Copenhagen: In which I attempt a solo pub crawl (and revel in a spectacular failure)

Okay, I confess.

I am a lush.

A sot. A tippler. An inebriate. A drunk. Somewhere in the 3-year gap between college and mid-twenties, alcohol became my indisputable drug of choice.

And boy, we've had some good times.

But there's no point in equivocating. For reasons both obvious and personal, my fondness for drink has evolved from entertaining to increasingly problematic. And while I don't much feel like sharing the gory details in a public forum, I will say this: the drinking has gotten old. And it doesn't seem worth the stress on my health anymore.

Now I've had my fair share of last hurrahs, particularly since the New Year, after it became painfully clear to me that something had to change (word to the wise: Parisian youth are really not partial to Reggaeton music, especially when it's forced on them by a belligerently drunk and overly touchy Uruguayan). But I only had twenty-four hours to explore Copenhagen. Before heading back to St.E. after eighteen days of traveling. Before returning to work after eighteen days free from undersexed adolescent french schoolboys.

I spent the day walking the crap out of Copenhagen. I went all over. The city center. Cristianshavn. Christiania. Nørrebro. Vesterbro. Fredicksburg. At dusk, the soles of my feet were on fire. And I was thirsty.

So I hit the pubs. Armed with my Top 5 bars list and a mission: drink a pint per bar, every hour on the hour.

First on the list: The Moose

GET HAMMEREDE IN CHEAP BEER
[Svaertegade 5] "THE MOOSE is the place to go if you're up for a crazy night out. Especially on Tue, Thu Sat and on the 13th of each month no one is left sober for very long. Then a large draught beer is only DKK16 until 21:00. After that the price rises to DKK23. Occasional live music. Open every day."
("Copenhagen for Young Traveler's" map and guide)

Of course, I strolled into the Moose on a Saturday. What luck. The entire bar was covered in graffiti: not an inch of wall spared, not even in the bathroom. I quickly surveyed the available tables and opted for a stool at the bar. Sitting at the bar always seems appropriate when you're drinking alone.

Denmark banned smoking indoors in 2007, with one exception:
"The only exception from the ban is for establishments with an area less than 40 sq. mtrs., which don't serve fresh food - so you can still enjoy a cigarette in some smaller pubs if you're lucky - some places have installed special smoking rooms but most refer smokers to the streets."
(Copenhagen Office of Tourism)

The Moose is an establishment with an area less than 40 square meters. It is also an establishment that doesn't serve fresh food.

I took in my surroundings, my eyes smarting from billows of pungent tobacco smoke. And I observed the following:
Above one table, a Moose's head stuck out prominently from the wall.

Above the bar, a series of inane pictures. A freeze frame from "Frankenstein," the movie. A photo of the National Olympic Curling Team of Denmark from the Nagano 1998 Olympics. Elvis.

Also, bills of various international currencies papered a wooden panel over the bar's mirror. I was only slightly horrified at my reaction upon seeing George Washington's familiar portrait sternly gazing down at me. (Like seeing the picture of someone you love up in some random bar. Since when do I love American money? Or George Washington?)

Musical highlights from the Moose included:
The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army"
Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Lou Reed, "Walk on the Wild Side"
Depeche Mode, "Everything Counts"

The drink:
Jacobsen's Brown Ale

The reading material:
Jan/Feb 2009 Foreign Affairs
(No comments, please. I realize it's not Rilke or Kerouac or Auden or whatever the hell you're supposed to read when you're sitting alone at a bar. But it was interesting enough.)

I sipped my pint of Jacobsen's and tried to read through the article on peace in the Middle East ("Change They Can Believe In: To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians Their Due," Walter Russell Mead). But I kept getting distracted by increasingly intoxicated and spectacularly attractive groups of Danes. One of whom came up to the bar about every 15 minutes to order another round for his table.

Apparently in one of trips to the bar, he sneaked a peak at my reading. And decided I needed saving.

"Hello!"

I felt someone tap my shoulder, and I spun around on my stool. Behind me stood a tall, blonde woman with bloodshot blue eyes.

