København...memories, oh memories..
11 years ago I fell in love...in love with a city. In 2007 I lived as a student at Copenhagen and I didn't actually knew how much I missed this city until I went back there last weekend.
Years have passed by and I never dared to go back there. I knew it would be weird to reach Copenhagen and especially Frederiksberg, where I once knew about 200 people and now nobody of them would have been there anymore. It wouldn't have been the same! But we plan our CPH girls reunion once a year and choose a different European city to visit together. Just us girlfriends from CPH times. So this year was the year when we dared to go back to where our friendship once began.
The city was the same and changed a lot at the same time. Maybe just as us girls. We changed, but I can mention it not often enough: We are somehow all the same as in 2007. We don't need a long time to build up the old connection again, when we meet after another year has passed by. We meet, start chatting immediately like back in the good old times. But yes, also we did get older. As Alka said: "There are some wrinkles now, but we're still the same!".
Anne-Laure and me already realized that we're still the same, when we met at the airport. Me saying in a very confident way: "Just come over and meet me at the metro station, I've got everything under control!"...finding out, nothing was "under control" since we didn't manage to get a ticket for the metro without overcoming "certain" obstacles, finding a seat in the front of the self-driven metro and be happy about it like children, then not knowing which station to get out of the metro (having an elderly, nice Danish lady to help us..."Just two more stops girls...now it's the next stop...") and then, by coming out of the metro station realizing that we actually didn't even have the adress of our AirBNB. So we were standing there, two little blonde girls, in front of Copenhagen Business School (CBS), waiting for the others to call us back and let us know where we have to go.
Then there was the moment, when we made our "pilgrimage" to CBS and PH...Porcelaenshaven No. 26-28, our old dorm. First of all we decided to have a beer at Nexus at a very Danish beer-time (5pm). How many nights we spent there having parties. And how often did my professor say in class that we should all have a beer together after finishing our studies (at 10am). Good old CBS times...
It was a really weird feeling to be back at PH. I was happy to share this moment with the ladies. Everything else would have been strange. Standing in front of the door, not knowing the current door code anymore, looking up to the window of my old (and very very tiny) room on the 5th floor. Memories shot through my mind. Parties at the basement, sitting on the sofa down there chatting and waiting for the laundry to be done, floor dinners, me making German "Kartoffelpuffer" for the others ("You really eat these with apple sauce?!?"), destruction of Salva's room with Anne-Laure after "Spa Monday", having Danish class with Wouter in that study just on the same floor as my room (and usually walking over there in my indoor slippers), having tea with Artem and Jovan, movie nights with the girls ("Who wants to watch some Sex and the Cityyyy?"), getting chased through the hallway by "The Mathieu", not to forget to mention the CBS Girls Soccer Team or the "Royal Copenhagen Running Team" and so on and on...
Thinking about it now even puts a smile on my face, not knowing if I'm happy about the experience or should be sad that it's over. You never have been alone at PH, you kept your door open and people would just come over to chat (and distract you from studying). And if you wanted to be alone, you just kept the door closed. I wonder if everyone at PH had the same experiences as us or if the class of 2007 was just a very special one with a strong connection.
After our dinner in the inner city, we decided to walk a bit and find our old clubs. Kulørbar was closed and a big construction area. There was still "Pizza Huset" on the other side of the street, where we used to have our pizza sandwich at 4am after coming out of the club. Then we found LA Bar, where we used to spend our wednesday nights. Young Danes were standing outside, not older than maybe 16 and veeeery drunk. We decided to have a 7 kroner - tequila shot on the good old times anyways, but the bar keeper ignored us for such a long time that we decided to move on to a place with nice drinks. Sometimes it's good to keep the memory of something instead of trying to get it back, haha.
Other activities just didn't exist back in 2007 and were new to us now. Like "Go Boat" for example. Luckily Isabel was with us this time, since she moved to Berlin recently. She was our guide for the weekend and had lots of ideas in her head of things she wanted to do with us.
So we rented a "Go Boat" on Saturday. It's a small boat with an electric motor with benches and a table in the middle. We took a picnic basket with some wine and some crisps with us. Spotify was playing songs from CPH times ("Jeg elkser dig" from Nike of Jay for example, haha). Anne-Laure (Captain! Oh, Captain!" :D) steered us through the harbour and all the small canals there for about two hours. A bit of a feeling like being in Amsterdam. And we never saw "our" city from this point of view. A very relaxed afternoon!
A visit to Christiania was absolutely on our list as well. It took a while until we found the main entrance, but we finally made it. Back in 2007 the "selling" part of this independent area was still a bit hidden, so we were really surprised that there is a real kind of market place now with small market stalls, where dealers offer their goods. Commercialisation seems to hit everyone, haha.
