The Unbearable Loveliness of Being
Updated: Sep 7
Or, a list of everything I have been doing, living, and loving in Copenhagen lately
3 weeks have gone by and I have gotten over the OHMYGODEVERYTHINGISNEW phase and the WHYARETHEYSPEAKINGTOMEINDANISH phase and have firmly settled into the time when I can be attentive and appreciative of little moments and details of my daily life here. Yet, everything is still weird enough that objects or experiences that might have felt ordinary at home feel newly discovered. The following blog post is a mishmash of all the things that I loved enough in the past week to stop and record. They lack a common theme, other than they made me stop or grin. I wanted to capture them before they just became part of my routine.
turning 22
I love birthdays, but that wasn’t always the case. Grappling with mortality isn’t the strong suit of any five-year-old, but I was particularly bad at it. I have a real core memory of weeping to my mother and asking, “If I didn’t celebrate my birthday, would I still have to get older?” Well, as it turns out, yes—because here we are, 22 years young, and I had to get up and stretch my hamstrings in the middle of typing that last sentence. I am not sure what changed. Maybe it was realizing getting older meant I could read all the salacious Young Adult books in the library without catching an eyebrow from the librarian, maybe I found my love for the perennial celebration through realizing I had the power to force my friends to come to elaborately themed parties. Point being, I’ve come around, and I’ve come around hard. I LOVE BIRTHDAYS, and it just so happens that mine was this week.
Before I came to Copenhagen, I was a little worried that I wouldn’t make enough friends in time to have a properly social birthday, but boy, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. We biked to my birthday dinner at Absalon through rain so hard that we arrived looking like you could've wrung us out. Afterward, we all sat on the floor of my room at the kollegium, listening to music, drinking, and talking deeply, our knees touching and our palms pressed to the sticky floor. I felt so happy and satisfied, surrounded by my new friends whom I feel like I’ve known forever already, and my old friends who've acquired a new glow in the context of a different country. We went up to the rooftop and danced to ABBA. It was still warm out. I watched the last ten seconds of September third slip into the fourth, and my 22nd year on this earth began.
bmo
The Danish panacea. The holy grail. The BMO. Hungry? Bread with cheese. Breakfast? Bread with cheese. Sad? Bread with cheese. Danish? Bolle med ost. I feel like the simplicity of this food staple means that there is nowhere for mediocre ingredients to hide. Before the BMO was in my life the concept of combining butter and cheese on bread was immoderate and ridiculous but now it makes sense. It still feels too excessive to be an everyday staple, but if you deploy it like you would a protein bar, it does for your blood sugar what a pit stop does for an F1 car and you'll be back on track at deeply irresponsible speeds.
big coats
There is nothing more powerful, more sexy, than hiding 90% of your body under a massive coat. The level of mystique and anonymity you feel should be studied. In hot dry California one doesn’t casually bust out a trench coat because people would absolutely assume you were hiding a bomb under it or something. Here, everyone wears them. I finally bought my winter coat (got it at Arket) and I truly feel assimilated now.
the language barrier
Most Danish people speak english better than you do, and when I try to speak Danish I feel one glottal stop away from retching, but I am so determined to learn to speak it. I find, though, when you leave the nucleus of Indre By, the probability you’ll encounter the language barrier goes up exponentially.
Earlier this week I went to get my nails done in a random little salon up in Nørrebro, one of Copenhagen's more culturally diverse and colorful neighborhoods. The woman who greeted me was a very physically imposing but jovial Russian lady who gestured to the chair. I sat. She had the type of hands that NBA players dream of, and she looked like she could have palmed a basketball (and dunked it for that matter) with ease. She gingerly took up one of my fingers and started in on it with incredible agility and dexterity. Pretty soon we were chatting, but it was quickly apparent that she was on one side of the proverbial language barrier, and I was firmly on the other. That might have dispirited lesser beings, but she did not seem to be a person stopped by such things. Block by block we dismantled that barrier, absolutely nailing the introductions, where we were from (she wanted to know if I had been to Hollywood) and then moved on to more conversationally nuanced topics, and it quickly became clear that my broken Danish, non existent russian, and her fledgeling english had reached an impasse.
The real kicker was when I told her that my favorite hobby recently was people watching. I saw her take a nearly imperceptible pause, during which I realized that might not have translated well and she likely debated if she was cutting the cuticles of a serial ogler or a psychopath. I spent the rest of the appointment stringing barbed wire across the top of our language barrier by trying to explain what people watching was in a way that didn’t make me seem like a massive creep. I'm certain I failed miserably. Still, I left feeling pleased that we managed to connect in some way even though we didn’t understand every word. Studying abroad, I’m learning that dismantling the language barrier is always worth the attempt, even if all you manage to do is rearrange the bricks.
going to dance class
I will do a more extended blog post about this later, so don't get your leotard in a twist, but I have been going to many ballet classes at København Danser Studios. It is the kind of studio you feel privileged to set foot in, the kind of teachers who are real artists and professionals. More later on Copenhagen ballet, but just know it's high on the things I've been loving. If you're looking for a spot to dance in Cph, look no further.
ice cream with friends you love
Does this even need explaining? Dairy is just a vessel for joy, love, and togetherness.
biking in the rain
This might be a little bit like me telling myself that I love this so that I can trick myself into really actually liking it, but there is something transformative about biking through a rainstorm, water making your vision blur, white knuckling, feet slipping, and jeans sticking to your thighs. Convinced you? Yeah me either.
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