France vs. Copenhagen

France:

-The Louvre. I can’t even say anything else about that.

-Also the Musee d’Orsay

Why can't this happen at every meal?

-And every other museum

-The wine, oh my god

-It’s so freaking huge!

-CREPES

-80 degrees? Sun? Sunburn? No giant monocloud? Yes please!

-The site of like everything important that every happened in Europe? Win France

-Tap water is free! Unlike in Copenhagen
-The meal experience.

I have never had a sit down 2 hour three course meal with red and white wine and coffee(well tea for me) for LUNCH! Much less had 3 of these incredible experiences in one week!

-Pickpockets? Not cool.

Copenhagen:

-Copenhagen is literally the safest city on the planet

-They speak English…without a sense of disdain

I was so surprised people in the mostly public institutions, ticket sellers at the Louvre and Eiffel Tower for example, spoke far less and less perfect English than the Danes. Perhaps they just prefer the superiority of their own language and don’t want to stain their tongues with English, but every single person in Denmark speaks amazingly fluent English, and they are happy to do it!

-The Copenhagen Metro is nine hundred times cleaner and easier to access. I mean would some above ground signs kill you Paris?

-Granola and wheat/rye/multigrain bread is so so not a thing in Paris. Score 10 Copenhagen

-The French disdain tea, and make faces at you if you ask for it instead of coffee, but the Danes love their tea : )
-HYGGE! (The danish value of "coziness")

Winner:

How about I just take both?

I'm a Rock Star

Gorgeous Swedish Coast

Somehow the experience of sheer panic makes your ultimate victory so much more fulfilling. Just like those moments on the Bornholm biking trip (where we did 70+km of biking in 1 day!), where I was so overwhelmed with this growing fear that there was literally no way we could make it home and would have to sleep by the side of the road.  But we did make it home, and damn we were on top of the world.

So when you are hanging by mere fingertips and can see literally no place to wedge in a finger or a toe on the sheer rock face, and can feel your entire body trembling as you cling to the tiniest centimeter of a ledge, you feel utter panic because you know you are about to lose your grip and can sense you are about to fall away from the only secure thing around you into the dangerous open air.  So many times I was ready to just call it quits and end the pain in my scraped up hands and sore arm muscles because I just couldn’t find a single way to pull myself up one inch farther.

The most difficult climb he opened for us, of which only maybe 4 of us made it to the top of, was the most difficult puzzle I have ever had to solve. You study how the people before you do it, but once you get up there you have no sense of orientation, and you have to try climbing from all angles, especially when you are in a sort of crevasse with two walls angled in, and also angled towards you. You feel like you are climbing upside down and putting your legs in positions you had no idea you were capable of. And of course I lost my grip so many times and had to just hang in the air in my harness for a moment to regroup and regain my determination.

But after 10 minutes of struggling to advance that 1-inch, receding territory, moving side to side, trying every angle imaginable, and then you finally find some way of pulling yourself up, and you push with all your might (so many grunting noises and being in labor jokes) and you feel like your legs, which seemed so useless and incompetent slipping and sliding 2 minutes ago, have such enormous power, and they push you up and you get a breath of fresh air as you feel the tautness of the belay telling you your moving upwards, and maybe you can do this after all. And then of course you do it all over again, inch by inch. Being stuck in a panic and then feeling the rush of power when you finally find a foothold.

And then there’s touching that metal carribeaner at the top and having a look out at the ocean almost directly below you. And belaying down :) And then being a trembling mess of adrenaline and excitement and cold (did I mention that of course it was raining for most of the day) and knowing you just kicked that mountain’s ass like a spider monkey.

At my lowest point on the hardest one, where I just felt too tired to carry on, one of the girls tried to toss me a peanut M&M from the ground! I almost caught it but failed. And then the instructor joked about how he was going to let go and go pick it up because it fell right in front of him and was tempting him. But that actually gave me this magical boost (even without actually eating any chocolate) and then I just did it and made it to the top! And I didn't do it too too painfully slowly :)

This is an unnecessarily large number of pictures of the hardest climb, but it's really fun when you slip through them all really fast

I look helpless

Danes are Super-humans

How in the hell, in a country with constant rain and cold and grey skies and such rapidly changing weather, do the Danes not get colds?

Not only do they not get them (ever) – they don’t even understand what they are. As I stand unable to keep my eyes open because they are streaming with tears and completely puffed up, a Dane asked me if I have really bad allergies, and I said I did but right now I actually have a cold. 

Response: “Wait what, your cold?”

I mean I could deal with them lording their immune-system superiority over me, but the problem is, since they are so resilient, their country doesn’t see the need to sell cold medicine. Anywhere.

I went to the pharmacy and they told me to go home and drink tea. Others have told me to throw back a shot and go to bed. The Danes don’t even keep tissues in their houses, or sell them in boxes in any grocery store except one, which I thankfully found today.  You also can't get an appointment with a doctor over a cold.  And it’s illegal to mail medicine the country. I would do illegal things to get a bottle of NyQuil right now.

So while Copenhagen has been horrendus for my allergies, on top of that I am now, in my 3^rd week, already on my 2^nd cold.  I’ve literally not been healthily functional since I got of the plane.

So what am I to do when it isn’t even winter yet and I can’t even get over these colds?? Besides chugging “Appelsin” (orange juice, confusing no?)  and drinking tea (7 cups and counting so far today) I guess I will just suffer through until the moment I take a trip outside the country, when I will come back with an entire suitcase filled with cold medicine as my souvenirs.

I mean there is always the “eat a pastry” solution. Which of course I did.

Unfortunately, I think pastries are better for solving life problems, rather than physical ones, because I am waay to sugar-jacked now to take the nap I really need.

But at least I am much happier :)