Things I’ll miss… and things I won’t

Every time I decide I’m going to write a blog I get a little scrap of paper and start making notes. Usually they are incomprehensible scribbles that I either can’t remember their context for or just ignore altogether.

For example, on my notes while heading home from Amsterdam at the bottom it just says ‘Seagull stalking me’. I can’t remember why I wrote that…

Anyway, as I was sat in the port of IJmuiden waiting for my ferry, I became all sentimental and wrote down what I will miss about Copenhagen; and more importantly, what I won’t miss. Here goes…







What I’ll miss:

Friends: Surprising one, I know. But yeah, there are of course people that I’ll miss a lot. Others I won’t miss quite so much. That’s about as emotional as you’re getting from me today.





Bikes: What the hell has happened to the world? I come back to the UK and suddenly cycle paths don’t exist. Cycling in Copenhagen was wonderful. It cut down journey time while helping to develop a nation of thunder thighs.





FC Copenhagen: I really drew the long straw on this one. Although I’m still writing for them next year, I won’t be able to regularly attend the matches (a phrase I use in my CV, of course). No, sadly I’m resolved to the occasional pop over for Champions League games, or maybe another biggie if one turns up. The experience at the club this year was incredible, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to touch a national trophy ever again.

Language Acquisition: Well after living a year in Denmark, my Danish is naturally superb. I do believe however that two friends have really helped me develop my language skills further. One is Google Translate: I couldn’t have done it without you, man. The other is everyone’s favourite friend, alcohol!

Pretending I know what Europeans are actually saying: The Danes speak wonderful English, as do the Americans and Australians. Even the Irish give it a good crack. However, I will miss harnessing my translation skills to decipher whatever the hell most Europeans are saying. Be it the Spanish lisp, the French drone or the Italian put-a-vowel-on-the-end-of-every-word infliction, it was nice – especially as a northerner – to be the arbiter of the English language.

Herring: There’s nothing nicer than a pickled herring resting on a bed of rugbrød for breakfast. Yum yum yum.

5-a-side football: Living in Copenhagen can be dangerous for your health. I’ve found the diet and social life is very heavy on the stomach. I’ve put on 4 lbs since January – horrific I know! The only way to keep healthy is to find some sport to do. Well I found it, in an open-age football group playing at 7am on a Wednesday and 8am on a Saturday. I will miss playing. I won’t miss cycling up Gothersgade on a freezing December morning, dodging the drunks and bin men.


What I won’t miss:

The Cold: Bloody hell Denmark you seriously need to get this sorted. It wasn’t that it was so cold I couldn’t move, but it was a long winter last year. In the space of a week over October, Copenhagen became a frozen wasteland. The rains promised for November fell as snow, and it was ceaseless until early February. I truly hated layering up with seven jumpers, t-shirts and a massive coat, to cycle with two pairs of gloves on in the driving rain.

Apologising for being British: This was a common one. Often on a year abroad you are asked where you’re from. Some even tried to guess before I told them. I got France most times, once Argentina, and occasionally American. Thankfully, never Australian. Usually I would have to say “Sorry, I’m from the UK”. It sounds strange, but maybe it’s this British sense of crippling self-loathing that makes me apologise. For I know that when I say I’m British, what I’m actually saying is “let’s hold the rest of this conversation in my language”.

People using ‘party’ as a verb: Right, I have never, in my entire life, liked to ‘party’. I have never wanted to party, go party or even make party. I occasionally like to go out. I enjoy a beer. I even like to go to parties. But I do not party. I’ll dance (terribly). I’ll sing (even more terribly). But I will not party.

Pretending to take an interest in Australians: Bar two, I think the stereotype almost fits. They love it, and I don’t.

Carlsberg: Imagine my utter delight when my mother informs me she’s got some beers in to celebrate my return home. Oh, a nice English beer maybe? Nope: Carlsberg. You can’t avoid it in Denmark. It appears you can’t avoid it in England either.

