That one time I spent a night in Copenhagen

Technically it was a three quarter day, an evening, and then a morning until like 10am.

I flew into the Denmark airport from New Jersey on a Lufthansa airline in the early afternoon. Which by the way, was not what I thought it would be like. It was like almost eight hours of what I can uncomfortably describe as an off road desert bus ride in Baghdad with high teenagers and bad metal music. After a 5 hour layover, I had finally left a hot and muggy Newark airport with 16 other students from California, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Texas, and South Carolina. Bound for a foreign land.

Hold on. Let me set the back-stage before the curtain rise.

Back in 1990 we were all officially dubbed US student ambassadors. A diverse mixing bowl of academically overachieving smart asses that somehow convinced the grownups in charge that we could represent the United States in foreign youth relations. We assumed that the teachers and government officials thought that if we all were honor roll students that individually participated in sports, social clubs, and community service activities; we would be proper/ideal candidates in building bridges with the youth cultures in other countries.

I have never met a better deviant group of misfits in my entire life to this day.

Sure, a full meticulous year before, we all went through the “weeding out” process. Classes and history tests on multiple cultures in a variety of countries. Psychologically structured interviews with teachers and state officials. We even had those day long group team building exorcizes where a couple random “important” teachers would observe our problem solving and social skills. Once a week taking a 2 to 4 hour bus ride to some random office building in Washington or south Oregon. Or on the fun days to an airport hotel when we got to gorge on free food in the conference rooms while talking with other potential students from other states. I personally only got to fly to Colorado with 20 other kids for the day. And no, I didn’t get my hands on any mama-juana. This was before 2012. By the way. I can’t even imagine the amount of money that was spent by the US government to fund this project. It’s not like it was just two teachers with a stack of books taking a class of teenagers on a field trip for a school project. This lasted a whole year before we actually left the US for three months. It started out with like 80 or so students from my state. And they weeded us down to three! Sure, the ones that made the cut were clever enough to behave ourselves in front of the grownups. But when we were left alone. Our perverted hormone soaked psyches plotted. It’s not like we didn’t want to do what the program was meant for. This kinda stuff was actually what we were looking forward to experiencing. We got off on it. We also knew it was the perfect opportunity to get away with some prime heavy $#!+ we would never get a chance to do at our age. Look at it from our perspective, back then. At least 3/4 of these kids in the program were from upper and upper middle class religious families. The proper well mannered people that regularly donated to “noteworthy” causes and organizations (for tax right offs of course). They knew the right people, shook the right hands, and had their foots in the right door jams. The other 1/4 were from middle and lower class families. Some religious. The rest just lucky to be considered. Mostly because of the criteria and GPA consistency in the schooling system. We assumed they allowed the smaller group of less fortunate kids because of the whole “political fairness” policies in place at the time inside what they call “the education system”. What was really hilarious to us was that only 5 of the rich kids made it for our planned trip. And they were just as badass as the rest of us low rent hooligans. If my memory serves me, I believe there were a total of 14 groups being sent overseas to different parts of the globe in 1990 and 1991. Thousands of US students going through the same program at the time. I personally thought we were the lucky ones since we got to actually be sorta-kinda in danger during our trip. Not really in danger. But when a country is at war with itself, it’s not like something very bad could NOT happen. Hey, it was the early 90’s. We still had concrete playgrounds and cheaply made slap bracelets. If you didn’t break your neck or slit your wrist open, you had a chance to accidentally catapult yourself into traffic wearing those trampoline disks. What were they called? Pogo Balls? So, if we were sanctioned with a military officer from the US consulate, what danger could we possibly be in?… hehe. We all spent two hours with the guy while he gave us the run down on what not to do. Then we never saw him again. That was on a Friday during our first week at our destination. But that was not in Copenhagen. Denmark was just our first pit stop. Which by the way, I should probably get to writing about.

So, a giant bumpy German airline cabin that smelled of BO, farts, and rotting chicken nuggets filled with 16 high as F^€£ teenagers listening to bad music… we got the whole back of the airplane. Though 2 of the rich kids were in first class and snuck us a $#!+ load of mini liqueur bottles under cover from the two teachers that were our chaperones. Which by the way were hella cool people. They weren’t lazy or disinterested by any means. They knew we were going to get away with shit no matter what. They just made sure we were not gonna do anything overtly stupid.