Weird is the fact that we lived in this city at a time where we didn't have smartphones. "How did we find our way back then?" - "We had paper maps and sometimes you just got lost and had to find the correct way then!" was one of our dialogs. That also a smartphone cannot always find the correct way was an experience we made on saturday night, when we got lost in Frederiksberg (I must admit I was the one leading the others at that moment) and our way ended at a fence in a dark park ("Remember the hot Danes, who helped us to climb then fence?"). Maybe I was just desperatly wanting some Sushi at the "better" sushi bar in Frederiksberg. So finally we decided to enter the nearby "London Pub" instead (I think the girls lost their trust in my navigation skills, haha) and have burgers and beer as ladies do ;o).
Sushi I finally had back at the airport on Sunday night. I was alone again at the Terminal, the memory of our final glass of wine together at Nyhavn just some hours before on my mind and already knowing that this time it wouldn't take 11 years for me to go back to "Wonderful Copenhagen". And I'm already looking forward to the next CPH reunion in Verbania (for certain reasons ;o)) in 2019! Love you, girls!
It was a really weird feeling to be back at PH. I was happy to share this moment with the ladies. Everything else would have been strange. Standing in front of the door, not knowing the current door code anymore, looking up to the window of my old (and very very tiny) room on the 5th floor. Memories shot through my mind. Parties at the basement, sitting on the sofa down there chatting and waiting for the laundry to be done, floor dinners, me making German "Kartoffelpuffer" for the others ("You really eat these with apple sauce?!?"), destruction of Salva's room with Anne-Laure after "Spa Monday", having Danish class with Wouter in that study just on the same floor as my room (and usually walking over there in my indoor slippers), having tea with Artem and Jovan, movie nights with the girls ("Who wants to watch some Sex and the Cityyyy?"), getting chased through the hallway by "The Mathieu", not to forget to mention the CBS Girls Soccer Team or the "Royal Copenhagen Running Team" and so on and on...
Thinking about it now even puts a smile on my face, not knowing if I'm happy about the experience or should be sad that it's over. You never have been alone at PH, you kept your door open and people would just come over to chat (and distract you from studying). And if you wanted to be alone, you just kept the door closed. I wonder if everyone at PH had the same experiences as us or if the class of 2007 was just a very special one with a strong connection.
After our dinner in the inner city, we decided to walk a bit and find our old clubs. Kulørbar was closed and a big construction area. There was still "Pizza Huset" on the other side of the street, where we used to have our pizza sandwich at 4am after coming out of the club. Then we found LA Bar, where we used to spend our wednesday nights. Young Danes were standing outside, not older than maybe 16 and veeeery drunk. We decided to have a 7 kroner - tequila shot on the good old times anyways, but the bar keeper ignored us for such a long time that we decided to move on to a place with nice drinks. Sometimes it's good to keep the memory of something instead of trying to get it back, haha.
Other activities just didn't exist back in 2007 and were new to us now. Like "Go Boat" for example. Luckily Isabel was with us this time, since she moved to Berlin recently. She was our guide for the weekend and had lots of ideas in her head of things she wanted to do with us.
So we rented a "Go Boat" on Saturday. It's a small boat with an electric motor with benches and a table in the middle. We took a picnic basket with some wine and some crisps with us. Spotify was playing songs from CPH times ("Jeg elkser dig" from Nike of Jay for example, haha). Anne-Laure (Captain! Oh, Captain!" :D) steered us through the harbour and all the small canals there for about two hours. A bit of a feeling like being in Amsterdam. And we never saw "our" city from this point of view. A very relaxed afternoon!
A visit to Christiania was absolutely on our list as well. It took a while until we found the main entrance, but we finally made it. Back in 2007 the "selling" part of this independent area was still a bit hidden, so we were really surprised that there is a real kind of market place now with small market stalls, where dealers offer their goods. Commercialisation seems to hit everyone, haha.
Weird is the fact that we lived in this city at a time where we didn't have smartphones. "How did we find our way back then?" - "We had paper maps and sometimes you just got lost and had to find the correct way then!" was one of our dialogs. That also a smartphone cannot always find the correct way was an experience we made on saturday night, when we got lost in Frederiksberg (I must admit I was the one leading the others at that moment) and our way ended at a fence in a dark park ("Remember the hot Danes, who helped us to climb then fence?"). Maybe I was just desperatly wanting some Sushi at the "better" sushi bar in Frederiksberg. So finally we decided to enter the nearby "London Pub" instead (I think the girls lost their trust in my navigation skills, haha) and have burgers and beer as ladies do ;o).
Sushi I finally had back at the airport on Sunday night. I was alone again at the Terminal, the memory of our final glass of wine together at Nyhavn just some hours before on my mind and already knowing that this time it wouldn't take 11 years for me to go back to "Wonderful Copenhagen". And I'm already looking forward to the next CPH reunion in Verbania (for certain reasons ;o)) in 2019! Love you, girls!
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