Lots of Love from København/Copenhagen

On my hitch hiking trip to the capital of DK.

I had collected enough money to visit the all famous capital of Denmark. Under enough money I mostly mean money to buy a entrance ticket to a festival and some beers. My next money will go to pay off dept from the trip.

So my adventure started on Friday the 1st of October. I packed had packed my stuff and made a wonderful giant blue sign with "E20" and "Copenhagen". I marched off to the right road and the weather was greeted me in its perfection, which is probably why I was picked up by a true Danish grandfather, maybe a little less smelly. I amused myself by sitting next to him in the sunshine and saying that my Danish is really bad over and over again, throwing in some awkward smiles. He took me 8 kilometers down the road, just to be picked up by a couple heading to Germany to buy 'cheap' beer (for me beer is only then cheap when it's free). After making to the next stop I managed to get a ride with the most colourful road worker I had ever met. Somewhere in the hitch hikers world there's an unwritten law to keep your mouth shut on sensitive subjects like race, immigrants, discrimination, religion etc. But as talking about the weather is probably reason for high suicides, so the decision to talk about immigrants just came very naturally. It always feels better to poke your head in the fire when it is advised not to do it. He soon revealed that he gets discriminated at least once a week for his dark skin, although he has lived in DK his whole life, speaks fluent Danish and has a Danish mother. That and other stories from people made me look at this well fare country in a whole new perspective. At some point I started to think, what if Danish people see only the word 'foreigner', not people behind it. The people who come here have their own groups and communities and there is no insight into each others cultures, or even if someone tries they get rejected as the natural way of things. Finally that leads to the fact that natives don't see the immigrants' culture, their families and the fact that they also have a life and roots in the same country and the same also applies for the immigrants, as they are being left out the same way. Not knowing causes fear and fear is hiding behind the word 'foreigner'.

No, now I have gone too far and too fast, first the explanation of the problem. These immigrants did not come at first because they needed to they were brought in by the Danish people themselves as work force. But after some time the need for them reduced and there was nothing to do with them. People who came had settled in and their children were already Danish, maybe they had even brought in their own families. Finally the Danish people ended up having lots of foreigners, but they weren't integrated so good, so they became the enemy. Then an extreme left racist party got into power, saying that the foreigners should be shipped out and given money to live on their own country. Media also hasn't been very innocent, provoking the problem as much as possible. Whenever there's a news about a crime, there are only two  ways it can have its introduction, either 'A young foreigner was caught' or 'A young man was caught', so you could always see who is in the wrong. I believe this is the biggest problem in DK, but I am also a foreigner here, so my view can be a little one sided.

Back to the truck driver. He told me a story of his brother staying in a prison in US for seven years, not making me feel a whole lot happier about the situation in world. Only after 3 hours we finally arrived in the South-Eastern part of the city called Valby, where he dropped me off. I jumped happily off an called my friend to pick me up. We spent the night cozily chatting and having a drink just to go out to a trance festival in another part of the city where her friend was working. The people there were very much out of place. It was filled with people that in my country would go to dancing clubs, get drunk, drive their BMW and make stupid jokes about getting drunk and throwing up on their neighbors lawn-mower. Girls in belts and men in tight fitting white T-shirts making obvious that they spent 50% of their time in the gym and other 50% drinking beer. As I waltzed in I felt immediately out of place, having on leggings and showing of my favorite little white socks with ethnic-stripes. The decorations were awesome, an the music was also what I happen to listen from time to time. The party was on two floors. On the lower floor you drank and ate all kinds of stuff, after that people headed up to dance and discover their preferences. I decided just to dance and enjoy myself and we left the place around 3 o'clock. The next day started off very successfully, by just vegetating and commenting on the videos in MTV, looking for things to do. In the end we decided to head out to famous Christiania which was a place for free people, even the police doesn't go there very often. As we headed towards our could we stumbled upon a tent introducing Scientology. We went in of course as there was free food and drinks, the cherry on the cake was free massage, they do know how to get people. They also had enough willpower to brainwash people via television. We were given a chair for the brain wash machine and two young guys who were sitting in front of us started talking. Their mission of the day was to sit there in front of that very screen, get drunk and with that annoy all the people in the tent. Why? One of the guys had made a grave mistake by buying a book about Scientology few years back and after that he had never managed to get rid of them. The people there just kept on calling him, at first for informative purposes and later just to annoy him. He told that he couldn't do anything drastic about that because they would ruin his life totally, so the only thing he could do was to annoy them back by getting drunk in their tent, a perfect master plan!
We left the tent after drinking a liter of their juice and eating all their cookies. Arriving in Christiania was like walking into a dream. For a second I though I was like in an improved version of Moldova, I suddenly felt home. First you had this nice clean city and then you turn the corner and end up in a very chaotic world, old paper, garbage, posters, great people, masked men selling grass, graffiti, worn down houses, it was all there. There were a lot of people all around, in houses were gatherings, some bars. We found a booth for exchanging clothes, you put clothes and you take clothes. Afterwards we sat down to a bench and had a few beers, waiting for a evening to head out in another bar. Around 12 after a lot of trouble, we found this nice bar, very football styled. It soon turned out there were around 7 people all from Svenborg, including my friend. We had a couple of beers and headed home.

My last day of Københaun started with vegetation...again, but this Sunday I decided to head home and with this other girl also from Svenbourg we headed towards Fyn, she lived in Odense, which is around 30 km from my school. To say that the day was less than perfect for hitch hiking is an understatement. We experienced cold winds, rain and drivers waving in compassion as we stood there with expressions varying from happiness to desperation and confusion. After standing there for half an hour an Englishman living in the house next to the road came up to us and invited us to have a cup of tea. After freezing our asses off for the next half an hour we decided to do just that, as long as it was free. He really loved talking, while we were sipping the worst tea in the British history. We found out quickly his attitude towards Danish women, weather, British and of course immigrants, my favorite was 'I'm not a racist...I just don't like Muslims'. We left with an easy heart  right after drink that murky hot water and got a ride in the next half an hour. We made it to Odense rather fast and I decided to spend the night there because it was close enough for me. Our night passed with drinking tea and dumpsterdiving, where I found the cutest pair of shiny silver slipper, totally unused. I think everybody should have at least one pair of weird shous what you'd never connect to the personality.

The next morning we started around 7 and I had a long 5 km walk to the Odense suburbs, where one remarkable thing happened. While I was wondering how do these people find time to trim their hedges into perfect squares, triangles and circles a man walking his dogs came up to me and asked about my giant Odense sign. We started talking and at some point we ended up talking about..yes you know it already...the immigrants and he told me that all the Polish people are coming here to earn fast money, for example his bike was stolen just few weeks back and on that same day a Polish car was seen standing on the street...Do you see the conclusion pattern? Anyways if I would've told him that I was from Eastern Europe he would've probably sent his dogs after me. I just find it silly that because there are some people from that country coming to earn some money in that way, but nevertheless you cannot say all of them are thieves. But I've met tons of this kind of people so my expectations are not very high in any case. I got back to the school by 10 o'clock.

So those were my adventures, I don't have any pictures unfortunately, so you're gonna just have to use your imagination. Take care and seeya.
Yours,
Jelly