A couple of years ago, a friend of mine got a job in Copenhagen. He had been there a couple of months when he returned home for Christmas and invited me over for a visit. Having never been there, and not seen my friend in a while, I was excited at the prospect of a jaunt to Scandi-land. Then he dropped the bomb that sweetened the deal; Snoop Dogg was performing there in the coming year, and I should try and time my visit to see him. Being a white Scottish man in his early twenties, I am obviously an enormous Snoop fan. I agreed this was a terrific plan and heard nothing of it for several months, my friend saying he would let me know the dates of the show when he knew.
I walked off a golf course at about half six in the evening three months later and turned on my phone. Amongst the many girls on tinder vying to chat with me (aye fucking right), there was a message from my friend. It read simply “Snooooooooooop”. Taking this to mean he had declared his tour dates I must admit I got a bit excited. When I got home to my parents house in East Lothian, I picked up the blower and gave him a call.
His initial response, before even hello, was to ask if I got his message. Upon telling him ‘no this was a random international phone call out of the blue, why’ he responded by saying he had sent the text ‘like four hours ago’. I clarified I had got it and asked him when the gig was. Tomorrow. Fucking tomorrow. Then he asked if I was up for it. Twat.
I said I’d have a look, but getting from rural Scotland to central Copenhagen in 20 hours from that point seemed unlikely without any direct flights. To my amazement, after considerable fucking about, a travel plan was hatched. I would get the last train from nowheresville into Edinburgh, get packed at my flat, get a taxi to the train station in the morning to get the first train to Aberdeen, from where I would fly to Stavanger in Norway, then change to a flight to Copenhagen, which is written as København in Norwegian airports by the way, I’m only telling you because nobody fucking told me. After the second flight it was a short train ride into the heart of the city to meet my friend. Piece of piss.
Once this was decided I threw a few clothes in a bag and jumped on the first train. The entire journey was spent having the conductor tell me that he was robbed in Copenhagen when travelling with the tartan army, therefore any woman that tried to talk to me was probably a thief. This was reassuring. I packed the rest of a rucksack in my flat and got the three hours sleep I was afforded before booking a taxi to the station. The drowsy train journey was broken up by oil rig workers on their way back up to their jobs being unreasonably loud, burping, farting and swearing, and I was in the fucking quiet coach, I can’t imagine what the other ones must have been like.
Aberdeen has quite a nice train station to be fair, so I didn’t mind the brief segment of the day I spent lost there, half asleep. I eventually found a taxi to the airport. The taxi journey was spent discussing pre-POTUS Trump, his new golf course, and how everyone in the city had come to the consensus he was an arsehole. My comment that ‘the course was meant to be quite good though’ fell on deaf ears.
Throughout this day, which would involve travelling to two Scandinavian countries, one of which, Norway, has one of the hardest languages in the world to learn for a native English speaker, the most I struggled to understand anyone was my Aberdonian taxi driver. I think I picked up three words in fifteen minutes, two of them being ‘Trump’, and ‘arsehole’. It was remarkable. If there wasn’t a meter on the dashboard I could have been there for several weeks trying to surmise the cost of the journey.
The next leg of the slog was a delight. As I was under 26, I still counted as a youth on Scandinavian airlines, which meant paying less than I would have on the bargain bastard airlines that I usually fly with, with comfy leather seats and beautiful Scandinavian air hostesses for me to get nervous around.
I think I conked out on the flight, then awoke to an announcement in Norwegian, which confused the hell out of me. I checked around to see if anyone else was fearing the pilot was having a stroke but it turns out I’m just really stupid. Norway, from what I could tell of my two hour stopover, is pretty cool. But my fuck is it expensive. I got a hotdog and a bottle of coke and it cost me 17 quid. Luckily I put it on a card and didn’t understand the value of a krone when it went through, so my outburst of “FUCK OFF” was reserved for my post-purchase googling, the woman sat on the bench next to me at the time didn’t enjoy it.
After wandering about looking at every screen in the small airport several times and finding that my flight to Copenhagen was listed nowhere, I discovered through Kojack-like detective work that the flight leaving at the exact same time as mine with the same airline to København was actually also going to Copenhagen. In fact they were the same fucking place.
