One of the things I love about European cities is walking along in what appears to be a normal neighborhood and suddenly coming upon what appears to be a castle.
And, looking more closely to see what appears to be a swastika at the top of the spire.
Turns out this was my destination, Carlsberg Brewery. The swastika is actually not the Nazi kind. It’s the East Asia prosperity and luck kind. It was there before the Nazis made it a symbol of Aryan pride and although Carlsberg removed the symbol from their labels after the war, they kept it on their buildings because they hate Jews. According to the tour guide it’s actually because they don’t mean it in the Nazi way and want to take back the original meaning – not sure how well that’s going for them considering the tour guide had to spend a solid 10 minutes explaining that they were not anti-semites.
Before my guided tour started, I was invited to walk around a self-guided tour. Two minutes in I realized I had accidentally ended up in a beer museum. One thing I love to do is not walk through a museum – especially a history one. Yeah, I get it, things used to be different and now we are in 2017 so we don’t have to treat humans like shit to get work done and we can control temperature better so our beer takes less time to make. And look, here’s a bottle room with all the beers we have collected for hundreds of years. Why is that a museum?
This was the mood I was in when the tour guide took over – so I am putting that into perspective as my patience started wearing thin. He started telling the story of Carlsberg brewery and the family drama that ensued. It was an interesting story. Also, I think men should go back to dressing like this. Andrew, let’s go shopping.
But, it took me the whole tour to warm up to the 20 year old. He was trying so hard to be likable – it reminded me of my fleeting and failed attempt at stand-up comedy 8 years ago. The audience can totally tell the difference between being genuine and acting genuine. Every time he peppered in an F bomb it was like someone doing an impression of what they think an American talks like. Finally, he admitted he was a history nerd and started getting super nerdy about history and the smarm fell off of him and he was just a geeky and adorable kid. It also helped that we ended the tour in the horse stables.
You can bet I risked it.
The tour was approximately $22.00 and with that came two beers. 
This was my second of a total of four beers that day. This will be the last time I drink beer in my life. If you ever see me contemplating a beer please remind me that I don’t like having the kind of pain in my body that feels like organs are trying to escape through my uterus.
I went and played some more improv with my new best friends at ICC and wandered off to the karaoke bar.
Sam’s is small, crowded and smokey. The crowd was super appreciative and my ego made me stay a lot longer than I had intended.
Question for my men friends out there: If you buy a stranger (who is likely almost twice your age) a beer in a bar after she hypothetically kills it with some Adele, on a scale of butt-hurt to well-it-was-worth-a-shot-and-no-one-asked-me-to-buy-them-a-beer, where do you land when you find out she has a boyfriend? Considering that we still had a fun time together and I sat with him and his friends as they regaled me with stories of the Guns & Roses concert that I hadn’t known was going on the day before, I don’t think he was that annoyed, but I was just wondering.
I think I second-hand smoked about a carton of cigarettes – time to restart the countdown on healthy lungs. Also, the first order of business for the next day would be washing everything to get the smoke smell out. I went home and curled into the fetal position to let the waves of beer-birthing pass.
To a certain extent, I feel like when I travel I don’t actually vacation. I am so busy trying to see things and tourist that I forget to just take it easy and vacation. The next day, Thursday (Torsdag), became just the day for that.
At home, I have someone that cleans and does laundry for me, and Andrew and I also hire someone to do that every other week (speaking of which, she just got another job – anyone know of anyone interested in coming once a week to do some housecleaning and laundry?). The last time I had been in a laundromat – not the kind that is in the apartment complex I was living in – but an actual laundromat was maybe almost 20 years ago. I had no idea how advanced they are now. Maybe they should make a museum about it. Now, instead of paying at the machine you pay for machines and soap at one station and then go use that machine and collect that soap. They also had centrifuges so that you could spin the water out before drying and to cut down on drying time. I chatted up a Korean couple getting ready to head back home and then read a book as my clothes went through the cycles. I washed everything that I had worn – including my smoke clothes from the night before, my coffee infused backpack, and my third pair of Beats headphones in two months. Looks like I am going to need to find a Radio Shack equivalent (only one that is still in business) in Copenhagen.
I went back to my apartment and read some more while lounging in bed all day. I had not eaten anything because that night was my reservations to Kong Hans Kælder.
The experience was magical. I won’t bore you with too many details, suffice it to say: the atmosphere was cozy and elegant without feeling bougie, my purse had its own chair, the wine pairings were surprising and delightful and if butter were whipped into a cake-bread that would be the brioche. I loved not only the food, but the artistry of the theater of the experience. Me and the sommelier became instant friends as she walked me through her pairings. There were only three downsides – the cheese course was done by a different waiter and he hasn’t got his flavor pairings down – at all; the dessert wine was too sweet with the dessert and did not go well.
Finally, the chef left early because he wasn’t feeling well, which makes me more than a little bit curious about my waking up at 3AM feeling nauseated for an hour. Here I won’t go into detail for sure.
Looks like another vacationy vacation day is in order.
klutz in my pants 