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Eel fishing smack -- read on...Dateline: Monday 30.8.1999 9:23 Location: EC 31 "Christian Morgenstein", Hamburg -> København
Last night was one of my more bizarre couchette experiences. Let's introduce the cast: in the bottom bunks, a black French guy and an older blonde woman, who were just a part of the scenery. In the middle bunks, yours truly and a depressed Danish wannabe-foreign-legionnaire, the very model of your cropped-dark-hair U.S. Marine type if not for startlingly blue eyes. And in the top bunks, a pair of teen-aged female German bombshells, one blonde, the other brunette. It soon became obvious that the powers that be had decided to move some fatty tissue from their brains to somewhere else:- Uhh, like, which bed is which number, like?
- There's a list outside.
- Like, totally, outside?
- Yeah...
- Like ohmygod! OK!Exeunt. They both totter out on 10-cm platform shoes and spend a few minutes in contemplation. A voice from the hallway:
- Like, shit! We're, like, up! That's sooo funny! <giggles>
So just when I'd filed them under "hopeless bimbo", they ask me and the Danish guy if they can buy us a beer. Well, we certainly weren't about to refuse (not that this stopped my paranoid alter-ego from checking that everything was securely padlocked and bolted down), so soon enough the 4 of us were sitting in the corridor drinking warm beer from cans. The Danish guy, evidently the life of any party, started with this catchy opening gambit:
- My life is shit.
He had earlier explained to me that he'd already been to Marseilles and signed up for the Foreign Legion, but had to return to Denmark due to a death in the family. He didn't bother explaining any of this to the girls though, who cheerfully ignored him anyway and started trying to tell about their own adventures. It quickly became obvious that their knowledge of English was almost as limited as our German:
"So ja, ve vere in south Frankreich, und ja, we Schnipp the bread, und ve drink, und now we go home," explained the blonde helpfully.
"Ja, ve go home," echoed the brunette.
"It is shit. Ja," stated the blonde.The Danish guy and I exchanged glances. After a few rounds of this we concluded that this just isn't going anywhere, so the Dane and I headed back to the cabin and the already rather drunk girls started looking for their next victim... but not before tucking us in and saying their goodbyes:
- Sleep very good!
- Ja, und don't wake up!
Dateline: Monday 30.8.1999 15:42 Location: The ruins of medieval Roskilde
Some things in Denmark are ludicrously expensive, but one thing sure isn't: the all-you-can-eat buffet lunch, which I've already extolled at least twice before. Today I opted for Hellas, which served a smallish number of excellently prepared standards (keftedes, tzatziki, Greek salad, etc) -- my only complaints were that there was no lemon & oil dressing for the salad and that tap water was 5 kr. Still, at 35 crowns, lunch was the same price as a large locker at the station (and half the price of a single sandwich in the Tivoli café!).
The essentials out of the way, I headed to Roskilde for a change. Let this be a lesson to you, kids: when 'railing on a budget, never carry extra cash with you. My "extra" 100 DKK transmuted itself into 4 CDs, stuff like PM Dawn, Sheep on Drugs and OMD, which I wouldn't dream of buying at full price, but would (and did) when discounted to (not by) 10% with a 4-CDs-for-100-crowns deal.
Getting back on track, sight #1 was the Roskilde Cathedral, a rather odd (towers, spires and domes?) construction in... not marble, not granite, not even cement, just brick. (An architect who tried that stunt in Paris or Rome would be shot.) Architecture aside, the cathedral also functions as a crypt for twenty-odd Danish kings and their royal families, the stone coffins of everyone including Harald Bluetooth (c. 900 AD) filling every nook and cranny. It's a strange feeling walking in there, past the bones of all the most powerful people in the land.. some sarcophagi are plain, some are covered in gilt or with statues of weeping women, a few are crowned with grinning skulls.
After passing the exquisitely named Viking Pizza & Grill, I did the unthinkable and entered my first-ever museum in Denmark: the Vikingeskibshallen, ie. the Viking Ships' Hall. And it was even worth the 28 kr admission! Really! As the name hints, the museum contains 5 authentic (plus a number of reconstructed) Viking ships -- not that spectacular in themselves, but the (free) explanatory film is both (unintentionally) funny and informative, telling how the ships were painstakingly extracted from the mud and pieced back together.
The obligatory exhibits on Viking life and customs were also better than usual. Everybody has heard the bit about Viking chiefs being buried at sea in loot-laden longboats, but did you know about the pre-burial sacrifices? According to a presumably neutral Arab (!) eyewitness, in addition to the standard complement of horses, dogs, cattle, etc. a slave girl volunteers -- they must be using the army definition here -- to be sacrificed. On the big day, she downs a big mug of hallucinogenic mead, has sex/is raped by the ex-chief's six best friends, who then proceed to literally tear her apart from limb to limb while a female shaman repeatedly plunges a dagger into her heart. No wonder the Vikings have a bit of a reputation as party animals, which may also explain why so many Danes and Germans are into S&M...
And oh, an "eel fishing smack" is a type of fishing boat. Go see one at the museum.
I had 36.25 DKK left and I'd calculated on spending 35.90 on food. But, due to a special tax levied on Finnish Interrailers in Danish økological supermarkets, the final bill was 36.20 -- leaving me without a single øre, as the smallest coin in circulation is 0.25. Spiffy or what?
You know you're back in Scandinavia when...
- There's a chill in the air the moment the sun disappears behind some clouds.
- The smell of smoked fish drifts over the harbor.
- Everybody else is also blond and blue-eyed.
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