Going home - Part 2

So where were we? Ah yes, I’d just completed my night in Amsterdam. Luckily I survived all the raucous shit that makes The Hangover so hilarious. I really must calm down.

Anyway, I woke on Thursday morning with some Ukrainian guy snoring in my ear. No, this wasn’t one of those ‘what the hell happened last night’ moments; I was sharing a dorm room with six other guys. Raunchy.

The snoring woke me at 7:00, and I was out of the hostel by 7:10. Amsterdam is just like any other city on a summer’s morn. As I walked across the lush green park outside the museum, two sunburnt tramps casually discussed the problems and dilemmas of everyday life, before one of them left to sleep on a grassy slope.

I decided I would get to the ferry as soon as possible, even though it was departing at 17:00. With two bags strapped to me and a bike beside, I knew it could take an Everest ascent effort to get to the port, which was not in Amsterdam as advertised on the internet. Oh no, the ferry terminal was in fact in IJmuiden, a village 30km outside the capital. At this point, I was wondering why I hadn’t just gone with easyjet.

The solution for me was to get a speedboat to a harbour close to the port, and walk from there. I sat roasting under the glorious morning sun waiting for the speedboat. It came, and I couldn’t get on because it was too full. Half an hour later, having befriended some Australians, I boarded a different boat.

Now, these Australians. Why is it, wherever you are in Europe, an Australian pops up out of nowhere? These four guys were actually quite nice – surprising I know. I got chatting to them about Europe and Holland and then sport. I mentioned cricket, and got a blank look from all four sets of eyes. “Nah mate, we follow AFL.” Of course you do. Ever since England beat Australia on their own turf, any Australian I have met suddenly doesn’t know what the concept of cricket is. Instead, Aussie Rules Football takes precedent in the conversation, so that I my only contribution of any relevance is to say the referees look ridiculous when they do that pointy thing (you know what pointy thing I mean).

Cricket has become extinct in the average Aussie’s vocabulary. To even try and mention Alastair Cook would be an invitation for complete social rejection. No, we talked AFL for half an hour, me only occasionally able to mention the C word when they spoke about the stadiums.

As I said, they seemed an OK bunch of chaps. However, one soon turned out to be what I like to call ‘Australian’. The others could almost have been European, but this one guy – I can’t remember his name but it was probably Ricky or Bozza – insisted on using the phrase ‘hanging out the back of’ almost every two minutes.

Now, I seem to remember there being some controversy during the winter about a Sky Sports presenter being a complete knob and suggesting Jamie Redknapp ‘was hanging out the back of’ quite a lot of females. As comedian Alan Davies said at the time: “what kind of idiot thinks his mates respect him when he says that kind of thing?” And, I have to agree. Ricky or Bozza or whatever his name was, in that one repeated phrase, confirmed to me that he was a complete tosser. Richard Keys was rightly sacked: I wanted to throw Bozza overboard.

I eventually left the speed boat and found my way to the ferry terminal, where I was told I would have to wait four hours to board. No worries, I had my book and it was sunny. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise just how sunny it was, and I’m still feeling the effects of a peeling left ear five days later.

The Ferry

I got up off my arse eventually and went to take a good look at the ship. My heart skipped a beat when I saw ‘Princess Seaways – København’ painted on it. I hurriedly dived into my pockets to find my booking confirmation – there was surely no way I had booked a boat back to Denmark… thank God, no, I was just being thick. I was definitely going to Newcastle. I soon boarded the boat.

When I booked my ticket, I was told I could take my bike and store it in the secure bicycle compartment on ship. What I didn’t know was that this ‘secure’ compartment was to be the handrail of the boarding ramp that a thousand motorbikes and cars would speed past. I was sceptical, and so lashed my bike as hard as possible to the rail, like so.