When I got into Copenhagen Airport I again got lost trying to get a train. Once a very helpful and polite chap showed me which train I should get, he then informed me twenty minutes later as he left the still stationary train that we had to change. He actually came and found me. That’s how nice Danish people are. Plus he spoke better English as his second language than a lot of people I know who claim it’s their first.
When I finally arrived at Oestbro, the station where I was meeting my friend, I tried to exit the station through three different entrances before finding my way out. My pal had brought a couple of ciders, so we sat in the sun on a bench beside a local lunatic and drank them. The first thing he told me, after saying how brilliant the city was, was the Danes have no word for please. This surprised me as they seemed to be some of the most polite people I had met, but again I know a lot of native English speakers who don’t use a word for please. English does have a word for please. It’s please.
After almost being run over twice on the way to my pal’s flat, we still had five hours before Snoop was scheduled to blaze up the ‘hagen. So after opening my friend’s fridge and discovering a leftover done kebab pizza, which he maintained was from the previous night but from the smell had been in there for 147 years, we made our way to Christiania.
For those of you who are unaware, Christiania is a ‘convent’ in Copenhagen, located in a former army barracks. It is an area of the city where marajuana is legal. There are no police, the people merely police themselves. It was my part of my pal’s grand plan that we go there before the gig and get suitably tiddly. I agreed wholeheartedly. Without meaning to brag I had been a greenthusiast for many years, and was used to zombie wandering. My friend, while no Willie Nelson, could generally handle his vegetables, so we thought ourselves safe. We got the bus there, which in some sort of futuristic way you can pay for on your phone without even having to speak to anyone.
When we arrived we headed in through the massive gates and the smell led us into the heart of the beast. For obvious reasons, no photos are allowed on ‘green street’, the lane lined with tents where men in masks and balaclavas sell every strain of grass conceivable. Or at least they market an unfathomable variety, it could have all been the same shit, stoned people are notoriously easy to hoodwink. We bought something with a ridiculous name and thought we were cool. Then we had to buy all the necessary construction materials, which were the cheapest things I bought the whole time I was in the country. It seems Christiania observes international economic outlook as opposed to Scandinavia’s normal ‘make everything so expensive people might weep when they buy something’ strategy. The grass would have allowed us to stay battered for a good couple of days for about the same cost as one gin and tonic in the rest of the city.
It was while we were purchasing said materials that we got our first example of what life could be like in such a ‘free-spirited’ place. A rather attractive young woman was walking out from a bar with her mates when an old bearded man, wearing a camouflage jacket, and only a camouflage jacket, started talking at her. That’s a lie, he was wearing hiking boots as well. Fortunately when the girl burst out laughing so did the old nutter and he simply sparked another spliff (I don’t know where he was keeping it) and wandered off.
We found a perch on a hill in the sunlight with a couple of beers and I started crafting. Once we’d cut the ribbon on the first couple we ventured from our grassy hillside vantage point down into the jungle of bars and food vendors. After administering a sound 8-2 pumping at 2-a-side table football to a couple of lads wearing English football strips, our stomachs took over.
Time was-a-ticking so there would be no sit-down dining. Plus in the stoned malaise we had worked ourselves into, it was hard to say if we’d ever get back up from a seated position. We settled on a jumbo hot dog, my second of the day if you’re keeping score. This one was the perfect blend of pig lip and anus ground into a tube shape, a classic hotdog. For all we knew they could have been a tube of dog’s baws, they tasted divine in our weed-enhanced state. After scranning them down in a matter of moments, and taking a good five minutes to remove the extra condiments and ‘dog-grease’ from our faces, a check on the watch told us it was time to high-tail it to the concert.
The venue for the gig was the Tivoli which, for those of you who have never ventured to wonderful Copenhagen, is a theme park near the centre of town which fills several city blocks. My pal had been at a couple of concerts there before and assured me there was plenty space. Upon my inquiry into how much the tickets had cost him, he replied ever so casually that tickets could only be bought at the door. We zigzagged to a bus and tried not fall over. The time was half past eight. My pal assured me the gig wasn’t scheduled to start until half nine, so we had ‘plenty time’.
The first sign that my laborious night and day of transit may have been in vain came when the bus rocked up to the exterior wall of the theme park. The queue, that we could see getting off the bus, was six wide and ran the length of the block. ‘Not to worry, this is the wrong entrance anyway’ says my mate. We amble, stoned out of our eyeballs and full of optimism along one side of the block, and round a corner. The queue fails to subside. ‘Entrance is on the other side, don’t worry’ reaffirms my mate. ‘Fuck’ I’m thinking.
