I wrote so so much yesterday but once again, have lost my work. I cannot understand how i didnt save it at least once for i wrote at several different points in the day. If you shake an ipad it will undo your last actions. I can only think that this is what has happened but it is so distressing. Using paper it would not happen this way.
I am surprised at my excitement of being in a city, albeit a small, gentle, welcoming, low rise city. Hyggeligt.
0150F, I let myself in and climb five flights of dirty communal stairs to the third floor, or is this the second? the key is under the mat so i let myself in. Its grim. No welcome note, two rooms with bedding tumbled upon them that might possibly be clean, a shower cubicle that is so scaled you cant see in it.
I open a window, put my phone to charge, connect to the wifi and try to ascertain which room might be mine. none reflect the pictures on airbnb.
I wonder if i am in the right apartment. I text my host and as i do so, remember i should have found two keys but there was only one. Taking the key with me i scurry upstairs to find two keys under a mat! Rushing back i collect my bags and let myself in again, this time to my correct accommodation. I find myself in a 'Georgian' style tenement, on the third floor in a student house. The rooms are clean, large and light, they match the pictures.
A 'flatmate' comes out of his room to say hello and we laugh about my error. I ask him for supermarket information, reach for my phone and remember it is still on charge, in the flat below! I rush back, pleased no one is still home, and return. I am still laughing about it this morning but sadly, i have remembered the window i opened and i must return to reassure the occupier.
The apartment has enormous windows. Looking from my bedroom i can see other, five storey residential buildings and from the kitchen, i look over rooves, over pigeons and great tits sitting in the twisted willow, over towards the rainbow skywalk of the art museum. I am very close to downtown.
Walking through a street of small colouful terraces, Møllestien, i find Fairbar, where couchsurfers like to hang out, closed. i enjoy the air and the safe anonymity of being in a city. There is so much to see and i am just able to be me. The evening light is soft but Møllestien colours muted.
The streets are quiet, it is sunday evening, suddenly horns beep, two small cars appear, chattering in a symphony on the quiet roads. I think perhaps the Danes have just won a gold in the handball olympics. I know that as excitement in Denmark has been building!
As i walk, i reflect on my existence in the Faroes, at times i felt like a patronising, almost quasi ethnographer, searching for what it might mean to be Faroese. much of my questioning was the result of there being little to learn naturally from, and in my search for knowledge about my surroundings, i found myself searching myself. Here, learning is all around me, is given me, gift wrapped.
I walk through the busy nightlife of the Latin quarter, to the harbour, bigger and more industrial than i imagined. Now getting dark i let googlemaps assist my sense of direction and head home. waylaid by the beauty of a building, i sidetrack and find the theatre just as a roar starts behind me, followed by a mass of singing that can surely only be the national anthem. i am drawn to watch.
The old irish pub might be somewhere i would usually avoid but as i stand at the bar, the place erupts with Queen, we are the champions of the world. Over the deafening noise i point to the only recognisable beer (other than carlsberg) on the pumps in front of me and find myself with the most enormous glass of Hoegarden.
I enjoy the atmosphere and am soon joined by a very drunken young man, entertained by his questions. Not for the first time do i find aminosity expressed towards the english, disdain, even contempt, for the fact that english has become the universal language. He also speaks fluent spanish and i begin to converse with him in my broken spanish but he becomes frustrated and returns our conversation to english. i am unable to persuade him of my point, that whilst indeed we are generally 'lazy' as a nation in not learning other languages, so too are we frustrated when others do not allow us to practice, for without practice, there is little growth.
He says, as others have said, that Danish people see themselves as 'racist' not so much towards other nations as amongst themselves. It seems there is a hierarchical use of language, perhaps a bit like received pronunciation, or BBC english as was. More than just dialect they say. Joined by one of his friends, they tell me how disapproved of, unaccepted, perceived as lesser beings they are, in places like Copenhagen but that here, in Aarhus, people come from all over the country and are easily accepted.
The city is hyggeligt. Literally translated it means cosy but it is clear that it means so very much more. Indeed, their pronunciation of Aarhus is very different from that of my host in Skagen, a gay artist, my own age from Copenhagen, who CONSTANTLY corrected me, every time i tried to use any Danish, forcing me, over and over, to repeat, to try to get my pronunciation correct. I mostly gave up and spoke english.
And i learn another side of the Faroese independence story. Greenland was sold for alcohol, just a few bottles of alcohol. Denmark feels frustrated that this is so. Such a small country yet trying to be so very big, it has not forgiven the sale of Greenland and will not let go of the Faroes, almost as a matter of principle. I ask, isnt there still a connection with Greenland? But i dont find an answer.