I of course went straight to my cabin upon leaving the car decks. An inside room with no windows – lovely. Importantly it had a bathroom, meaning I wouldn’t have to roam the ship looking for toilet facilities. However, the bathroom wasn’t fitted very well, as this photo demonstrates. The gap between toilet and loo paper was a good meter. I could reach – thankfully – but imagine an infirm old lady stretching her arm across the bathroom, mauve trousers round her ankles. She’s almost gets to the paper when suddenly she slips forward and bangs her head on the sink, mauve trousers still round her ankles. Just saying…

I went for a mooch around the ship after a little kip and a real good top-up of sun cream. In my desperate hunger I scuttled over to the ‘Sea Shop’ to buy some basic supplies. There was no bread. There was no pre-made food. There was only bumper size sacks of Daim bars for €20. Whoever needs €20 worth of Daim bars I do not know. What struck me most however was a very exclusive special offer for bottled water. €2 for still water. The ‘special offer’ sign made me wonder how much the water was before they kindly dropped the price.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the evening either on deck with some old curmudgeons or in my room. I finished my book while quaffing my luxurious still water, and fell asleep with chocolate smeared all over my face, submerged in a mountain of Daim bar wrappers.

I opened my eyes to a generic wake-up call to all passengers: “The ship will be arriving in Newcastle in two hours” – well let me sleep for two more bloody hours then!

Going home - Part 1

Easyjet fly from Copenhagen to Manchester twice a day, seven days a week. It takes one hour and 40 minutes to get from Denmark to the UK, and costs no less than £50. Well, I am currently sitting in a windowless ferry cabin in Amsterdam, coming to the end of a three-day journey to get home. I think I made the wrong choice.

It all sounded so simple at the time of booking. Because my bike is too old and frigid to let me cycle all the way to Amsterdam, instead I changed the ferry booking and got a train ticket to Holland: direct. I booked a cheap room so as to have one glorious night in a new city, and in a sense completely forgot the wonders of aviation.

I was all set. I had a rucksack strapped to my back and one on my front, walking my bike beside me. A walk from my apartment to Copenhagen’s central station usually takes 20 minutes. 45 minutes after I set off, I finally arrived, exhausted and annoyed. I always get annoyed when I leave anywhere: the place, the friends, the relaxed stance to street prostitution. So as usual I sat on a train platform with my bike and my bags, peeved.

I was of course happier when the train arrived, and even more delighted when I got a whole cabin to myself. As it was an overnight train, I booked a bed in a luxurious cabin with free tea and coffee and biscuits and a buffet cart and ironed sheets. Well, actually, of course I didn’t. I booked a ‘travel seat’ in a room with five other ‘seats’, no electricity, no air conditioning and a faulty light fitting.

But no, this was fine. I had my book in my hand and was ready to tackle some Brontë. Of course, about an hour into the journey I was getting tired. I rubbed my eyes a few times and was drifting to sleep when suddenly I sneezed pretty much everywhere. I realised my eyes were swollen and my nose was running. Yep – less than 30 miles from Copenhagen and the pollen of Denmark’s wonderful rural landscape had already infiltrated my pathetic excuse for an immune system.

The occasional sneeze and snot trickle lasted until dark, when I began to drift in and out of sleep. Now, I was happily prepared for the fact that 15 hours on a chair was not going to be the most comfortable of snoozes, but when I finally knocked out we apparently crossed the German boarder. Just gone midnight, I was rudely awoken by an enormous figure bearing over me from the doorway. “Blach blach blach!” he shouted at me and another guy who had joined my cabin. I was petrified. The other man handed over a laminated piece of card, so I understood this gargoyle-like German policeman wanted to see my passport. “I give you my passport, you give me a pacemaker OK?” He looked sceptically at it – as they always do – and reluctantly gave it back to me – as they damn right always do.

The rest of the night went relatively smoothly, and I arrived in Amsterdam happy enough. I eventually found my room – shared – in the south of the city and departed to find something to do.

