Copenhagen Archives - Nadine Walks

Searching for Hans Christian Andersen; at what point does a visit to a country “count”?

January 19, 2015

A few months ago I had a short conversation- in the comments section of one of my blog posts- about what it takes to check a country off your list. I have this scratch-off map of the world, and as I start to do more traveling, I’m wondering which countries I can scratch off, and which ones I need to spend a little more time in.

I think this is probably an interesting conversation on its own, and I’d be very curious to hear opinions on the topic. If you’re spending a 2-hour long layover in an airport in Belgium, does this count? I think a lot of people would say no, and yet, I had a friend who vehemently believed that setting foot in a country- in any way and for any amount of time- “counted”.

And then, how much time is enough time to feel like you’ve gotten to experience a place? Can you experience a place in 24-hours? A few days? A week? A month? A year? All of the above?

It depends, of course. I spent 9-months studying in France, and a month walking through Spain on the Camino de Santiago. In both instances I felt like I was able to experience the culture of these countries, in a much more intimate way than I have on any of my other travels. But then I think about Italy, where I just spent a week, and I feel like I don’t really know the country. I was even able to stay in someone’s home and chat with some locals and see a few places off the beaten path… but to know Italy, to try to understand it, I need more time. I’m still checking it off my list, still scratching it off my map, but there is more I want to experience there.

And what about Iceland and Denmark, the two countries I “visited” on long layovers at the beginning/end of my travels? I’ve been wanting to write about this idea of the long layover and more about my experiences (and I probably will, in a future post), but for now, I just want to consider the idea of whether I have actually visited these countries.

Some have said that you need to have a unique experience in a place to say that you’ve been there. So I think about Iceland, about my two long layovers: busing out to a hotel at 4am and peering out the window to see a light sky. Sleeping a disjointed few hours in a comped room and then meeting up with a few people I’d met the day before for lunch. Wandering through Reykjavik, touring the Hallgrimskirkja and going up its tower to see a panoramic view of the city. Buying a warm bowl of soup from a food truck, drinking strong coffee in a cafe and writing a blog post, walking along the old harbor. On my second stint in Reykjavik I again walked along the water, for a few hours (I was just coming off the Camino, so walking was the only thing I felt like doing); I found another coffee shop and I ate a hot dog and I could get around some parts of the city without my map.

Then I think about Copenhagen, and I’m not so sure I can check this off of my list. I was in Copenhagen for less than 24-hours; I slept in a hostel and I toured an art museum, but does this count? When I was on the train heading back to the airport, I thought: “I’m in Copenhagen, but just barely.”

And yet, traveling gives you these unique moments and experiences that feel like something. They are so much bigger than the moments in my typical days because they are foreign, because I am far from home, because I got myself on a plane and on a train and down a street in a city in a different part of the world. I had a few moments like these in Copenhagen. They were so regular, and yet, they were also strikingly different. I was walking down Stroget, the main shopping street of the city, and so many people walked down the street with me, bundled up in long puffy coats and thick scarves and wooly hats. The street opened onto a small square and a man sat on a chair strumming a guitar. The music drifted down the street and as I listened to his voice and walked past bright window displays, I saw a large, full moon hanging low in the sky, just in front of me. I had to stop walking, I had to stop and stand against a building and consider where I was. The music and the people and the moon and the fact that I was walking through a city in Denmark.

Later, I wandered through Magasin du Nord, a large Danish department store. I ended up eating dinner in the cafeteria area on the 5th floor; it was a good solution for a (shy) solo-traveler on a winter night. I saw a few ladies sharing a small bottle of wine so I bought one for myself, and as I ate my meal and drank my red wine, I laughed a little at myself. Shouldn’t I be having a different kind of experience? I justified my department store meal with the knowledge that Hans Christian Andersen had, at one point in his life, lived in a small room in this very building. So after my meal, and feeling nice and warm from the wine, I set off to find the room. Except I couldn’t. I think I had the wrong building (I had the right department store… somewhere in Copenhagen there is a Magasin du Nord that has a room that Hans Christian Andersen lived in, I am sure of it). I explored every nook and cranny of that store, convinced that the room must be tucked away in some obscure corner, but finally gave up (I had a similar experience on my first visit to Paris, when I spent several hours hunting for Jim Morrison’s grave in the wrong cemetery).

So, is this an experience? Of course it is. I can’t say that I know Copenhagen and I certainly can’t say that I know Denmark, and yet, I’m always going to have these memories. Of a beautiful voice and a busy street and a full moon. Of wandering around, a little fuzzy from my department store cafeteria wine, searching in vain for Hans Christian Andersen’s room.

For now, Iceland and Denmark “count”. But the great part about traveling is that you get a taste for more. If I never make it back to Copenhagen, then at least I have a story about the time I drank wine and wandered around a department store looking for an author’s room. But now I have a reason to return: among all of the other things to see and experience… I need to find that room.

Department Store Dinner, Copenhagen, Denmark

Dinner in a department store

Twix and Van Gogh and some thoughts on traveling (and life)

January 4, 2015

I’m eating a Twix bar in my bunk bed in Copenhagen (a top bunk, of course); Twix seems to be my comfort food when I’m in foreign places. I only have a little less than a day in Copenhagen, and by the time I arrived this afternoon, the sun was setting. So I figured out how to get from the airport to the train station to the hostel, stashed my bags on my bed and locked up my valuables, and then set off to see the city while there was still a bit of daylight.

