A brief synopsis on the origin of our discontented state:

In the beginning our heads were larger than they are now, twice as big.  We had four legs, not two, and an equal amount of arms.  On our big heads either side had a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth and in the middle perched ears: two on each side.  Like two modern heads were somehow melted together from the back of the skull until the conch of the ears were a hair's breath apart.  Bodies were more rounded and when arms and legs were splayed outwards; great speeds could be reached by cartwheeling across the vast plains of earth.  Most bodies had a male side and a female side, but not all.  Some were double male, some double female.  Only mixed gender bodies could reproduce when a child was desired.  But all were satisfied and content in their happy pairing. 

Zeus pondered these wondrous creatures with a mixture of awe and pride.  But soon these sentiments festered and a deep envy filled his soul for these happy creatures and with furious bolts of lightening he lashed out and slashed each body in half; leaving them tottering lost and alone on two unsteady legs; condemning us to half blindly seek our lost other half.

Hr Plato: tak for det 

Påske i København / Easter in Copenhagen

Friday 22nd / Good Friday, one of those rare days in Ireland where it is illegal to sell alcohol: bought a bottle of Prosecco on the way to Danish friends Christina & Jonas' house for the arranged Easter lunch - traditional Danish style, naturally.  There were approximately 15 in attendance and so the basement had been reserved for the banquet.  Six large tables pieced together to accommodate the crowd and the dazzling abundance of food.  Baskets of rugbrød (rye bread) dotted the table, punctuated by bottles of glistening-from-the-freezer Snaps (almost pure alcohol the Danes love to drink at seasonal events).  Baskets of boiled baby potatoes, boiled eggs, fresh chives, mayonnaise, remolade (like a lumpy tangy mayo), the Mexicans brought a bean dish dripping with melted cheese on top and a large bowl of delicious spicy guacamole, various types of fish: dried white fish from the Faroe islands, marinerede sild, karry sild (types of traditional pickled herring), a giant and unbelievably delicious veggie quiche just bursting with spinach, tomatoes, peppers and various other colourful delights.  It was like Babette's feast without the bankruptcy.  Prior to sitting down indoors, we basked in the hot sunshine, dotted around the big garden on chairs, benches, grass, and sucked on juicy dribbling slices of cool sweet watermelon, just shooting the breeze to the drifting tones of New Orleans jazz humming away like sweet sounds of distant honey bees hovering at blossoms.  The cool shade at the banquet table came as a relief, our appetites now whetted by the watermelon and wine, and we set to work building ever more creative smørbrød (open face sandwich), interrupted regularly for another round of "skål" (cheers!) and a quaffing of ice cold Snaps (potent alcohol!).  

So after a long lovely lunch, with the loveliest bunch of people one could hope to dine with, we shuffled gently out to the garden to bask in the afternoon sun once more. The wine long gone by now, it was beer for the afternoon and evening, with no less than two more outings to the local shop to restock.  That sunshine kept evaporating everything!  Sweet things for dessert started appearing late in the afternoon.  Banana bread, French crepes, little chocolate eggs, all grazed on slowly by full bellied folk as a cow might distractedly chew cud.  As the sun set and the cool early night air started to raise goosebumps, that was the cue to drift homeward.  A spectacularly lovely day, followed by an 8 hour coma.  

Saturday: a slow start to the day, vague notions of going to the library were dismissed in favour of sitting in my back garden in shorts, t-shirt and bare feet with a compendium of readings in search of some topic interesting enough to fill 25 pages.  I should say that summer arrived nearly 2 weeks ago, so it's been shorts and t-shirt weather. I'm a bit tanned actually. The day was interrupted several times, welcome interruptions I might add, firstly by Belfast boy Paul from University out and about on his bike enjoying the sun.  We had coffee and a chat for an hour then off he went on his merry way.  Back to the sunny reading, then another visitor: Alina the Romanian from University this time arrived with a few cans of beer, and who was I to say no to some ice cool beverages on a hot day?  We sat there until the afternoon sun was cut off by the high buildings and then went to make food - a homemade pizza this time, I had prepared dough the night before so it was fat and swollen as it should be.  A delicious pizza later, we headed into town to see one of the CPH PIX (film festival) films - I had lots of tickets from volunteering I did for the festival, so I got to go for free.  We went to Gloria cinema on Rådhuspladsen (town hall square) to see a film about red haired people, the translation roughly being "Our Day Will Come" or something like that.  A French film starring Vincent Cassel (he was in Black Swan).  A wonderful, dark comedy, very action driven which was lucky for me, as when the film started, the subtitles were in Danish and the dialogue, naturally, was in French.  It didn't actually make much difference, I read the subtitles, and listened to the French - a language I once had a basic level of - and it was fine!  And funny, a great film, really enjoyed it.  