When I told a friend a few weeks ago – well, not really a friend, more of one of those people you end up talking to at a party – that I would be going to Amsterdam for one night, he said it would be “wild”, and enviously looked at me.

Now, what on earth did my friend mean by this? Sure, Amsterdam’s a pretty groovy place with its canals and bicycles and – dare I say it – cheese. But hey, there’s more to do in Amsterdam than eat cheese, as I found out. First, I went to the Van Gough museum, before heading for the Heiniken Brewery. Ha, crazy eh?

Anyway, it was getting late so I sat in a park and read for a bit before having a look at the old Olympic Stadium in the city. There I ate some food in the Stadium. I know; it doesn’t get much wilder than that.

The next day I headed to the speedboat that would take me to my ferry. My head was still hazy from all that cheese and art the day before.

So anyway, that was Amsterdam. Part two – my amazing ferry adventure – will follow…

Relationship crisis

Two weeks ago my bike broke, putting a serious strain on our relationship. After a change of back wheel, gear cog and chain, I was allowed to cycle her home again, but something had changed.

Indeed, I noticed that changing gear was different, likening it to a new haircut that made her look far less attractive. Actually, with the clicking noise that continually comes off the chain now, it’s as though she’s had a nose job operation and when she speaks you can hear air whistling through the nostrils. It’s really annoying.

Anyway after a fortnight I’ve gotten used to it and my love for the old bike started to return. So, yesterday I went for a reasonable 30km ride – nothing to what I will be doing daily if I cycle to Amsterdam this summer.

The Sun was low and the breeze was up, and everything felt great in the world once again. I was at one with my bike, until – cycling past Christiania – clang! Something gave way on the back wheel.

As I dismounted and carried my bike onto the pavement, I made eye contact with a pedestrian passing by. She gave me one of those ‘that didn’t sound good’ kind of looks. And indeed she was right. As you can see from the picture, the axis on which the wheel turns has collapsed in on itself. Well, you can’t really see it – but that hairline fracture on the right hand side is what has buggered this relationship up.

Of course it looks like nothing, a bit like the boil that suddenly sprouts on your girlfriend’s upper lip looks like nothing. But soon it grows bigger and bristly hairs start protruding out of it. This problem needs fixing before it’s too late.

I tried to continue cycling but the back wheel began to wobble. This is going to cost a fortune.

So my predicament: it’s Sunday morning and I can’t get to a bike shop before tomorrow. I have breathing space. I feel as though I’ve just been told she’s been cheating on me, and this is my sulk period. Tomorrow I will face the music and sort this relationship out.

I have two options. One is to mend the bike – replacing the wheel – and stomach the cost. However, what’s not to say the same situation won’t happen again as I’m heading into Hamburg? My second option is to get rid of the bike: dump her. We’ve had a good run – nearly 9 months in fact – and her brakes are loosening and her washers are rusting. She’s getting old, tired and – on account of the back wheel – wobbly.

So, do I stick with my faithful yet draining old bint with a boil on her lip, or trade her in for a leggy 21-year-old Danish blonde?

Rear Window

I’m sat at my desk right now trying desperately to do work from my apartment. It’s 9:30 on a Wednesday evening, so we can assume all the working people of Copenhagen are at home. In front of my desk is a window. Through my window is the street below. At the other side of my street is an almost identical block of flats to mine, as this photo demonstrates (snow not included).

I’m now staring at these windows across my street. Some have lights on, some don’t. There are even some candles on the top left windowsill that looks like some saucy mood is trying to be set up there. All these lights, and yet no people. I can see twelve separate living establishments, but there’s no one in them.

I’m beginning to think Hitchcock’s film Rear Window was a bit of an exaggeration. No one is playing the piano; there isn’t a shifty looking bloke on the ground floor in a trilby; and I can see no evidence of any scantily clad actress-to-be lunging up and down while cleaning the fridge.

This is an outrage. Come on Copenhagen you boring city – what is the point of me trying to pry into your vacuous void of a life if you don’t do anything exciting to fill it?

