Viking Ships and Hooligan Pubs

I've been less hungover. Sometimes I think a hangover is a great equalizer. If you had a really good time last night, and John Doe sat at home watching Star Trek reruns, you're going to wake up suffering from a hangover with teeth, and John will greet the morning sun with a clear head and he'll know exactly where both his shoes are. But John will never have any stories to tell. Last night was one of those that I went into with few expectations. The local football club - FC København - donated 300 tickets for their match against Esbjerg, another Danish league team. We had free reign over a big section on the south end of the stadium, and the gameplay was fairly exciting, albeit a bit chippy. After the game, most of us were planning on heading back to our respective residences, but Astrid, our Danish social coordinator, suggested we head to a good Danish football pub to celebrate the victory. The place was great. Affordable beer, foosball, and real live Danish soccer hooligans. The latter ended up getting us into a bit of trouble. Earlier in the day, we found a club apparel store and picked up some FC København gear. I was wearing a jersey I had bought, and these crazy fans were excited that their club has fans in the States. I didn't mention we bought the shirts six hours previous. They bought round after round, writing it off to team relations. Each round consisted of a Carlsberg and a shot of Fisk, or Fisherman, as it's most commonly called. Alas, all good things must come to an end, and after a number of those rounds one hooligan became bored and punched an Aussie friend in the face, prompting a tense few minutes and our eventual departure. I'm still feeling the Fisk a bit this morning.

This past weekend was the first I've spent entirely in Copenhagen. Friday night Pete and I got a late start, and hit a bump on the road when Pete realized he bought 'light' beer, which in Denmark translates to 2.6% alcohol. That doesn't make any GD sense, but some things aren't worth pondering. Thankfully I had a cache of red wine, and we went out into the city to meet up with Thomas at his brother's friend's place. They had a big head start on us, so we were forced to take "penalty shots" as punishment for sobriety. An American med student visiting, Nick, tried hiding one of his shots, and was given a penalty shot when his transgression was uncovered. Drunk medical students are hilarious. We headed to the center and slipped into a cool club called The Happy Pig. The place was fairly big, but was made up of a series of smallish rooms, with live music on the ground floor and a DJ on the first. If you haven't gathered, going out in Copenhagen requires frequent small loans, so when a "drink special" presents itself, we get it. If the drink special was one really big long island iced tea that everyone has to lap out of at the same time, we'd get it. If the price was right. This particular night it was ten shots of Fisk for 100 kroner. That's a good deal. We danced for a while, then headed out to LA Bar to enjoy the ambiance of tiki bar and ten kroner tequila shots. On the walk back there was an incident involving a shortcut and a tall barbwire fence. You'll have to ask me about that one in person.

Saturday, after Friday was sufficiently slept off, Pete and I headed out into the gloomy day and bussed to Assistens Kierkegaard (sp?), the massive cemetery in Norrebro. Many famous Danes are buried there, including Søren Kierkegaard and HC Andersen. There's an index of sorts near the entrance that indicates which graves are worth visiting. I wonder what the criteria for that list is. The place is more like a well-groomed park than a cemetery, and people are strolling through or even biking down the path that splits the place in half. It started to rain, and we made it back to Kathrine a little damp. Saturday evening we had a bbq and took advantage of the smaller-than-usual group by hanging around the common room, sharing drinking games and getting to know people better. I ended up in this crazy conversation (hard to believe, right?) with a Russian-born New Yorker, who was at a crossroads in life, and thought coming to Copenhagen would reveal the right path to her. I probably made things a bit fuzzier. Two Italian guys talked Pete and I into making a late run to McDonald's. When we arrived, I couldn't believe the menu. Four meals. Meal #1: Two Big Macs, fries and a drink for 72 kroner. Meal #4: Four cheeseburgers and a drink for 59 kroner. There are two problems with this menu. First, who eats that much McDonald's late night. Second, I'm not paying $15 for two Big Macs!

Sunday we hopped on the regional train out to Roskilde. When we went to the city for the festival, we really didn't look around much. Roskilde is actually the medieval capital of Denmark, and is a very beautiful town. Unusually hilly for Denmark, and sloping down to the big fjord that connects the city to the sea. The Roskilde domkirke was fairly impressive, and of course, under construction. We walked around the old cobblestone streets of the residential area, eventually making it down to the fjord, where the Viking Ship Museum lay in waiting. Some years back they unearthed five Viking-era ships from the fjord, and reconstructed them for public viewing. Then they built a museum for them, because it's hard to charge admission without at least four walls. The ships were scuttled in an effort to protect the capital city from the ruthless invading Norwegians, and they were mostly in splinters when they were surfaced. The reconstructions were pretty sweet, and next door the harbour was filled with recreations of Viking ships, one of which had recently been sailed from Roskilde to Dublin and back, tracing an old Viking pillaging route.

Today I'm supposed to start my term papers, but the sun is out in full force for the first time in a week, and I'm not wasting it. Maybe Tivoli tonight..