Fall back and regroup

Ok, yesterday was not a stellar day in the history of the Go See Run Eat Drink enterprise. I've had other not-so-good days (Glasgow leaps instantly to mind, as does an aimless Tuesday in Dublin) but I think yesterday was the worst so far. It was still not bad enough to cash in my Winnipeg Hash Luxury Hotel Voucher. I did consider it, but that really wouldn't have solved the problem.

Just for the record, here's what happened to my beloved Eee PC. I woke up a bit late and a bit fragile after an evening with the Copenhagen Hashers (great trail, 5 drink stops, with a maximum of about 100 metres between each. Nicely done CPH4). It was pouring rain, but I couldn't face another hostel breakfast so I chucked the Eee into my daypack and rode off on my rented biked headed for café that had become my favourite because the proprietor was friendly, the latté was generous and the wifi was free. By the time I got there I was approximately as wet as if I'd stood fully clothed in the shower for 10 minutes. Of course this would have requierd being able to get into the shower, which is by no means a guarantee when sharing facilities among 10 people. So I was ready, really really ready for a latté and a pain au chocolate still warm from the oven, and a "morning plate" with a dish of greek yogurt, syrup and granola, served alongside a bun with meat and cheese, dark rye bread and jam, and a soft-boiled egg.

Yes, I was drenched, but I was drying, and I had coffee and chocolate and the promise of a pleasant morning of food and free wifi. I think I was approaching the state the Danes call "hygge", a word that has no proper equivalent in English, though "cozy" is in the right neighbourhood. My sense is that "pleasant physical and spiritual contentment" might be closer. The Rough Guide describes the concept this way:

"...a mixture of conviviality and intimacy. You'll sense hygge when you sit sipping hot gløgg in a toasty warm candlelit cafe while snow is falling outside, or around a midsummer's eve bonfire with people chit-chatting around you and the odd traditional folksong being sung."

And then out came the computer, and hygge went out the window. When I packed the Eee in my daypack I neglected to put it in its little protective sleeve (stupid). And I ended up sliding it into the same pocketas my set of traveling cutlery (also stupid)*. So when I removed the computer, there was, literally, a fork sticking out of it (which gives a fresh meaning to the phrase "stick a fork in it, it's done"). I guess the fork got wedged between the keyboard and the screen, resulting in this inevitable equation:

FORK + COMPUTER + PRESSURE = CRACK!

That's supposed to be displaying my desktop, not some kind of modern art stained glass nightmare. Not to mention the missing page up key...

I gasped so loudly when I saw it that the people at the table next to me looked up. And I kept gasping, because the only alternative seemed to be tears.

And you know the rest. I checked with a computer shop and the repair is not cost- or time-effective. (And I just have to pause here and say an ENORMOUS thank you to Antje at the front desk of the DanHostel Copenhagen City. When I told her what happened she sympathized, and talked me down off the ledge, and showed me on a map where the computer shops were, and gave me an hour of internet access for free and called me "sweetheart". She was a rock.)

Eventually I decided to try and salvage something from the day and get in a long run while I was still in a good city for running. I stocked up on sports drink** and headed out. I was determined to do 25 km, which would be my longest run since the Fargo Marathon. And I did it, despite stiff winds around the lakes and a nasty fall on a gravel path in Christiania. I got back to the hostel exhausted and (literally) bloodied but triumphant, and miraculously did NOT have to wait for the shower. By the time I was clean and had a beer, a sandwich and a full can of Pringles, I was vaguely on my way back to hygge, but the day still had a few curves to throw at me.

First: laundry. 30 kroner is not bad for a load of laundry, and soap was included, and you didn't need change for the machines. The trouble is that in a hostel containing over 1000 beds there were exactly 2 washing machines and one lonely and overworked tumble dryer. Now in general I think the Danes have a lot of things figured out, but I have to say that whoever was in charge of the Laundry Room Design and Outfitting Sub-Committee for the DanHostel Copenhagen City (and you just know there was a committee involved) should be soundly flogged with every wet pari of boxer shorts, every damp Oktoberfest t-shirt and every sodden pair of worn out jeans that gets left in a sorry pile in the queue for that dryer every day.

I did manage to head up top my room with a neatly folded pile of clean, dry laundry by 1:00am, but there was still one more treat in store. When I opened the door to my room I was astonished to find my bunk already occupied. "Wha...?!??". As I stood there, open-mouthed in amazement, the guy in my bed*** woke up and started trying to explain. He was French, and I didn't get everything he said because we were trying to be quiet so as not to wake the others in the room. "We are three" he said, meaning that he'd checked in with two other friends and he figured they should get three beds together. In fact there was an empty bed in the adjoining room, but instead of taking that, he neatly removed all of my stuff from my bed (and this was a LOT of stuff - clothes, books, toiletries ... I even had the Aeronaut locked to the bed post), stacked it all near the door, and climbed into my bed with his head on the pillow still wrapped in my silk sleep sheets.

I truly cannot properly describe the bald-faced audacity of this maneouver. I wanted to throttle him, or at least march him down to the front desk where his sins could be properly explained to him. Instead I did the Canadian thing and was polite, and spoke French to him, and even used the formal "vous" form as opposed to the informal "tu" form. I did not, however, allow him to remain. After the day I had I was not going to let some smarmy French git steal my bed. I think evenutally he realized I was not going to relent, and took his sheets and slunk off to the other room, and the bed that was supposed to be his in the first place.

Well I mean, really.

And that was my day. Started badly, ended badly, and had a few vaguely hopeful moments in between. Still, I'm glad to beat a hasty retreat from Denmark. There's a lot I didn't do there. I did not eat any proper smørrebord, and I did not so much as glimpse a herring. I did not go to Legoland or the Hans Christian Andersen Museum. And I did not smoke up in Christiania. But I did hash, and run, and ride a bike, and found a nice café and I had several danishes.

Yum. Also pictured: my new blogging system, which involves scratching marks in a bundled collection of flat pages for future upload. Positively prehistoric. Also, all that writing is doing nothing for my old surfing injury

And now I'm in Amsterdam, and have been in contact with a friendly hasher to whom I can have a new computer shipped, and it looks like I may eventually get my hygge back.

* If the little carabiner that holds the knife, fork and spoon together hadn't packed up a few weeks ago, the cutlery would have been hanging neatly out of the way... or if I'd got up earlier and gone for a run instead of fleeing for the cafe... or blah blah blah..."what if" is a road to madness.

** And what is it with the fizzy sports drink over here? Why would you want to drink something fizzy while you're exercising? I bought 2 bottles of something called Carlsberg Sport, and it was carbonated! And in the UK the most popular sports drink is Lucozade, which is also fizzy and has the added disadvantage of having a name that sounds like a brand of medicated cream you'd apply to a nasty rash.

*** Not always a bad thing, mind you, but really really not on that night...