on a side note

i was biking to amager friday night and they lifted the middle of the bridge i was on to let a boat through, and it was really pretty with the lights across the river (sometimes i find the lights at night in copenhagen kind of scary, because there aren't enough of them to see by so they look sort of disembodied and imposing, and they're ususally ugly company logos . . . but anyway) and of course everyone kept one foot on their bike pedals even though we obviously weren't moving for a while, and i was sad about leaving for a month and leaving in general. i was looking at guidebooks for london and thinking about how big it is and it kind of scared me. i'm annoyed that i'll have to take public transportation from one part of a city to another. i've kind of gotten used to living in a small place.

my parents came to visit last week. i had midterms and a cold, so i didn't do much sightseeing with them, but it was nice to show them around a little. they had dinner with my roommate's family, which didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. my mother only asked my roommate's boyfriend to repeat his name three times. we also went to the royal danish theater to see a ballet (manon) and the jazz house to see the bad plus. danish people almost always clap in unison. sometimes it's because they want an encore, but then the encore happens and they keep doing it. it's kind of disconcerting. i ate (and drank!) at restaurants for pretty much the first time ever. my parents visited my sister in rome last year, and there were a lot of comments along the lines of "italy is so much warmer this time of year" and "wine in italy was so cheap," "an expresso in italy is never more than a euro," and "you can eat out in italy every night and they just keep bringing you food, and it isn't weird cold fish." but they did like copenhagen.

this past week has been fastelavn, a danish carnival type holiday. they had a party at our school last weekend where you hit big wooden barrels with a bat until candy came out. then you kept hitting them until they were completely destroyed. the game has gone on since medieval times, except back then, instead of candy there was a live cat inside. you only hit the barrel until the cat got free. i think. you also used to fast (hence the name), but somehow that's evolved into dressing up and eating a lot. last night i went to a costume fastelavn party at the university of copenhagen. danish college students have an almost unhealthy love for foozball. as usual, they asked me how i could handle coming from a city like new york to a city like copenhagen. most danish people i've met who have been to new york are kind of afraid of it, and this fear always revolves around some bad experience in the port authority. i try to explain that even i am afraid of the port authority.

actually, it's common to send your children to the u.s. for a year in between junior high and high school. my roommate's younger brother is thinking about it. he doesn't want to go somewhere "too religious" but he thinks it "might be great," which is one of those phraseologies that makes me wish english was my second language.

land of the midnight sun

this weekend i met my parents at the airport to go skiing in norway. norway is a pretty country. mountains, perfect pine trees, little red houses. like those christmas specials with the pointy-nosed children. that's about all there is to say about it. then again, i didn't go to oslo. but i'm surprised someone as twisted as munch comes from a country where everyone is so sedate. disturbingly sedate. i would go back, if only because there's a town called hell. and i didn't see any fjords. i missed the oscars.

my mother pointed out that scandinavian food is a "bad parody of american food from the 1950s." while i think scandinavian food probably came first, i see what she means. at our hotel in lillehammer there was a weird gelatin with eggs and shrimp suspended in it. also scalloped potatoes, creamed spinach, liver and onions, and at least six kinds of smoked salmon. i think i accidentally ate liver. maybe that emboldened me, because today i finally caved and bought sliced ham at the supermarket.

my plane back to copenhagen was delayed two hours, so i sat with an insanely expensive norweigan airport beer and read the lonely planet guide to eastern europe. drinking alone in airports is surprisingly satisfying. you're stranded there, alone, wondering what labor disputes well-paid scandinavian baggage handlers could possibly get themselves into, and then there are all these other people sitting alone drinking. mostly wearing suits, which makes it funnier.

my spring break plan is finally coming together. i doubt anyone else cares about this, but i've spent days toggling between the polish, czech, and lithuanian national railways websites (least helpful award: lithuania) and i want to show off. from prague i'm going to take a train to vilnius, find my great-great grandparents, drink mead in a converted nuclear fallout shelter and go to stalin world. then i'll take a bus to riga and drink balsam with british stag partiers. then i'll fly to barcelona and see the sun for the first time in months before heading up to iceland, then london. no, i'm exagerrating. there's sunlight almost every day in copenhagen. it just only lasts an hour. still, i'm happy to be back.