"Would you like to come have a drink with us?"

She posed the question in perfect, if slightly accented, English, waving over at her table, where I spotted the Dane who had been at my side refilling on drinks just a few minutes before. And by his side, another man, older, taller, with brown hair and equally bloodshot blue eyes.

I smiled and replied, "Of course!"

As it turns out, Synne (pronounced like Sonne with an umlaut over the "o") and her crew had discussed my situation at length before asking me to join them. Brian, the younger man, had tried to read a bit of my article and reported back to his friends about it.

"It's soooo booooooooooring," he exclaimed, drawing out his words. I laughed and told him I found it interesting, but much preferred to be in the company of talkative locals.

Now, if you'll recall, I was on a mission. I still had four bars to visit.

Bars like VINSTUE 90:
[Gammel Kongevej 90] "An authentic bar with original 1916-decor. The famous serving of Carlsberg from a special tap takes 10-15 minutes. Because that just makes the best glass of beer! When ordering your slow beer, order a vente-øl (while-you-wait-beer) as well. There's no music, in order to preserve the fine art of conversations. Open every day."

Or MASKEN BAR:
"Gay time all day! At MASKEN BAR it's Happy Hour all day every day! The mixed crowd of gay, hetero and bi, combined with a friendly staff, make everybody feel welcome."

But Brian bought a round of Jacobsen's. Followed by a second. Followed by a third.

As I lost my sobriety, I lost all sense of time as well. Conversation flowed as freely as the pints of beer Brian kept bringing back from the bar. And then I told Synne, Brian, and Frank about my grand plans to explore the Copenhagen nightlife solo.

"Where do you want to go? We will take you!"

But not before dinner, as, apparently, the men had not eaten. I was treated to dinner and more drinks at a crêperie nearby. Then we moved on to Masken Bar, where Frank was felt up by more than a couple of scantily clad men. Frank and Synne are actually a couple. Synne doesn't have a problem with Frank's natural attractiveness to other men. Nor does Frank, for that matter.

At this point, a "snowy mix" was beating down mercilessly on the streets of Copenhagen, and we slipped and slid our way a club where a live band was rocked out to Guns 'n Roses and other Guitar Hero tunes. Frank and I head banged our hair dry while Synne and Brian continued to throw back the beers. I made it back to my hostel, by some miracle, soaked but safe, at approximately 5 am. And was kicked out of my bed at 10.

I'm happy to say that I think this was truly the last hurrah to end all last hurrahs. Not to mention the fact that I now have three wonderful people to visit next time I'm in Copenhagen.

C'est pas normal

The other day, Kim and I went for a drink at our neighborhood dive bar, Dirty Old Town. Modeled after an Irish Pub, the Dirty (or Dirty Old Man, as we call it) is a dark, wood-paneled refuge plastered with Irish paraphernalia. Flags of Ireland, green clovers, and signs hailing past and future Saint Patrick's Day celebrations provide the main decor inside, while a chalkboard by the entrance lures potential carousers with a bit of Irish wisdom: "A Guinness a day keeps the doctor away."

It is, hands down, my favorite bar in Saint-Étienne.

Kim and I sat there, deep into our Snakebites (made here with a shot of Cassis syrup) and mused over Saint Patrick's Days past. She told me about her (mis)adventures back in Milwaukee, like the time she was accidentally cast on the evening news as an early bird Saint Paddy's Day drunk ("I was at the bar at 9 pm! Not 7 AM!"). I related the traditional 24 hour pub crawls back in Boston, and how I've (sadly) never participated in a single one. And how I wanted this year to be different.

We looked at each other and had the same thought: what better venue could we possibly have for this year's Saint Patrick's Day than the Dirty?

Clearly, none. Kim whipped out the tiny agenda she carries with her everywhere to plan her life (I think she puts me to shame) and flipped to the week of March 17th.

"Normally, I don't have any class that day! You know what that means!"

No. Stop, I said. Do you realize what you just did? You said the N word. In English.

She paused, and laughed in full realization of what she'd done.

I'll explain.

