Joel's Blog Archive

by Joel Aufrecht 12:57 AM, 12 Aug 2003

At the beginning of my China journal, sweltering in a turboprop on the runway, headed for Vancouver, I noted that I expected to continue sweating for months to come. And I did.

Coming to Denmark, I didn't count on sweating. It wasn't a surprise that New York in August was muggy, sure, but after that ... I don't think it's dipped below 75 in the two days I've been here, even at night. Quite a shock, though consistent with the heat wave that left us cooking in Seattle last week.

Actually, I didn't think I'd be travelling right now. Due to miscommunication, I sat on the work permit paperwork until the last minute, and jeopardized my rescheduled plane ticket. Since changing the ticket involved multiple FedEx expenditures and at least an hour on hold, I was waiting until the last minute. (Travel Tip: never buy a paper ticket from Travelocity. Electronic, sure, but not paper. And since Expedia is ex-Microsoft, and Orbitz pays to piss us off with their pop-ups, I'm not sure what's left for fare searches.) But my tardiness worked out well when, the Friday week before the ticket date, I got an email that my work permit was approved. I bustled to mail my passport to New York, got it back the next Tuesday, and was on my way.

Oh, and another reason to avoid Travelocity for multi-carrier international travel: they gave me a 10-hour layover in Newark. 7 am to 5 pm. Thanks, guys. After six weeks of travel around the West Coast, I got hard-nosed and trimmed a duffel bag from my inventory of backpack, two duffels, and laptop bag. Bye bye second wool sweater, music apparatus, Natural Keyboard Pro, mouse, boots. But this still left me with an uncomfortable load of luggage on a day that was muggy before it even woke up. The very helpful people at Newark Airport (motto: "That's Newark _International_ Airport to you, you schmuck") said I couldn't store stuff there, "not since nine eleven." The bus driver was very helpful: "Nowhere. Nowhere in the city. Not since nine eleven." He dropped me off at his last stop, a block from ground zero. I walked over to the big hole in the ground, watched some street vendors fight over turf at eight am ("You don't touch the cart!"), and turned into a hotel across the street. They took my backpack and duffel for the day for free. I love New York - it's Jersey I can't stand.

New York was gray and hot and muggy - not a nice combination. I walked around, took a subway up to Times Square, walked partway through the Park, called Talli at 10:30 am and woke him up, met him back downtown, by which time it had cleared up a bit but was still too hot, and went to Battery Park to look at the Statue of Liberty (didn't I read that a judge had moved her to Jersey? That used to be good news but I'm not standing up for New Jersey any more. Although the bus driver did a great job of abusing traffic to get me back to the airport even after I had been stupid and gotten an unwisely late bus. I was still at the security checkpoint when they started boarding).

Denmark. Denmark is nice. I got it around 7 am on not enough sleep, and followed instructions to get to the apartment I'd found on the internet. My hostess was waiting ("I'm still up myself, actually. I was dancing all night,") and I dumped my stuff, got a key, tried to take a shower in a curtainless tub, and headed out to see Copenhagen.

At 9:30 am on a Sunday morning, really nobody is around except tourists. It was brilliantly sunny, utterly cloudless except if you looked on the horizon towards Sweden, and very civilized and peaceful. Nothing but cobblestones and six-story, two-century-old townhouses, with church steeples for variety. Really much much nicer than the bits of Newark I saw from the bus. Assuming the weather stays the same year round, the only thing between Copenhagen and perfection is some mountains nearby. I guess I'll have to go to Stockholm next.

There really are a lot of Danes in Denmark, and they really look like stereotypical Scandinavians. If there are brunettes, they're in hiding. They're all pretty serious about their tans. Everybody I approached spoke flawless English, but I still experienced that feeling of helplessness that I had at first in China. In fact, I think I felt better in the last half of the China trip, when I had barely enough Chinese to survive, than I do now.

I wore the t-shirt, but only got one comment, from the guy who sold me a postcard. He liked the shirt and said the Arabic had caught his eye. I overloaded on the beautiful scenery (Danes, Denmark, and sunshine in equal proportion) and headed home to conk out by mid-afternoon, while my hostess went to the beach. I slept for most of the next fifteen hours before heading to work.

Monday I beat everybody to the office at 8:30 am. I had a full, productive day, the first time in two years I can say that about a day spent in an office. As usual I'm sure I'm being too bossy and not shutting up, but then they did want a project manager.

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