i want, i want.

This is what I want:

To have Robbie, Marieke and the Doctor wake me up in the morning. To not take warm sunny days for granted. To shop at Coles. To listen to the football on the radio. To eat a Cheesymite. To wave to the people behind the counter of the Cheesymite-selling store. To be behind the counter of the Cheesymite-selling store.

To cuddle/annoy my puppy. To annoy my brother. To browse in the Mary Martin Bookshop. To complain about going to 'The Stirls', but secretly love how I get to see everyone there. To sit on the hard tram seats, just for a stop or two. To have coffee with my best friend. To have coffee with the Uni girls. To complain about the news quizzes.

To go somewhere, anywhere in Man Car. To come home and watch Rage. To visit Mint Vintage. To text my friend whenever I see a member of Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! To pay $1.35 for a bus trip to town in peak time. And back, if I am lucky. To be able to find everything single item on my shopping list. To go to Supermild. Or at least say that I want to go to Supermild. To walk down Rundle St. To snuggle up in Cocolat with a mug-sized latte.

To eat at Scoozi. To go and see a French film. To go to a newsagency and buy Frankie. To go to Queen St and pretend that I am hip. To see your band. To be able to tell you that I love the new Kings of Leon song because they have 'been flogging it on Triple J'. To be able to tell you that I love you.

I love Copenhagen, but I still want what I miss from home.

However even if I could combine just a couple of things on my list with Denmark, I would feel like I was asking for too much. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

What do you want?

one, two, three, four.

Pretty Danish flags / Perfect sky and my wonderful umbrella / I see ladybirds everywhere / Castle in which Hamlet is based.

In beautiful weather I visited a town called Helsingor. It is on the coast and is *this close* to Sweden. I sat under my umbrella on a hill in front of the castle and stared across the water at Sweden for over an hour. I waited to hear how the band had gone in their second ever gig, and their first one playing originals. It also happened to be part of a band competition.

They won their night and will now play in the semi-final.

I am so proud, but my heart aches.

walking and walking.

A flea market/street party in Copenhagen, Saturday / A super-sweet street in Copenhagen, Monday / Street stalls selling flowers make me smile / Patterns, patterns. More on flickr.

Last Friday I attended the Sommerballet in Arne Jacobsen's Bellevue Teatret, north of Copenhagen, on the coast. Being English (or at least, non-Danish) speaking university students, we didn't realise until we got there that it was actually the premiere, so we were perhaps a little underdressed. In any case, I had worn my favourite vintage dress and my super awesome frenchy heels, so I was doing OK. The ballet itself was amazing. Contemporary and engaging, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

We were seated on the balcony part of the theatre, and noticed a lot of women stumbling on the stairs. Now if anybody is going to fall down stairs, it's going to be me, and true to form when we decided to walk down to the actual balcony rail for a closer look during the interval, I lost my footing. It was really nothing more than an unsteady moment, I didn't land flat on my face or anything. But when I put my right foot back down on the floor, something was missing. I had worn my most favourite pair of black, high heeled, lace up, pointy, wonderfully frenchy $7 from Vinnies shoes, and THE WHOLE HEEL HAD SNAPPED OFF. The most beautiful, sturdy, amazing shoes I own - broken. Don't get me wrong, I have been looking for the perfect pair in flat version for ages, but this is not how I envisioned it happening.

So it has been a mournful couple of days.

In other news, I have spent the last two days walking and walking and walking and stopping to buy pastry and then walking some more around Copenhagen. I also visisted the breathtaking Louisiana Musuem of Modern Art on Sunday (and I could see Sweden!)

Copenhagen is one super-stylish city. And then when you leave the cobblestoned streets with the candy coloured buildings, and duck under a low awning into a basement vintage store or amazingly decorated cafe... it becomes warm and cosy (and still super-stylish).

fashion capital.

It's fashion week in Copenhagen, so I'm not sure if the city is really amping up the style, or if it is just always amazingly well dressed. In any case there seems to be hundreds of leggy women roaming the streets, not to mention the thousands of hipsters practically lining up to be candidates for Copenhagen Street Style.

It poured and poured and poured today, but for the most part I kept dry as I tourist-ed it up.

