Today I went back to the café where I made my one Danish friend the last time I was here, an old hippie who called me out right away as jøde because he himself is, too, and there he was, waiting to hug me good and tell me to come back on Friday, by which time he’ll be through with the ministry of food health or whatever they call it here and ready to ping-pong — his verb—with me about what I might do from now onward. The Danish aren’t particularly open-minded to what is known as networking, he says, for they miss the point that to let someone new into a circle is to one’s own benefit, too. The Germans, he says, will be different.

Now it is six minutes ’til ten at night and I am only just beginning to need a reading lamp to write by, which really could be called a writing lamp if not for the crushing creative imperative. 

Northern Europe in May, as advertised.