But for all of my planning (though really there wasn’t much), I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where to go. My flight had been delayed for an hour in Bologna, so I no longer had time to walk to the art museum I’d wanted to check out. I headed in that direction anyway- what I thought was that direction- only to realize that I couldn’t figure out where I was on my map.

I ended up in a different art museum, 40 minutes before they closed, and didn’t have to pay because entry is free on Sundays. I walked through quickly but paused for a long time in front of a Van Gogh painting, one that he did in the last year of his life while he was in St Remy.

It’s been incredible to think about the last year of my life. In August, after I finished the Camino, I went to St Remy, a small town in Provence, France. I walked the streets that Van Gogh walked, I took in the same views, I looked out the window of his room. And now, today, I’m in Copenhagen, of all places. I found myself in a small art museum that I didn’t know existed, staring at a scene that Van Gogh painted years ago and one that I saw, myself, just months ago.

It makes the world feel a bit smaller. In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t traveled that much. Not when I think about the entire world and of all the places I’ve never been to, and may never get to.

But these recent experiences in Europe? They’ve taught me that the world doesn’t have to feel quite so large and so unknown. There are corners that I can discover, moments that I can experience that feel like they should be impossible… but aren’t.

And these thoughts are stemming not just from the Van Gogh painting, but from being in Italy. I’ll write more about the trip in the days to come, and talk about some of the beautiful things I saw, the amazing things I ate. But really, I think what might stand out about this trip is that it didn’t feel so foreign, or strange. Traveling is still a very big experience for me, and I think it always will be. But the more I travel, and the more I expand on the types of experiences I have, the more that this all feels possible, like it can be an active part of my life. Not just a big trip that I take once every 5 or 10 years.

Is this post making sense? I’m tired and confused about where I am. I know I’m in Copenhagen, I know I’m going home tomorrow, I know that it’s now 2015, but it all feels jumbled and crazy and wonderful and strange. But I think that’s what traveling does. It takes us to a time when we’re blogging from a top bunk, wiping bits of carmel from the Twix bar off of the sheets, listening to guys speaking whispered French from somewhere in the room.

Tomorrow, things go back to normal. But it’s a new year, and I’d like to have more experiences like this: like Italy, where (at least some of the time), I felt like I was settled and home. And Copenhagen, which feels random and exciting. And, for that matter, like Spain, where I could learn how to feel comfortable in a foreign place, on my own.

I’m not sure what 2015 is going to hold for me. Not sure at all: I have no plans, only ideas. And that’s sort of an exciting place to be in.

No Nuts in my Pasta; Italy as a Visitor

December 29, 2014

Since returning from the Camino this summer I’ve been struggling to find the same kind of energy that I had while on my walk through Spain. I’ve found it in small moments: a hike in a park with my Camino pack on my back; an inspiring conversation with an old friend; in live, loud music in a crowded amphitheater; when editing an essay and finding the perfect expression.

But these small moments have been a contrast to entire days full of movement and newness, and I’ve missed all of the life I was living on the Camino.

One way to get it back is to travel. I always suspected this, and it’s been confirmed in the tiny ‘trips’ I’ve taken since the Camino. Driving down to Virginia, out to Cleveland. I’ve soaked up the movement and the company of good friends and family, and I wish I could get more of it.

And this week I am getting more of it. Two days ago I sat in my window seat on a plane that was about to fly me to Copenhagen, and along with a tiny shiver of nervousness, I felt great waves of excitement. I texted a friend in the moments before the plane took off: “Unlike my flight to Iceland, this time I’m going to get a meal!” and “I hope there’s free wine!” (for the record, there wasn’t) and “There’s a tiny mirror next to the food tray!”

It was the excitement of travel, of flying off to a new place, of wondering which movie I would choose to watch, of what food would be served in an aluminum tray, of what I would see when I’d land in a new country.

Copenhagen wasn’t even my destination, but as I waited for an hour in the airport before boarding the connecting flight to Bologna, I was so happy that I would have a longer layover on the way home. It was the most beautiful airport I’d ever been in, with so many wonderful examples of Danish design. And it was thrilling to be somewhere new again. The old Camino excitement was back.

I’ve been in Italy for two days now, but spending time with a friend is a completely different kind of travel experience than going off on my own. I’m being driven around in a car, the language is being spoken for me, menu items translated, free coffee from the local cafe because I’m a visitor from America. And right now I’m lying on a couch with a heavy blanket across my legs, Christmas lights blinking on a tiny tree, music playing from small speakers, the peel of a clementine on the coffee table at my side. This could be a scene from my own life, so it feels a bit surreal that I’m in Italy, in someone’s home. I’m not a pilgrim, I’m not quite a tourist… I suppose I’m a visitor. I don’t think I’ve ever had this type of travel experience before.

But so far, I like it. There was a five minute exchange at lunch today of whether the pasta dish I wanted to try had any nuts in it. Our server talked to the chef who reported that he shaves something into the filling of the pasta that may or may not be a nut, but to be on the safe side he didn’t want me to risk my life, so thought I should order something else. The pasta I DID order was incredible, of course, and assuredly nut-free. I don’t have to worry about trying to explain my allergy in Italian, or that something will be lost in translation. I have someone to show me how to weigh vegetables in the grocery store, I have someone to take me to the best places for coffee, to explain how to order a ‘double’ shot of espresso when one doesn’t quite seem to be enough.

There’s a beauty in doing this all on my own, of figuring it out and learning from the mistakes, and I’m sure I’ll have that in my short time in Copenhagen. But for now, I’ll take this fairly stress-free and more intimate style of traveling: of experiencing Italy as a visitor.