National Denmark Day

Now I have walked the river feeling envious of people laughing and eating and canoodling on blankets. Lax or no prohibition against open containers, apparently. Danish flags are everywhere, I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s National Denmark Day? I am sitting on some benchy step-type things above the canal in Christianhavn and watching a raven tear at the shredded lettuce and whatever else is inside some crumpled sandwich paper left by a trio of thuggish Danes who were supping here until recently, when they left without first becoming my friends.

I think I’ll take a walk over to Freetown Christiania, maybe buy a joint, see if that’ll help me sleep during a time more broadly regarded here as night. Yes. And on the way I will scan the ground for generous bits of remaindered cigarettes with which to roll a spliff.

One fellow in a clump of drunken others still eating sandwiches and getting drunker in the vicinity is singing Destiny’s Child.

I, too, want someone to say my name.

You try out writing in the second person

May 17 / København

Pjiake

May 18 / København

undskyld

May 19 / København

Today I made some friends named Katrine and Hakim — she a native of Denmark, him, of Morocco — who were on their third date and also at the craft beer and food truck festival on the Carlsberg brewery grounds that a brewer here who grew up in Durham like me and is a friend of my old friend got me into.

We sat together on a curb outside the event, passing two spliffs among the three of us and talking about world affairs and national shame.

I told them about Anthony Weiner and Huma and Hillary and about my idea for a shirt featuring the USAmerican flag and the words I’M SORRY in as many languages as possible.

The Danish is undskyld, they told me back, adding that I personally needn’t apologize, and I wrote it all down to remember.

Katrine photographed me deep in my international, ineffectual coin purse, fighting through the mis-math of trying to convert inadequate euro plus some rogue Antillean guilder into adequate beer fest tokens for buying Cambodian hot rock ’n’ rolls to share with my fest friends, two of three of whom would turn out to be vegetarian anyway.

Later I looked at how I also wrote the words tissekone and fisse, Danish slang for parts of a woman, and too drew a crude likeness of the Nike swoosh. No telling why. America, maybe.

berliner boyfriend

May 20 / in motion

I said,

Here is my new boyfriend on the boat:

She said,

Oh yes heʼs very cool drinking and smoking and rock and roll

I said,

Iʼm really excited to be a cliché in Berlin

Although Manuel is not the Berliner boyfriend name I was hoping for

alcohol

National Denmark Day

I think I’ll take a walk over to Freetown Christiania, maybe buy a joint, see if that’ll help me sleep during a time more broadly regarded here as night. Yes. And on the way I will scan the ground for generous bits of remaindered cigarettes with which to roll a spliff.

One fellow in a clump of drunken others still eating sandwiches and getting drunker in the vicinity is singing Destiny’s Child.

I, too, want someone to say my name.

You try out writing in the second person

Pjiake

undskyld

We sat together on a curb outside the event, passing two spliffs among the three of us and talking about world affairs and national shame.

I told them about Anthony Weiner and Huma and Hillary and about my idea for a shirt featuring the USAmerican flag and the words I’M SORRY in as many languages as possible.

The Danish is undskyld, they told me back, adding that I personally needn’t apologize, and I wrote it all down to remember.

Later I looked at how I also wrote the words tissekone and fisse, Danish slang for parts of a woman, and too drew a crude likeness of the Nike swoosh. No telling why. America, maybe.

berliner boyfriend

I said,

Here is my new boyfriend on the boat:

She said,

Oh yes heʼs very cool drinking and smoking and rock and roll

I said,

Iʼm really excited to be a cliché in Berlin

Although Manuel is not the Berliner boyfriend name I was hoping for