It doesn't feel like it. Nor does it feel like in three short months I'll be heading back to the US.
While I bitch constantly and day dream heavily over want of an available supply of peautbutter M&Ms, Forever 21, the beach, weather that reaches above 50 degrees (that's above about 10 degrees to all my lovely Euro-ites), driving a car, being around native English speakers, Starbucks, and things costing a third of what they do here, I don't really miss those things as much as I think I do.
I love Denmark. Yes it's cold most the year. And dark. So dark. But today it is beautiful. It is spring time and the sky is blue and cloudless. The trees may be swinging in the wind--not enough for me to say they're swinging violently, just nearly--but they are green and regaining leaves. There is a vase of tulips on the table. The grass is turning color and little white flowers are coming up in abundance.Spring has come to Denmark. I love spring. The smell of earth in the forest, the rebirth of what the snow once hid. At home I relish daffodils and ranunculus, the birds singing in the trees, baby deer prancing in front of cars, and everything fresh again.
Spring is helping to remind me why I love it here.
My neighborhood is an island of tall hedges slowly turning from winter-brown to spring-green; behind them is a hodgepodge of modernist danish design and H. C. Anderson era thatched roves. The forests of beech trees run across low slopes and connect to pastures full of cows eating the new shoots of grass. A pair of swans, real freaking swans, have decided to call the smaller lake home and spend their days drifting luxuriously across the water and hissing in Hyde-like bursts of energy at passers by.
Church bells ring softly from both church and neighboring castle chapel-- obviously unable to be matched they content to echo each other every hour. The cemetery lays still on the crest of a hill, unmovable and ever growing. From the forest trail it is a sea of chestnut and oak trees framing faceless angels and tall stone monuments. The dates are wore away; the remaining names of Jensens and Sørensens covered with moss. It is not a sad place, but a happy one to walk through on a freezing winter afternoon, all blanketed in snow, or on a cool spring morning when the flowers open slowly to the reemerging sun.
The train to Copenhagen takes you through miles of archetypal houses and more sprawling gray lakes. A blur of blue and red stations with towns named Sorgenfri (Sorrow Free), Lyngby, Gentofte, and other unpronounceable combinations of vowels and hard consonants. A slow half hour of business men in suits and grandmothers in furs (because most Danish grandmothers really do wear their furs out), children and young people with bicycles, mothers with giant prams. All dressed smartly in a mixture of H&M the many brands of Magazine and Illium. Silent with head phones, or chatting away in the rhythm-less jumble that is their native language. I made it my goal to understand the crackeling announcements that burst forth from the conductor; but seven months later I'm still left in the dark at an unfamiliar saying, and look to fellow passengers near me to know if the train is hurtling towards death.
Into the center of a dense, thrumming city. Untouched by the destruction the rest of Europe suffered in war, Copenhagen's veins are tiny cobble stone streets where the buildings sag inwards and block out the gray sky. Lakes and bridges, tall dragon's tail towers, and black stones. Depending on which gold capped spire peaks the skyline you can tell which part of the city you're in, though you are never lost by the lakes and their tree lined paths. Huge castles next to diminished looking glass towers. Unexpected dead ends, and brown brick churches with unpronounceable names.
There are little boats at the bright multicolored painting that is Nyhavn--with it's restaurants, wine bars,
The city center and walking streets are a constant buzz of chatter, bike tires squeaking, high heels, and people. Fabulous store front windows selling everything from flowers to underwear--all decorated to entice the passer by and to exemplify Danish ascetic for design and display. Danish design that perfectly describes the city of Copenhagen--a mixture of traditional sensibility and stream-line perfection for the greater good.
The smells of pølser stands and crepes, pubs bustling with the usual patrons even at noon.
Bike lanes and bike bells, and bikers yelling swear words at you.
I would not change anything about this place.
Not for a life's supply of peanut butter M&Ms or all the Starbucks Frapichinos in the world.