When we finally reached a gap in the crowd, which has been six deep for almost the entire circumference of the theme park, a figure of people which was later estimated by the news at 120,000, my pal proclaims ‘here we are, this is the main entrance.’ To be fair to him, the queue is only 80 metres long at this point to a visible gate into the park. We manage to order a few beers from a bar we are queuing past and get them down us, careful not to disturb our high. Meanwhile I’m going through fags like the very air we were breathing was a toxic fume, and only smoke would keep me alive.
As time passes I’m getting more and more nervous. We can hear the music start, but it’s unclear if its the big man or just a support act. By this time we are past the bar in the queue and 20 metres from the entrance so any nerves went unsettled. It was at this juncture my pal decides he’ll try and becalm me by telling me not to worry, he’s been here with his mum to see Michael Bublé or some shit before and there was a queue. When I asked if the queue was this size he just started shouting ‘snoop d-o-double-mutha-fuckin-g’, which was decidedly unhelpful.
When we got to a mere ten yards from the gate, there was some commotion ahead. The Danes, usually calm and composed, as unlikely to start making trouble as Trump is to marry a Mexican, started making trouble. The gates slammed shut and a smile crept over my face. It was not a smile of pleasure. It was more of a ‘have I just seriously got three trains and two flights to stand in a fucking queue for over an hour for no fucking reason’. Despite a nice young girl informing us that they were only shutting the gates until some people came out so there was space, it seemed the answer was unequivocally yes. I had. Bastard.
My mate turned to me, with genuine embarrassment, and said sorry. To be honest, while I was gutted, and just a tad totally fucking raging, I still had a four day break in Copenhagen lined up, so it was hard to be annoyed. But I still managed. After twenty minutes hopelessly vegetating in the queue, we decided to declare, and my pal told me he would take me to the nicest bar in Copenhagen to make up for it.
It turns out turning up to the nicest cocktail bar in town stoned off your tits and dressed for a Snoop concert is not overly well received. Regardless, the ever-lovely danish people let us in and soon our memories of this catastrophic clusterfuckup were wiped clean by a mix of old fashioneds and long island iced teas.
For the rest of my trip spent there I had a wonderful time. Copenhagen is fucking fantastic. The city is beautiful, almost as beautiful as the people, which are in turn only outshone by the food. I was introduced to Liar’s dice, which is a game where the aim is to guess how many of a certain face of dice there are on the table. There are many rules and variations which I won’t go into at the moment but the gist is the loser does a shot. This game was obviously invented to be played in groups larger than two as me and my friend were shit-faced after 10 minutes. I was taken to some marvellous restaurants and told about Noma, the reigning best restaurant in the world. My pal informed me that one of the dishes they served involved live ants eating prawns, which was the point at which I stopped listening. He also said he had been offered a table there for him and his girlfriend (you usually have to book 8 months in advance) but the price tag of a grand each had been ‘a bit steep’. Meanwhile I was raging at a 17 quid hotdog and coke.
I was also taken to Mikkeller and Friends, a craft beer bar which is apparently amongst the best in the world. Started by a professor and his students at Copenhagen University, I had no idea what the fuck made it so special, but the beer tasted alright. Uncomfortable stools mixed with my repeatedly smashing my back off the vertical radiator behind me lessened the experience somewhat.
The final day I spent alone, as my pal had to go to work. I had some krone left over so I treated myself to a steak and a nice bottle of red for lunch. Again the food was outstanding. I moseyed to the train station and had a 10 minute semi-steaming conversation with a bloke about how his English was so good before finding the right train to the airport. I got on the plane and discovered I was sat next to a rather attractive young lady who lived not far from my flat. However, after our initial 10 minute pleasantries the bottle of picpoul de pinet that I enjoyed at the airport oyster bar caught up with me, and next thing I knew we were landing. I can only assume I had been sitting with my head lolled back, mouth agog, breath honking of wine and fags for an hour, as she was considerably less talkative when we landed.
So despite not getting to see Snoop D-O-double-Gizzle the break was a success. I had been to a great new place. I had managed to legally get high. I had enjoyed some incredible food and met some lovely locals. All of this and I still had time to embarrass myself in front of a girl. Can’t see fairer than that.
A drunk abroad 