when i went to copenhagen this time around, i saw it in a different way from the way i usually do. over the past year, copenhagen has been a really important but really singularly functioning place for my friends and me. it’s a place where we can buy booze, break some rules, and come back to life in sweden a few hours later. so the most i’ve seen of it are the bars, the sketchy train stations, and the main mall area that contains the liquor stores. that’s it.

my mom and brother and i obviously weren’t in cph to do sketchy things, we were there to be tourists. we were there for the food and the museums and the culture. 

boy, was my dear old mamma in for a surprise. she was expecting this spic-and-span, clean, gorgeous scandinavian city. that’s not what copenhagen is. if you’ve been there, you know what i mean. 

copenhagen is, however, a city teeming and foaming at the mouth with culture. street culture is rampant, and not always in the best of ways. graffiti adorns almost every building, wall, or metal structure. special disposal bins for needles and syringes can be found on most street corners. bicycles are everywhere- and upon them rabid bicyclists that will run your face into the ground if you block their way in traffic. copenhagen is a city of contrasts: adorable cafes packed into dodgy, darkened corners of streets. jewelry stores and modern art galleries with graffiti spread all over the walls. boutiques selling airy, light, hardly-there clothing with bars over the windows. some of the most beautiful people i’ve ever seen walking along the street side-by-side with some of the scariest. some things about the city are absolutely breathtaking- the architecture, for example, or the canal. but every time i would see something that took my breath away i would be brought back down to earth almost immediately by the shouting of neighbors across the street to each other, the ring of a bicycle bell, the scratchy-squeaky sound of a mother hanging her laundry on an old, worn out laundry line. the smell of cigarette smoke, the sight of ash settling on a young girl’s black shoes cautiously like cancerous feathers. 

i felt about copenhagen very similarly to how i felt about berlin. it’s not a perfect city by any means. it’s a city with a rough history and maybe a rough future. but you know what? i’ll take that to a picture-perfect metropolis any day. the huge cities, the scummy floors or murky water or trampled grass or graffiti’d streets, those are the places where stories begin. those are the places where novels are born. if i’m ever a writer, if i can ever get my shit together that much, let me live in a tiny apartment in a crazy city where i can open the windows and hear the sounds of history: a fish merchant yelling to his daughter to take out the trash, the flower delivery truck bringing by summer roses for a long overdue wedding, a father carrying his son on his shoulders and whistling a tune from his boyhood, long since forgotten. let me hear these people with beautiful imperfections and still more beautiful lives, and let me tell their stories. that is my one truest hope, that i can tell their stories.

fucking long shot but uh

if you’re reddish-blonde, have a bit of stubble, and happened to be working at the copenhagen city museum this morning and happened to be wearing a band shirt for “the sad lovers” and happened to make my stomach flip when you smiled at me as i bought a pin 

call me

yeahhh