Never being one to celebrate Easter, I had no plans for Sunday.  I woke up early as had been a spring habit with the morning sun waking me directly, so I decided that a long run was in order after the Friday Feast.  Now usually I decided my occasional runs based on routes that I already know the distance of - such as Frederiksberg Have, the local park, is 2.4km per circuit.  But on Sunday I decided that I would simply run for an hour, just focusing on time not distance.  I took in a lap of the park for the scenery and elephants (it backs onto the zoo) - I still delight at the sight of those weird prehistoric looking things and just kept on going, occasionally telling myself in a southern drawl to 'run Forrest, run'.  Not that I needed much spurring on.  The warming morning air was just perfect for trotting around the pretty, leafy roads of Frederiksberg.  So exactly an hour of weaving around, I trotted back indoors.  I measured the distance which came out at exactly 8km.  Now, it had slipped my mind that morning that I had said to Belfast boy Paul that I wanted him to take me along to this yoga class he takes up in the far reaches of Nørrebro, a neighbouring area.  I may not have run 8km had I remembered that, so perhaps not a bad thing.  We met up in the afternoon and cycled to what looks like a hippie reclaimed warehouse, up some dark weaving stairs and into a beautiful large light filled studio in the attic room.  There were about 8 or 9 people in attendance, and we all fished out rolled up mats from a little cupboard at the end of the room and laid them out.  I might add that I have never done yoga in my life, but being rather bendy in ways, I always suspected myself to have innate yoga skills!  In some respects, I took to it fine - a few balance issues on the standing poses, but I can grab my two big toes and bring one toe about halfway up to my ear while sitting down (the bow and arrow pose) which I was chuffed with, 'cos you never know when you'll need to bring your toe up to your ear.  The class went on for 2 hours: I was expecting an hour, tops, but it went pretty fast all the same and ended with a 15 minute relaxation which was so nice I had trouble staying awake.  

My body felt so 'worked' after all that, so it was time to abuse it again, we figured.  I headed home for some much needed lunch, then arranged to meet up with Vida the German, Alina the Romanian and Paul again at Nørrebro Bridge to sit lakeside and have a beer in the late afternoon sun.  It was so picturesque: the Dannebrøg (DK flag) had been flying on the bridge for a while now (perhaps since the christening of the handsome Prince's twins a couple of weeks ago?) but as the sun drew nearer the horizon, the flag removers came to take them down.  It was quite lovely to watch then lower these four giant beaming red symbols of lovely Denmark against that perfect clear blue.  And we fell into a thoughtful relaxed silence watching these men at work, when out of the blue (literally) appeared no less than 14 hot air balloons of every colour you can imagine, drifting across the skies over the lakes, their perfect reflections doubling their number!  It was gorgeous and whoops of delight and clicks of cameras became the symphony to the drifting sight.  The day had surely peaked... but no, there was more to come.  A ringing telephone. Chatter in Romanian. Laughter and many many "bina bina bina" - Romanian for an affirmative.  Click, the phone is hung up.  A beaming Alina excitedly announces that a woman who she had befriended on Twitter had just docked her yacht in Christianshavn, and did she want to come over - the posse too!  Easter on a Swedish yacht?  Yes please!  A few bottles of wine purchased and a high speed cycle to Christianshavn, we found a beautiful white yacht, adorned with the Swedish flag, with two smiling faces on board.  We hopped on and thus began a wonderful evening which would end in the early hours, after much interesting conversation with these Swedes (one originally from Romania).  Still in shorts, sandals and t-shirt by 2am, the cold was beginning to catch up on the wine, so it was time to head home.  

