Wandering Reflections III : Scenes from an itinerant life (Copenhagen).
The rain and wind had made a rag-doll of my umbrella. It was not sturdy enough to face the Nordic one-day-cold-monsoon spell. I say “my umbrella” although it was on loan. The guy at the reception of my hostel had kindly allowed me to borrow an umbrella for the day. A dark grey windy and wet day in the Danish capital.
I had arrived the day before to find the pavements, parks and people soaking in the warm sunshine. The ride from the airport to the centre was quick, but not cheap (nothing is, in København!). The metro, that looked more like a little air train, was above ground for most of the 15–20 minute ride.
When I stepped out at Nørreport station, I regretted not packing some shorts and sunglasses. Little did I know the very next day I would regret not bringing an umbrella too.
Freedom is beauty, I read written on a wall. On that first afternoon, the sun was hot. So I was pleased to not find the angular, feeble sunlight I expected from Scandinavia, all light and no heat. Here, it kissed my skin and made me feel free. Sunshine was in the beauty I experienced, inside and outside of me.
I sat on a bench in Ørstedpark, sipping on an ice latte I had bought in a nearby covered market full of food stalls, flower shops and trendy restaurants. There was a small lake in the park and flowerbeds of every colour imaginable. 20°C, sun, coffee and a green park was not a bad start. Yet, on that brightly lit day, I noticed an abject lack of melanin around me. I put on Etta James and pretended like the world was velvet and ebony and full of darker, bolder, richer hues. I needed to feel less of an anomaly. Less “exotic”, less eccentric.
Ironicsllly, later that afternoon, I walked to see some dead white men that impress me with their achievements. Sleeping under the mulch in Assistens cemetery, topped by unremarkable graves, are Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr. Writer, Philosopher, Scientist. Can one person be all of those things?
After the first of many sleepless nights in my crowded hostel room, I decided to brave the elements the next morning. The rain was relentless and my umbrella was not to be the only victim. The wind picked up as I made my way to Christiansborg Palace and the Royal Danish library.
I decided to seek comfort in an underground, minimalistic, Scandinavian-style coffee shop. The rooms were sparse: white walls, some artwork, leather and animal-hide covered chairs. I read my book (“Open City” by Teju Cole) on a sofa under a frosty window waiting for the showers to pass (they would not, until after dinner). The chapter I began reading described the main character walking around in Brussels on a cold rainy day. Eerie.
I wondered if I could write about my travels with all the profundity and introspection that Teju Cole did. I decided I did not want to, his writing had an annoying, assured edge. How does one avoid self-indulgence in a first-person account? Apparently one does not. Simple, Cole seemed to be telling me.
Once the rain lulled temporarily (but not the wretched wind), I stepped out into the world. Not keen to pay more Danish crowns (the local currency), I chose not to visit the Royal rooms. Instead, I took to meandering around the drenched open spaces of the Royal complex. The Danish liked their steeples, spires and towers. I saw many rising up like morose, sickly fingers against the cobalt sky.
Walking in those grounds, I found my man Søren Kierkegaard again. This time in a courtyard of the Royal Library. Here, he was more alive than a tombstone can ever attempt to be. A copper sculpture of a young man, facing a fountain, red-bricked buildings and colourful gardens. No one looked at him. Wet tourists scurried past, taking pictures instead with the neighbouring flowers in bloom. Rain pattered down on Søren but I know he would not have cared. He loved his city and, I presume, its mercurial weather too. What he did despised vehemently was the pretentiousness of the human condition, the vacant millimg crowd.
On my way home I stopped at a local drugstore. I needed earplugs, an eye mask and some nutrition bars to survive another night in the hostel. When I went to pay, two women (one in her early fifties, Portuguese-Danish as she later told me; the other was younger, in her twenties, Danish-Danish I think) at the cash register began talking to me, eager and wide eyed.
Was it the rain that made this seemingly sedate, inexpressive population come to life? Or was it something about me? The weather had turned me inward-out, so I did not mind that little conversation. They asked me what I was doing in the city, what my name meant, about India and then went on to chat with me for nearly a quarter of an hour. When they insinuated that I was on a romantic holiday, I assured them I was not. The innuendo made me uncomfortable. When I finally paid (a discounted price), the younger girl said, “You have a beautiful energy around you”. She smiled and I thanked her for the compliment. The chattier older woman added: “Indeed. Like your name, you’re full of sunshine and light.”
I felt something thaw inside me. The cold loneliness of Copenhagen had steeled me to human connection. In fact, I thought I looked forlorn and uninteresting to strangers, waking around with a broke, borrowed umbrella. A dark figure in a very pale city under a grey sky. It intrigued me that people see what they would wish me to be, or perhaps how I would wish for them to see me — without knowing me, without really knowing my truth. They see happiness and radiance on the surface when sometimes there is none in my core. What of all the anxiety and fear and sorrow I might be carrying around? Invisible.
That evening, a friend showed me the centre with its bright red, yellow, green and blue houses. Wide squares and narrow, cobbled streets. We went to a bar full of old radio sets hung up at the back, a homely dinner table in the middle and candles burning quietly in the windows. The rain had stopped. It was time for an “Earl Grey martini”.
Over the next few days, I visited the Little Mermaid statue (little and underwhelming as I had been forewarned), glimpsed other palaces, the famous Tivoli amusement park and strolled around Christiania, the independent alternative commune in the city (think streets full of weed vendors, music, overgrown gardens, rundown buildings and graffiti galore).
Although Copenhagen had great parks, bars, cafés, world food restaurants and clean, efficient public transport, it was the cold beauty, the feeling of listlessness, of dark days with little sunlight and the lack of diversity that remained with me. There was a sleepy, sluggish, almost staid feeling that I could not shake off.
Perhaps, too, what I saw reflected how I felt inside. On the way back to the airport, I decided to put on some blues and laugh at the sweet melancholy of life. Søren would have.