If there's one word, one phrase in particular, that upsets me in its French use, it is the word "normal" and it's frequent attachment to the prelude "c'est pas."

C'est pas normal. It's not normal. Or C'est normal, it's normal. Or Normalement... Normally...

In English, we tend to say "usually." Or "typically." Or "most of the time." To invoke the word normal in statements about our daily lives feels very, very wrong to me. If something is "normal," then its opposite is "abnormal."

Synonyms for abnormal: deviant, aberrant, bizarre, gross, queer, weird...

Normal or abnormal, it all feels like judgment.

It works in certain cases. For example, a French rap group called the Neg Marrons have a great song entitled "C'est pas normal." It begins with the refrain:

On prend la parole pour délivrer la vérité
Pour tous ces gens qui vivent dans la précarité
C'est pas normal, c'est pas normal, non

(We take to words to deliver the truth
For all the people who live in precarity
It's not normal, it's not normal, no)

The song is about the dire straits of the immigrant poor in France, and I wholeheartedly agree that their situation "is not normal." The context merits use of the word "normal" because the situation, as it stands, is an aberration.

Meanwhile, when I showed up to the prefecture earlier this week to pick up (at long last!) my carte de sejour, I was informed that my medical examination had somehow been misplaced.

C'est pas normal, the attendant assured me.

I stared at her, blankly, trying to mask my anger at the situation. And at her response. I'm glad it's not normal, I shouted in my head, otherwise I'm not sure how you would manage to run the goddamn country!

Or, take for another example, the ski getaway I indulged in last weekend. When I arrived late Friday evening with my ski mates, Ilka and Corinne, we waited outside the welcome center while the trip coordinator fetched room keys for all. Only the room keys weren't matched with the rooms they belonged to, so we were forced to wait while the coordinator tested each key on the rooms available. Upon receiving our room assignment, we were informed that, due to a lack of space at the resort, we had been placed in a room for six with two complete strangers. Normally, one would expect to have advanced notice of such a drastic change, especially given that we had paid more for a 3-person suite. The coordinator offered the following by way of apology:

C'est pas normal.

(We also later discovered, after having been reminded various times by the travel agent of the urgent need for us to bring our bathing suits to take full advantage of the slope-side swimming pool, the pool was actually closed on Saturday night. The only night we could have possibly used it, that is. When we reported back to the travel agent, she shook her head and said, regrettably, C'est pas normal.)

Morgan, a French friend of Kim's and native stéphanois, has told Kim that her accent in English, well, "It's not normal!" Kim's English sounds a bit like Fargo-speak: undeniably hilarious, but not what you would consider a deviant form of the language.

Well, alright then, two can play at this game! I've observed a few things myself that are "not normal." Like the advertisement below for Orangina.


Really, Orangina? A buff, naked bear, licking his chops and thrusting his pelvis at a bottle of your beverage? C'est pas normal, okay?

Or the local creep who frequents the bars in the Place les Martyrs des Vingres, Saint-Étienne's happening late night square.

C'est pas normal.

I begged Kim to erase that word from her vocabulary. We must hold fast and fight the Frenchification of our language skills! We've been in France for four months now, so I suppose French is bound to impact our English to some degree. It's normal. But...

Crap.

The ANAEM and Falling in Love

The ANAEM is the Agence Nationale de l’Accueil des Etrangers et des Migrations. Translated roughly to English, it stands for the National Agency for the Welcome of Foreigners and Migrations. The ANAEM has a dual mission: to welcome and support aliens when they move to France, and to assist French nationals and workers when moving outside France.

This friendly and welcoming agency is where all of us non-European language assistants are required to pass a medical exam. The exam is one of the requirements for our carte de sejour, which allows us to remain in France for the duration of our work contract.

I don't need to devote much time to how the purported importance of this medical exam escapes me, given that I've been in France since late September, and I only just received my summons to the ANAEM two weeks ago. Let's just say that if me and the other American assistants had arrived in France with tubercular lungs or smallpox, our students would already have been irreversibly exposed to whatever horrible disease we might be carrying. And having our lungs x-rayed at the ANAEM in December would do little to save the poor little buggers.

