cimorene

I was there with six female classmates, our teacher and the school's dapper little vice president, and our Finnish co-participants from two other community colleges elsewhere in Finland from our collaborative anti-racism project.

Our teacher used the reward of this "mostly free" trip to lure us into signing up for the project. Since grant money was involved, I think we all figured the trip had some official relationship to the source of said money, although I don't think anyone told us exactly what that source was. It turned out that even though we had to pay only 50€, we also had to find meals on our own ~6 times, so it wasn't exactly cheap. It also turned out that the trip wasn't official at all.

The president of one of the other schools booked our schedule for the trip, which included a 4-hour walking tour on Tuesday, a museum visit on Thursday, and two visits to two different Danish følkhøgeskolor (sort of community colleges, but they don't confer any degrees)... apparently bc all 3 of our schools ARE this type of school (the rest of the Nordic countries having borrowed the idea from Denmark after they invented it in the 19th century), but I'm not sure why this connection was supposed to be so exciting that we had to extensively tour TWO of them, taking up an entire day of vacation time - with the exception of the lunch we were forced to find and scarf in 45 minutes on our own, and at our own expense, in between.

He ALSO made a big deal about how we were "meeting an EU Minister" on Thursday and how official it was and how we had to dress up, so a lot of people did - like, wearing heels and stuff - which they then had to wear to hike across Copenhagen, around 1:30 of compulsory hiking, and it turned out that the "Minister" was actually a young, casually-dressed employee in the public relations department of the independent office for Nordic intergovernmental cooperation. We sat in the basement of that building and were given coffee and shown a powerpoint, while she outlined for us how the governments of different Nordic countries have historically cooperated with each other in a couple of different ways. She was less dressed up than many of the people in our group. :| :| :|

We were given our freedom at dinnertime Tuesday and Wednesday, from 2-7pm Thursday, and up until 1:30 on Friday, so I think that by visiting Christiania and one museum we actually did pretty well. Stuff happened:

Had vegan food from a homecooking potluck restaurant thingy place in the hippie independent region Christiania on Thursday afternoon. My graphic designer classmate and I both wanted to go there, and several of our other friends tagged along, but two of them got scared because they had somehow failed to grasp from our numerous explanations in advance that there would be a lot of pot and hippies, which are apparently ~super scary~ things. The food was delicious.

Saw the Little Mermaid statue.

Visited the Danish National Museum on Thursday. Wandered around inside by myself and was really impressed by the Danish history part. There's a room full of enormous Viking runestones and a lot of other archaeological things going back to Denmark's prehistory - Viking longships and human sacrifices and now-extinct animal species from a bog, weapons and armor and coins and a ton of stuff from medieval churches, an awesome statue of St George and the dragon where the dragon is making a hilarious face. Also saw a couple of temporary exhibits which were cool. Then I went to the "ethnographic" wing - not on purpose, because I expected it to be enraging just from the name, but I kinda got lost, and it was. Also a bit smelly and a lot of stuff severely poorly labeled. I get the feeling there may have been some budget cutbacks in the museum, and the Danish history part is really the only part that's been safe.

Was severely underwhelmed by the hostel (Generator, a chain). Our 6-person room was very small; my mattress & duvet had suspicious stains. There was a faint smell. There was NO SOAP. The reception desk, which is staffed by young foreigners from all over whom I STRONGLY suspect are underpaid, sells things like toothpaste and soap for an extremely steep price. They also rent hairdryers for an extremely steep price. They also don't rent hot water kettles, but offered to SELL us hot water, one cup at a time, from their bar, at a cost of 5kr, around 66 cents in €. The bar is open all night and there's a terrace attached which was under our window, and it produced wall-rattling horrible eurodance music and really loud conversation all day and all evening till quite late.

Thursday I was out with two classmates trying to find a restaurant with a bar that wouldn't be disgusting, too crowded or too loud, and we failed and had basically given up and were walking back towards the hostel in (hungry) defeat, when we stopped to read the menu posted outside a café. We were debating why it would be open at 11 pm if it was a cafe and not a bar (because we wanted a bar) when the barista ran out into the street and invited us in in Danish. We wandered in in confusion, kind of like... okay, well at least it's warm inside, whatever.

