like step by step, with multiple divorces. last week we all watched america's next top model, and felix said, "her lips are so big, it's so ugly" and sophie said "maybe she got plastic surgery" and i thought, i want these people to adopt me. and they do keep giving me food, which is nice, because grocery shopping in denmark is incredibly depressing--everything is gross, expensive, or both. last night they had a "cuba night," where we drank mojitos, listened to salsa music and looked at the pictures from their trip. did i mention that i love them?

the only thing not great about denmark is the mohammed cartoon scandal . . . one of my professors said that this is the scariest time for denmark since world war II, which is insane. danish foreign policy is generally to not offend anyone ever and go unnoticed, so they're really surprised to be making international news. but there's a huge snowstorm right now, so it would be hard to set anything on fire here. i hope.