Kim, Corinne, and I were all schedule for the exam on the day of our first major snow storm in Saint-Etienne. Our little city was receiving a healthy dusting of snow when we boarded the train, and everything looked pristine and white. You can imagine our chagrin when stepping off the train and onto the platform in Lyon only to discover cold, wet rain.

Unfazed, we popped by Lyon's Marché de Noël for a warm cup of vin chaud before heading to the ANAEM. The irony of drinking before a medical exam is not lost on me. However, I wasn't particularly concerned that I would have to pass a sobriety test in order to be allowed to remain in France.

The ANAEM was closed when we arrived at about 20 minutes before 1:30 PM. We stood at the entrance as employees returned from their lunches, huddling close and rubbing our hands together for warmth on the off chance that they might let us into the building early. Apparently, rain, wind, and cold are not good enough reasons to let "foreigners" into an empty building before reopening time.

Once inside, I was reminded once more of how much being inside French government buildings feels like being in hell. Or being in a scene out of the movie Brazil (not that there's a difference).

"Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?" And such.

The bureaucracy alone makes my head explode, and the architecture seems intentionally designed to intensify the explosion.

The exam was simple and brilliantly executed. One doctor asks you questions about your health, another doctor x-rays your chest, and a final doctor reviews the x-ray and signs the form that will enable you to go downstairs and obtain a final signature before taking the form back to the Saint-Etienne Préfecture. Which will then enable you to wait a month before passing once more by the Préfecture to pick up your shiny, new, plastic-wrapped carte de sejour.

Only we were all rather nervous about the x-rays. Or sex-rays as they were dubbed. Being left shirtless in a room with an unfamiliar French woman spewing commands at you rapid and only semi-comprehensible French (almost as if on purpose) is not the most comfortable experience.

We all came out with our forms signed and varying tales.

On my turn, the x-ray doctor had me lift and hold my hair up off of the nape of my neck, leaving me in a topless pose that I tend to reserve for bedroom seductions.

Corinne, wearing a necklace, was told to put the necklace in her mouth (shocking, I know).

Finally, Kim, topless Kim, Kim who also had on a necklace, was told to take it off while the doctor wrapped the protective lead pouch around her waist.

"You guys, when she wrapped that thing around me, it felt like we were in love!

I Heart Berlin

I arrived in Berlin Friday morning, courtesy of an Easy Jet flight that deposited me at Schönefeld Airport. Schönefeld, as I discovered once I stepped off the tarmac, is about an hour away from Alexanderplatz, the commercial center of East Berlin and the closest train station to my sister's apartment. Line was a trooper and managed to drag herself out of bed by 10 in order to get to Schönefeld by 11 and pick my ass up, only to turn around and repeat the one-hour journey in reverse.

First thoughts after I dropped my pack off at Line's apartment: I love German. And damn, the Germans (in Berlin at least) love their bikes.

First, the bikes. They're everywhere. As ubiquitous as cars in Miami. What's more, the city is designed for them. I've heard of such cities in Northern Europe (Copenhagen comes to mind), but this was my first time in a true biker's city. Bikers rule, and boy don't they know it. Line schooled me pretty well in Berlin's pedestrian rules of navigation ("Don't ever, EVER step into a bike lane without checking for bikers.") But given the fact that I pretty much live my life in a perpetual state of blissful unawareness, I'll confess that each time I set food outside, I was haunted by visions of me catapulting some poor biker off the bike lane. Accidentally, of course.

No such misfortune, thankfully. Although I drove Line a bit nuts walking around Berlin.
Me: Watch out! That's a bike lane!
Line: No, Katie.
Me: Wait, but then are we on the bike lane now? Shit, move, there's a biker behind you!
Line: No, no! Just relax!

And few minutes later, crossing a street...
Me: No one's coming, let's go!
Line: Katie, no! It's the bikers' turn now!
Me: They get their own turn?

Yeah, I was confused most of the time. But at least I wasn't the target of an irate German biker's German curses and insults.