After customs and baggage claim, we entered a fancy bus that took us to the Hotel d'Angleterre. Which was awesome! There were three of us per room. Right when we got to our room, we chucked our suitcases on our beds, changed our clothes, and booked it to the lounge for food. When we had gotten our room assignments on the bus, we systematically switched our seats and planned our “free night out” with the maps we were given. Once a week we had a ‘free rein night’ to do what we wanted. Just as long as we were with one of the city’s chaperone guides that were being paid by the program for the day. We got 7 in Denmark (the rest of our trip we had no more than 3). So, I grabbed four pastries and made a sandwich. We sat on two couches with our chosen chaperone, forgot her name, and dished out what we wanted to do for the rest of the day. Aside from visiting a museum, a park, and a smattering of tourist shops, we wanted to visit Vesterbro. The red light district. Our chaperone just looked at us in disgust. She asked why on earth would we want to visit that gross area? Why indeed? Well, for starters, none of us ever saw seedy areas in any big city. I myself mostly grew up in a sheltered community far from those kinds of areas. My day trip partners in crime were the same. We wanted more than the tourist trap shenanigan visit. Sure, variety shops and museums are cool. But who goes to another country to visit a slum; just to watch drug dealers and hookers? Us three, that’s who. Back in the 90’s Vesterbro was pretty bad. Not as bad as some of the slums in the US. Not that I would have realized until I got much older and moved into the city life. Looking back now, it really wasn’t half bad in comparison. She reluctantly agreed and started our tour of the beautiful city of Copenhagen. She did try to convince us to visit Vesterbro (about an 8min bus ride south) before the other stops. We, in unison, said hell no. We wanted that to be our last stop before getting diner at a nice pub. YEAH!!! Let’s go watch coked out hookers and then go to a bar to legally drink alcohol! What uninhibited heavily repressed intrusive teenager doesn’t want to do that?? Our guide was obviously nervous for the first hour. Telling us later, that she truly thought she was going to get arrested for taking us to the seedy part of town. But the money was also kinda worth the risk. After about 20 minutes of watching scummy men in cars pick up hilariously dressed women, spotting two corner dealers, and a ridiculously dressed man walking up and down our side of the street whom we assumed was a pimp. Mara and I decided we wanted to go talk to one of the hookers across the street from the wonderfully disgusting cafe we were drinking coffee at. Rachel was hysterically laughing the whole time. To chicken-$#!+ to join us. And our chaperone at this point in the night was fascinated on what would happen. She was surprisingly excited to hear what we were going to talk to the lady about when we got back. For protection Mara had bought a small can of mace in the market we visited and I had brought over two truncheons from the states (they were in my back pockets). We figured that a pimp might approach us and make trouble. So we also had $40 American to give the hooker if there was a problem. That, or Mara would blind the guy while I kneecapped him before we both booked it to our emergency meeting point our chaperone had designated on our maps.

It was cool. No issues. The lady was very nice and said that talking to us wasn’t a problem. We were lucky that she spoke English. Mara also spoke Norwegian and I spoke French (not well, enough to get by). So we figured we had about a 30 percent chance that one of our three languages would pan out. It turns out that the lady used to be a dancer for the DDT and turned to hooking because the money was better. She needed to save up quick. She was planning on moving to Italy with her mother at the end of the year to get a job at one of the dance companies in Italy that her sister danced with. When we asked what it was like having sex with so many men she just shrugged her shoulders. Most of the time it was like having sex with a respectful human being that was nervous and/or considerate. But you always get that super freak or deviant that thinks treating a woman like a rag doll will not get them shoved in a trunk of a car. She then nodded to a string of cars up the block in one direction and down the other. She said that she pays 900 Kroner a night for a car to follow her. Another 900 if the driver has to get physical with a client. She then shows us her wrist that has a thick leather band with a small pager looking device attached to it. She said all she has to do is rip it off her wristband and it automatically notifies her driver that she is in trouble. Mara then asked if it would be ok and not too rude if the lady would flash her boobs at Rachel and our chaperone across the street for $40. That’s like 400 Krone or something. She took the money, did a little dance, did a hilarious boob reveal then spanked both are @$$es. It was great. Rachel laughed out loud like a horse pig while our chaperone turned beet red with both hands over her face. We said our heartfelt goodbyes in laughter hugged and then ventured off into the night for a wonderful diner and head sized pints of great beer.

When we got to Finland (our second pit stop) one day later. My roommates there were just as badass. Two days in that country was off the hook. But that is another story.