Only then did we realize it was a hookah bar, which it didn't say on the outside - neither in the name, nor on the menu, even though the INSIDE menu was half hookah stuff, and the first half at that. And everyone else in it was a Turkish man. The friendly barista went away and another man with a :|-face came to take our order. Two of us ordered lattes and he said that all of us would have to order something because we couldn't just "take up a table with just one person ordering" (the cafe was half empty, and we came in because your bro loudly asked us to? Twice???). Our other friend didn't want any more coffee (she wanted beer or nothing), so he said that in that case we couldn't have a table so we left.

THEN Ukrainian friend - who HAD in fact ordered a drink, mind - said that we shouldn't eat there because it was a Turkish restaurant and there were "only foreign women there" (there were no women at all in the restaurant except us, idk what she was talking about) and they therefore "probably wanted to kidnap us" and "might put something in our drinks". Apparently we should accept her expert knowledge of How Turkish Men Operate on the basis of the fact that she is Ukrainian, which is sort of kind of near Turkey, so therefore she knows all about it because "Turkish people come to the Ukraine sometimes."

"Um, did you pay any attention to the whole anti-racism education that was the entire reason we came to Copenhagen in the first place?" asked Mexican friend, laughing.

Ukrainian insisted that it wasn't RACISM that caused her to automatically suspect all Turkish men of wanting to kidnap white women, it's just experience and FACT because they're KNOWN for doing that. We both kind of stared at her. I was like "Uh, definitely not all Turkish men can possibly be out to kidnap foreign women all the time. That IS racist and it doesn't make sense." And she was like NO IT'S NOT IT'S JUST THAT THAT'S THE WAY THINGS ARE! THEY COULD PUT SOMETHING IN OUR DRINKS! So then Mexican friend was like "Sorry, I can't agree," firmly, and ended the discussion.

Except THEN we get back to the Hostel of Grossness and my Mexican friend went to hang out in the disco-bar with another classmate, while I and the Ukrainian both stayed in our room. And I then listened to her OBVIOUSLY telling this entire story with long ranting about how unreasonable we were to call her a racist, first to our Russian roommates, then over Skype to her husband.

Typical butthurt racists, making twenty times as much fuss over being called out as the actual WOMAN OF COLOR who had to shut her down. And she called her out gently and politely! She actually APOLOGIZED while doing it, multiple times! UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH

So. That was Thursday night. Friday I was awakened early by my Russian roommates giggling. Then one of them said "Cim, look, there's a man in here!"

I was like "Bleh? What?"

There was in fact a strange man sleeping in the sixth bed in our room. He had not been there when we went to sleep. His shoes were on the floor mixed in with our shoes. He had appeared in the middle of the night. We went through this in stage whispers with our Mexican and Ukrainian classmates as well, then I texted our teacher:

ME: Teacher come and look there is some strange man in our room - #___
ME: He's slept here all night without us noticing anything.
TEACHER: What???
ME: Yes. To come, to come! We woke up and here he was!
TEACHER: I'm getting dressed, just a sec

Excuse my grammar (it was in Finnish); I was tired. So she walked in the door, the Russians (who had actually both gotten up and SHOWERED before noticing him - he was in the top bunk) pointed at him, and she went, "I'm going to get Reception." She walked out.

2 minutes later she walked back in followed by a receptionist saying, "That's not possible" in a snooty voice.

"Look!" said our teacher, and pointed at the bunk.

Reception did a double take, his eyes kind of bugged, he whipped around and stared when the dude's shoes were pointed out. He asked us if we knew anything about the dude and we all said he wasn't there when we went to sleep, and we only noticed him upon waking up. Then he shook the guy by the arm and woke him up and was like "Excuse me, what are you doing here? I have to ask you to leave, this is not your room and it's a female room."

So the guy woke up and said - I still can't believe it - that he got in with a working keycard GIVEN TO HIM BY THE NIGHT RECEPTIONIST at 2 am, because at 2 am when he was drunk and had tried to go to his OWN room, there had been some stranger sleeping in it. He'd gone to reception and the receptionist had "solved" it by GIVING HIM A KEY TO OUR ROOM, which, by the way, had been fully booked and pre-paid so was COMPLETELY OURS regardless of the empty bed (which, however, reception knew about), and which was also single-sex female (which reception ALSO knew about). The teacher and the receptionist both asked us all if we were okay. We all said we were. The guy apologized and followed the receptionist away meekly.

I betaed an angry letter of complaint that Ukrainian classmate wrote to the hostel's parent company.

After that I went to Designmuseum Denmark with my Mexican classmate. It was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing. I am now a big fan of Danish modernist designer Hans J. Wegner, whose life's ambition was to design "just one good chair".