I don't think I could ever tire of candy-coloured buildings.

this is...

... my favourite band in the world. After On par with Interpol.

Their name, a work in process. As are their songs. But I think they are amazing, and they have the most wonderful guitarist/wannabe percussionist/super-talented writer in the world. The other guys aren't so bad either!

These are also two of my favourite photos that I have ever taken.

I miss you.

dansk.

I am not sure where to begin, or what to say other than that I am meeting some wonderful people and seeing some beautiful sights. Every corner I turn something new amazes me. The place where I am living looks like a postcard, and I am beginning to feel quite comfortable in my new surrounds. It helps to have things from home with me.

My shopping lists need to be in both Danish and English so that I know what to look for.

All I can say is 'hej' and 'tak'.

I cannot wait to be let loose on Copenhagen though.

bike me up, baby.

I reckon I could pull this off.

Copenhagen is the cycling capital of the world.

I'm not as scared when I see stuff like this.

6 days to go.

wine-schmine.

I've got a lot going on at the moment (understandably), but I just remembered that I meant to blog this a while ago.

The other weekend we went to see a friend of a friend's band play, but somehow we got there WAY too early. Not even too early to not look like eager beavers and be fashionably late, but too early for the place to even be open. So in my 'oh-yeah-I've-always-wanted-to-go-there-let's-do-it' excitement, I talked the boys into going this super-chic wine bar, based on an old chemist's shop.

The second we walked in the door we were pounced on by a waiter who gave us menus and sat us down on some lovely frenchy lounges in a quiet corner (amongst the 30-somethings sipping their Penfolds or whatever, and eating cheese platters). We were obviously a little out of place, but we couldn't exactly just get up and leave so we decided to have a drink. We would play it cool, cool as cucumbers.

I really like sweet white wines (red - uh, no thankyou), but I couldn't think of the name of the type that I usually like. So I looked down the list to the 'sweet and fortifieds' section, and picked out what I thought was the one I liked. I even asked the waiter 'is this a white?' and he looked at me a little strangely, but said yes.

So I ordered the rather expensive drop, and he brought me out this horrible looking red wine. I made sure my face didn't fall until after he had turned his back, and instantly realised what I had done.

I hadn't ordered a light and fruity MOSCATO, but a deep, warm, disgusting MUSCAT, that tasted like really strong, foul-smelling honey. The waiter thought I had asked 'is this wine?' not 'is this white?'. I may not know my wines, but i'm not that retarded. I do understand what the heading 'wine list' means.

So I held my breath, screwed up my face and drank the revolting stuff. I think I only came close to flat-out spitting it out once or twice. I pray to god that the waiter didn't catch my awful facial expressions as I braved through the glass.

Safe to say I will not be showing my face in there for the next 20 years.

That will be the end of my attempted wine-conisseuring for a good while, methinks.

10 days to go.

light reading.

Just some light reading for the next couple of weeks, courtesy of the local library.

27 days to go.

smile.

I went to see Happy-Go-Lucky a couple of days ago. It came at just the right time. I had an intense few days at work over the weekend, and was ready to hit the next customer who ignored me/wouldn't smile/refused to say thankyou over the head with a Pane Di Casa Stick (trust me, this would cause considerable damage.)

Enter the eclectic Poppy (Sally Hawkins) who's smile never left her face as she chatted on at a thousand words a minute in an attempt to brighten up someone, anyone's life. I laughed out loud during a movie, properly, for the first time in a long while in the Flamenco dancing scene (above). It was just what I needed. The unsmiling world around Poppy's optimism are the people who I serve everyday. It's not that hard just to be polite, to smile.

Don't get me wrong, I have some lovely customers. It's probably only one in ten or twenty that frustrate me. But it puts a downer on my day and I know that my bad mood then translates onto other people.

If you do nothing else today, smile at the person behind the counter. Say thankyou. You don't have to be over the top, in your face like Poppy, just be nice about it.


PS I would obviously recommend seeing the movie, but I would also advise against it if a) you are currently in the process of driving lessons/are contemplating taking driving lessons, or b) are having a career-direction-crisis, as it will quite possibly make you want to be a primary school teacher. The scene where Poppy and her kids are flapping around as owls is gorgeous.

29 days to go.