Second, and briefly, the German. I love it. I know many people will disagree with me and argue that it is an ugly-sounding language, filled with harsh "rr"s and "sch"s. To you naysayers, I blow a raspberry and beg you to rent a German film like "Das leben der anderen" ("The Lives of Others") or "Lola rennt" ("Run, Lola, Run") to remind yourselves of what German actually sounds like (it is NOT, as most imagine, best represented by old film reels of Hitler and his Nazi brethren orating and spewing hatred; instead, think Goethe, think the poetry of Schiller, the music of Beethoven).

So yes, I want to study German again. And not just for the sake of the language. I sort of fell for Berlin the first day I arrived, and what sort of love affair can I hope to have without speaking the language of the object of my affection?

That first night, I was invited out by a friend who is currently on leave from Harvard and living in Berlin. It was all the product of happenstance. I happened to be in Berlin, and I happened to post my location on Facebook. My friend, Clara, happened to also be in Berlin, happened to be on Facebook at the same moment as me, and happened to chat me before I signed off (an aside: I will no longer moan and groan about new Facebook features: Facebook chat IS, in fact, a useful tool). And my sister happened to have other plans, so I was free to go.

I left my sister's place on Prenzlauer Allee (say it!) with some beer already in my system. I hadn't realized, yet, that there was no need to limit my pre-gaming to her apartment. When I wobbled into the train station, it hit me: everyone, and I mean everyone, was drinking beer. Out of bottles, not brown paper bags. Pilsners, weiss biers, even Smirnoff Ices.

Berlin really is this tolerant.

The train ride to Kortbusser Tor is kinda hazy at this point; the only memorable moment occurred when I got off at my stop and encountered the biggest, hairiest dog-creature I've ever seen. More bear than canine, just chilling at the station with its owner. Not seeing a muzzle (which I think may be mandatory in France, since all dogs hanging out in public sport them), I pumped my legs hard and fast to get by. I swear the animal had dreadlocks.

And then, something else I'd never seen. A group of animated young people, all probably early to mid-twenties. It took me a few seconds to figure out why they had caught my eye. They were talking like they had parrots for hands. It hit me: they were deaf. They stood around in a varied formation, signing away with excitement, patting each other on the back, smiling, reveling in the promise of a Friday night. I watched them for a minute or two before continuing on to the party.

In retrospect, I have mixed feelings about my reaction. It's not like I would usually stop and stare at a group of friends hanging out in a train station. But what can I say, I found this unusual and therefore interesting. I think most societies tend to keep its members with disabilities out of sight and out of mind. I was glad and grateful for another reminder of how diverse we are as a species, and how very much alike.

I arrived at the party location, a club in a predominantly gay area of the city, and headed straight to the bar to refuel. I wasn't sure what to expect at a celebration for the Berlin Porn Film Festival, and I am easily intimidated by men in leather with nipple rings, topless waitresses, outfitted in S&M garb, selling lube and condoms in old fashioned cigarette and candy trays, and the effortlessly cool ambiguous artist crowd.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention this was a party for the Berlin Porn Film Festival?

Headlining the party's musical entertainment was Azukita, an Argentine duo with pretty craptacular music but one of the kitschiest, campiest, most bizarre performances I've ever seen. I'm still deciding if I liked it.

In what I can only describe as porn karaoke, the two members of Azukita (a boy and a girl) performed the soundtrack of porn vignettes they had filmed of themselves together, as the short films were projected onto a screen in the dance hall. The films were linked by the presence of an evil, bloodthirsty masked man. This villain, in classic, scary movie style, would creep up and (literally) cut short the couple's fornication by slash, slash, slashing at their flesh and splattering blood everywhere. The live soundtrack provided a level of mediation tantamount to the dubbing in camp classics like Godzilla. In short, it was sexual, sickening, and hilarious all at once.

Azukita drew Argentines out of the Berlin woodwork: the party was teeming with them. I asked Clara, why so many argentinos, to which she replied:
"Katie, if you do theater, if you're an artist, if you are creative and you want to study and party with the best, you come here. To Berlin."

Sign me up!