The best I’ve got at the minute is one dark window on the third floor with an occasional blue light illuminating the chasm of boredom in front of it. It’s the telly, of course. Heaven forbid anyone do anything amusing for my benefit.

Good lord! OK so this is genuine. Having written ‘for my benefit’, I looked up from my desk and saw a woman – relatively young as well – hitching up her pants on the third floor directly opposite me! My heart honestly skipped a beat then. Maybe I should take off my shirt in return…

Nah too risky – she’s gone now anyway. Probably to the sex dungeon she part-owns below the bike sheds. The old couple above with the mood candles are stirring though. Granddad is looking attentively at something in the middle of the two windows, while Grandma keeps popping in and out. Oh, she’s gone to light more candles.

Granddad’s got up now. Suppose it’s been seven minutes since he went to the toilet. I think he was sitting by a computer. The flat next to the oldies’ has metal blinds on the windows. How dare they – don’t they know I’m trying to peek into their lives?

What was I blabbering on about earlier? This is great! OK, if I stick my head out of the window and look left, the next building has a flat with three windows – all with plants on the sills. What a posh tart. Oh look, and he’s got a real lampshade as well.

Oh, Granddad’s back. That porn film must have downloaded by now then.

Well apparently there’s more to Copenhagen than I thought. Although to be honest if it wasn’t for that brief glimpse of female thigh I’d probably not be saying that.

Relationship issues

I have a major relationship crisis at the moment. On Monday I was cycling in the east of Copenhagen when I heard a loud clang below my feet. I tried to continue pedalling but my bike was having none of it. In a few seconds I was by the side of the road, my hands covered in oil, trying to figure out what had happened.

It appears buying a 20-year-old bike is not smartest thing to do. My gear cog on the back wheel had disintegrated, falling onto its axis and basically making the bike uncyclable (definitely a word).

So, yesterday I took the bike to my local bike shop. In Copenhagen bike shops are like pubs or newsagents: everyone’s got a local. Mine is just across the road from the flat, which is lovely. Anyway, I wheeled the poor wounded animal over to the shop and let the guys have a look at it.

"She used to be obedient."

I now realise what it must feel like when you take your car to the mechanic only for the guy to take a sharp intake of breath and basically inform you the thing is buggered. My bike was completely rodgered in that respect.

The verdict of ten minutes poking and prying: the cog would have to be replaced. Now, this is a problem with a bike almost as old as you are – no one produces parts for it anymore. I have five gears on the cog at the back; unfortunately five-gear cogs are unheard of in the modern age of ipads and sexually transmitted infections. The smallest available was a seven-gear cog.

‘That’s fine’, I said, ‘just whack it on’. Unfortunately when we messed around with it, it appeared seven cogs would be too big to fit between the wheel and the frame of the bike. The solution: change the wheel. I realised this was going to be a bit of a fiddle. I left the guys to it and went to the laundry. When I got back, we found out the chain wasn’t long enough, so I got a new one.

Anyway, 650 Danish Kroner later (apparently £81), and I got my bike back. And you know what: something’s changed.

It doesn’t purr anymore as I glide down the road, nor do the gears change freely. To make matters worse, there is an annoying clicking sound coming from somewhere below my arse. I can’t figure out where it’s coming from, but to me it sounds as if the bike just doesn’t want to move.

These suspicions have doubled since I realised that when changing gear the chain rattles like hell. All this noise is putting a serious strain on our relationship. I used to be able to pick the thing up and go for a spin, no problem. She used to be obedient. Now, I have to negotiate a high enough gear just to get off the starting blocks.

The problem is I can’t do anything about it. I’ve tried fiddling but there just isn’t any way of sorting this problem out. It’s like when your girlfriend comes back with a new haircut, and you realise you don’t like her as much as you thought you did. You suggest trimming the fringe or pining it back, but whatever you do it just isn’t the same anymore.

