The Little Mermaid

... probably had a sore throat.

Like me right now. Have caught a bronchial bug that has had me hacking away and in bed for the past 2.5 days. It started on Saturday, the same day that brought great, Greenlandic-type winds to town. My hostess fell off her bike that night, possibly blown off course by the winds. She was in the hospital for two days. We make a fairly sad couple in her apartment, but we are making it through.

But the world will be okay; Denmark is here. This is the place where four kids cuddle up in a bike-driven box, where you can buy a Kartell designer lamp in a supermarket, where Moleskine tests out its new products, and where design is part of the national economic policy. My trip here is part of the long-range plan of seeing Denmark in 50 years. I try to visit a collection of memories, and there is always something different that puts me on a new route. There is much construction here, particularly for a new subway line, such that it seems that the aim to perfect Copenhagen might just happen by year 3000. The underground is made of fairly soft material - chalk - an engineer's sandbox to play in.

There seem to be more Asian-ness here. A lot of new high-end sushi restaurants, but not many Japanese.  As if there is the desire for the culinary benefits of globalization, but without any cultural awkwardness and misunderstandings. There are more Mandarin-speaking Chinese tourists here, and I have even heard Cantonese-speaking tourists. As for myself, I have been asked if I speak Danish more than any other time I have been here. Or, out of kindness and humility, they simply speak English. As a Danish-speaking non-resident asking for the tax-free form, I am simply too foreign. So foreign that I am probably ideal - easy to integrate, and I cost nothing to the state. There is a level of foreign-ness that is appealing, interesting, and comprehensible. But after that, the brain damage begins.

This has been my most fulfilling trip to Denmark yet. It is good to go to a place where it is like a home away from home - a place of growth, wonder, and nourishment, to maximum effect with fairly minimal effort. My physical home since coming has been in a house built in the 1600s, and with a woman who I met in the kitchen of the Danish Institute in Damascus two years ago. She generally has a very full schedule, and has brought me along to her evening events, including a book launch by the same Institute, an avant-garde performance, and an art opening. She, like many women here in Denmark, are very inspiring in their work, warmth, and hospitality.

In a few days, I will be seeing some of Denmark that I haven't seen before, and am very much looking forward to that. I will be taking a meditation / painting course at Loegumkloster - the kind where, if you didn't bring any art supplies, they will have some for you. And after that, a bit of touring, including in Denmark's oldest town, as well as an island that is Denmark's sunniest and driest. Which I feel I need. Over the past two weeks, it has been an average of 12 degrees in Buenos Aires, Vancouver, and Copenhagen - you would think that the world has united this spring.