That’s how it ended. Easter in Copenhagen. For a thoroughly secular place; they sure do know how to have a happy Easter.  

It doesn’t snow in Ireland [A Christmas story in May]

I eventually made it back to Denmark - I say eventually because it took several days to get out of blizzardy Dublin and involved an overnight camp in the airport - which actually turned out to be an amazing night! I’ll get back to that in a bit.

About lunchtime on Monday 20th December, the skies got dark and large flakes of snow started drifting down, ever the heavier. The airport was still open and functioning when I got on the Aircoach at 16:30. Plenty of time to make it in for the 18:45 flight to which I had already checked in online. Just a bag drop to do. BUT - the roads and the millions of drivers were not prepared for the snow which was now coming down at an alarming rate! So obviously everybody seeing the snow panicked and immediately took to the roads to get home. I have never seen traffic so bad. The M1 was a car park. What should have been a 40 minute journey took 1 hour 40 minutes and we only made it that quick because the driver took off his usual route and cut through Swords village. With finger tapping at bruising point, the moment the bus pulled up at the airport the anxious passengers leaped up into the aisle, no exception in my case, grabbed my case and I ran at speed through the airport in a scene not unlike the Home Alone panic airport rush and luckily enough there was still a staff member at the otherwise deserted SAS Check-In desk 9. She took my baggage with an air of trepidation not quite masked, but with typical flawless Scandinavian efficiency. I proceeded to run to security, now only 15 minutes before the flight was due to leave, tugging my belt off as I darted through the crowd control tape leading to security. It was ominously quiet at security so I got through in record time. But as I glanced at the board to see what gate to go to, the depressing words "CANCELLED" started flashing. Groan. I calmly re-threaded my belt, and asked a staff member where I collect my baggage. That sounds like an easy task, but I omitted the throngs of people circling the yellow vested woman so that alone took 10 minutes of forcefully eyeing and vying for her frazzled attention. Standing at the carousel for 40 minutes with a bunch of Danes, the familiar sound of Danish was somewhat comforting. I just wanted to be back here. Once the bags finally re-emerged, dazed and confused from their futile trip around those underground belts, it was a quick dash to the SAS desk to re-book on the next available flight. The next morning flight was full, so they put me on the 18:45 flight instead. Okay, grand.  But now I had to get out of the airport and find somewhere to stay for the next 24 hours. I had heard South Dublin was the worst hit, with record amounts of snow, so heading back to the parent’s house was out of the question. But my buddy Mildred who lives close to town kindly offered me her couch for the night. It took over an hour of standing in the snow to get on an Aircoach; the queues were that long and the roads were that bad. Eventually I got back into town and made my way to Mildred's. Normally a 20 minute walk from O'Connoll Street, but this time taking 40 dragging a heavy case through the foot of snow leaving in my wake a cleared path for the lucky street walkers headed my way.

She had the heating in the house blasting when I got there, it was heaven! I cracked open a bottle of Bailey's I'd been given, and we drank a few glasses of that. Very necessary after the evening I had. Next day I refused to get out of "bed" until 11. Felt great to get a lie in - the first one all week, in spite of many many many late nights! The weather had eased considerably, and flights were coming and going from the airport so it was looking good. I couldn't risk another looooong bus journey so I was back on the Aircoach by 15. However, the snow decided to start falling again around that time; more of the heavy variety. Got to the airport around 16, in what were pretty much blizzard conditions, on a bus that was sliding and skidding on the hidden ice all the way. A huge queue had already formed for the 18:45 flight. I stood next to a guy from Northern Ireland, a Swedish woman and a Lithuanian woman. The latter two trying to get home for Christmas, Northern Ireland guy trying to get back to DK to spend Christmas with his kids. We whiled away the time waiting for SAS to make a definitive announcement by trying to explain to the women that it doesn't actually snow in Ireland and that's why there's no such thing as snow tyres or tyre chains here! Funny against the backdrop of a blizzard so bad, the building across the road was invisible. Finally SAS confirmed what we were all dreading yet expecting: no flights tonight. Seemingly it takes 4 hours of no snow falling to clear the runways and there just wasn't going to be a break in the weather for that length of time on Tuesday evening at all. But the SAS staff passed on some promising news too: SAS were going to charter a special flight just for us at 09:30 to get us all home for Christmas. It was good to hear, especially as every 10 minutes on the loudspeaker, a gruff announcement was made that "Any passengers on cancelled Ryanair flights, please leave the airport, go home and re-book your flights". And to add salt to the wound the announcement continued: "Please return any duty free you have purchased back to the duty free shop." Owch! They won't even let you drown your sorrows with cheap booze!