To make matters worse, imagine you’ve booked a two-week long holiday with your new freakish-looking girlfriend that you can’t get out of. I haven’t a clue how I’m going to manage cycling to Amsterdam in June with this horrible, whinging old hag between my legs.

New shampoo

As people who know me are well aware, I am the ultimate 21st Century metrosexual man. I own top of the range hair straighteners; I read FHM magazine on the toilet; I shout “she’s fit” at passers by on the bus; and of course I moisturise thoroughly after masturbation.

Sad to say, I am not actually this idealised god of a man. My neck isn’t as thick as my head, nor do my pecks strain to burst out of my t-shirt. Instead, I like the non-commercialised things in life: bread, cheese and 2-in-1 shampoo.

Maybe it’s a self-respect thing, but I genuinely don’t have the confidence or tenacity to strut around showing off my CK boxers waistband off to the world. Therefore, when I am forced to buy a brand, I get very annoyed…

Last week I was forced to buy brand, thanks to Netto’s disgraceful policy of not catering exactly to my niche in the market.

This tag line here on my new bottle of shampoo denotes everything that’s wrong with modern marketing, and the gullible fools that lap it up in the vain hope that the words on the product are somehow gospel. ‘Healthy looking hair in 10 days’ – there’s no quote marks, or expert scientist with his thumbs up stood next to it in guarantee. There’s not even a tiny asterisk in the corner leading you to even tinier writing on the back of the bottle confirming the statement is in fact bollocks. It’s an irrelevant statement that will never be challenged.

And yet, this little quote – critical as I am of it – still did enough to entice me to buy this particular range of shampoo. For it seems Copenhagen does little to cater for the simple man, unless you want so simple you may as well just scrub a soap bar into your skull. The Netto I was in last week offered ‘Pantene Wild Minx’, ‘Lynx Ferocious’ and of course something along the lines of ‘L’Oréal Fruit Infusion’. It’s the same old crap on every bottle: you smell great, you look great; hey, you even feel great!

Netto deal with the other end of the market too, but sadly an industrial sized white bottle with the word ‘Shampoo’ on the front and an ingredients list of simply ‘Shampoo, yeah?’ on the back does not really appeal to me. I need a good old 2-in-1: quick, easy and effective.

Sadly I had to punt with ‘Repair and Protect’ – whatever that really means, as there was no simple, economic – yet not completely Orwellian – product available. I’ve been using this shampoo a week now, and I must say my hair doesn’t feel any different; although I do still have to wait three more days to get that desired effect.

I fully expect to wake up Monday morning with a John Travolta slick back barnet, spring out of bed; check myself in the mirror, click my fingers and point at my reflection in a ‘still got it, kid’ kind of a way, and swagger down Strøget with my leather jacket cast nonchalantly over my right shoulder; arse bulging out of my tight pants, CK boxers on show.

But for the time being I have to remain dismayed with the over-priced shampoo I’ve bought. Apparently this shampoo helps protect against styling damage. This is interesting, as my styling approach boils down to an ‘attack hair with towel until sufficiently dried’ practice. It works for me, but it’s probably not the ‘safest’ way to dry your hair.

Honestly, this bottle just makes me feel guilty about apparently not being able to maintain a healthy head of hair. ‘Repair and Protect’? Well how bad is my hair? It’s not a car with an MOT problem, it’s hair.

On the back: ‘Do you have hair that is dry/damaged and more prone to split ends?’ – the answer: I really don’t know! But you suggesting this to me makes me think ‘yes, I probably do’. Suddenly the bottle is in my shopping basket next to the bread and cheese (non-brand) and I’ve sold myself out to a day-time TV advert with fake eyelashes, heavy blusher and some pathetically camp guy stylist claiming he offers ‘salon products without the salon prices’.

Do I want to look sensational? Not particularly. But will this shampoo guilt me into thinking I look like crap? You bet it will…