Copenhagen

Champions of Breakfast

January 10, 2011January 12, 2011 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

There are so many things that France does right. The wine, the food & the healthcare. The 35-hour work week & the apéritif. Some things about living in France have just been too easy to get used to. The fact that in France, bad grammar is a worse offense than profanity just makes me feel at home. I can no longer sit down to a meal without a glass of red wine, or go without an espresso after lunch - especially when lunch can often be around 2 hours long. So many things about life in France are - yeah, I'll say it - better than that in the United States. But, you already knew that, right? It's hardly a secret. People here have longer life lines for a reason. That's not to say that I don't ever have a few complaints. Believe me... I do. (You knew that was coming, right?) Sometimes, it's just a matter of homesickness, or missing something from home...

Coffee Cups & Campgrounds: The Road Back to France

September 30, 2009December 21, 2018 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"'Mid pleasures and palaces through we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like Home." -J. Howard Payne"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it." -George Moore "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." -T.S. Eliot* * * I stared out the window, watching Germany roll by as we made our way to Freiburg. "You know," I said to Olivier. "I can't recall the last time that I had a decent cup of coffee." He pulled on his beard as he steered our little Renault up the highway, recalling all of the cups of coffee we'd drunk over the past days.Then he said, "We haven't had a decent cup of coffee since we left France." It was true. I had some drip coffee from a bakery with my kanelgiffel in Copenhagen. We made some nasty instant sludge while camping in Sweden and had some watered-down American style joe with our Frühstück in...

Miles of Berlin Before We Sleep

August 20, 2009December 2, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"Gotta go over the Berlin Wall I don't understand it.... I gotta go over the wall I don't understand this bit at all...." -Sex Pistols, Holiday in the Sun * * * The world is full of great cities, each of them considered "great" for reasons all their own. I haven't seen them all and there's a good chance that I never will, but I've seen a few. I've been rained on in London. I've stepped in Parisian doggie doo on my way to the Eiffel Tower. I've drunk sweet, sweet Guinness in Dublin. I've done a shitty Sean Connery imitation in Edinburgh. I have yet to argue with a NYC cab driver, but it's on my list of clichés to act out. Then there's Berlin. Sure, I consumed sausages, beer and sauerkraut in Berlin, so there's one more big city cliché checked off on the list, but there's so much more to it. I went crazy in Berlin. I walked around slack-jawed, laughed, learned, cried and shook my fist at Berlin while...

Copenhagen, Part 2: Nothing is Rotten in the State of Denmark

August 7, 2009December 2, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

“Traveling expands the mind rarely” -Hans Christian Andersen “My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident.” -Hans Christian Andersen “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” -Marcellus, Hamlet scene iv * * * It only took one day for me to decide that Copenhagen was my new favorite place in the world and that absolutely nothing was rotten in the state of Denmark as far as I could tell. The second day there only assured me that I was right.Of course, I didn't need that assurance, but you get the point.Since we were there as tourists, we were obligated to make a trip to see The Little Mermaid statue at the harbor at Langelinie. No, this was not Disney shit - what I'm talking about here is a statue based on the original Hans Christian Andersen story.First, we had to make a trip near the Royal Theater opera house to catch the boat that would take us to the...

Copenhagen, Part 1: Entering the Gene Pool

July 24, 2009December 2, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

It didn't take long for Olivier and I to make the drive from Hamburg to Copenhagen. That's one thing that I still get a kick out of when it comes to living in Europe - just drive for a couple of hours and instead of crossing state lines, you cross borders into another country, where the language changes and the road signs become meaningless, crazy looking words.In France, Olivier and I both understand the road signs. In Germany, I could make out a few while Olivier could make out the rest of them.In Denmark, we were both lost.Luckily, everyone there speaks such perfect English, that it doesn't really matter.Score: 1 for Denmark.We arrived at the place where we would be staying. We had made a reservation while we were still in France. We walked up to the front door and found a note with Olivier's name on it telling us to go inside.Then we found a path to our room...