Since it was about 17 when SAS announced the rescue plan, I had made up my mind to spend the night at the airport. There was little point in spending 3 hours getting home only to have to be back in by 07:30 to check in. The Northern guy said he too was going to stay overnight while the women said they were going home. Mad pair! So I had an airport buddy for the evening. We immediately set a direct course to the bar upstairs and ordered ourselves a couple of Guinness's. We got on like a house on fire, yapping away about this and that, until the bar closed at 20 and we had to find somewhere else to pass the time. We found another bar, The Fáilte Bar, downstairs at Arrivals and found ourselves squashed in a booth with two older women and a son in law of one of them. They were waiting for the arrival of two young kids from Belarus. Saw Adi Roche, founder of the Chernobyl Children’s Project, was there too sitting on the far side of the bar. We sat with the ladies and the fella, laughing and joking, reading trashy newspaper horoscopes to each other, until their time came to head off. Our next recruit was a Polish guy who was standing at the bar when I was ordering yet another round. He was all smiles and a bit shy, so I insisted he come sit with us. Jarek was his name, and I remember little else about him except laughing long and hard when he insisted that he could not sit in the middle because "he didn't want to split up a lovely couple"! We howled laughing at that - and explained to him through ruptured gasps of laughter that we had no idea who the other was, and that we hadn't even swapped names yet! We did at that point though – “Hi, I’m Damien” and “Hi, I’m Sue. Nice to meet you!”
We parted ways with Jarek when the bar closed and Jarek wanted to head out with his friend (who had been snoozing on a nearby couch) to puff on a few cancer sticks. So we bid our farewells and best wishes and so Damien and I had to find something else to occupy us. It was late but we were too wired to even think about camping for the night just yet. So we set off on a mission to find the elusive entrance to the brand new Terminal 2. Barely open, it only services two airlines: Ethiad and some other Middle Eastern airline. We wandered until we found the innocuous door leading to the beautiful and glamorous Terminal 2: down a long unfinished tunnel which was very much exposed to the elements brrrr! It had a roof, alright, but cheap runner carpet over chipboard on the floor, and air vents which had not been sealed yet so it was minus temperatures in there. A quick dash through and we emerged in this almost empty cavern of a place. The strangest thing was that the Ethiad flight from Abu Dhabi landed that evening? The Sheik must have a magic carpet Damien mused, sending us into fresh gales of soused silly chuckles. We wandered around discovering all the nooks and crannies of the new Terminal until the sleepiness started to creep in. We went back through the arctic corridor to Terminal 1 and went in search of a spot on the floor to set up camp. But since there was reportedly 40,000 people staying overnight that night; finding a spot in what looked like a refugee camp proved impossible. After a long and futile round trip through Terminal 1, finally we decided to trek back through the arctic corridor to the opulent loveliness of Terminal 2. Why didn’t we just stay there? I’ll have to blame the Guinness for clouding the obvious. We found a cosy spot in The Oak Cafe. Others had the same idea, but there was space and enough chairs to make makeshift "beds". The marble floor looked a bit cold. So that's how my night in the airport ended.

Now, what struck me most about Night in the Airport, was the sheer brilliant mood of everyone there! I have never had so much fun in an airport in my life - people were ready to make jokes and strangers were finding airport buddies for the night and little groups of people were forming to keep what were already high spirits even higher! It was wonderful. Something Damien and I had commented on at the time even; comparing Danish and other cultures with the social ‘more the merrier' attitude of the Irish: best summed up in the word ‘craic’. Danes have they word for a great night out. They call it ‘hyggelig’ – a word approximating to ‘cosy’. Not quite the Irish style which seems to involve the infecting of strangers with good humour. I had thought when deciding to stay overnight that I'd find a book, a corner and read till I fell asleep and that would be as good as it could possibly get.

How wrong can you get?