Day 11
Aalborg, Denmark
A University and tall buildings and curvy, modern roofs. Lots of metal and fancified buildings everywhere past the industrial ship parking lots. The gigantic ship turned on a dime and I probably couldn’t even turn my kayak around in that spot. We landed soft as a cloud and I put my hand to my face. It was so soft and clear, the air so far removed from my harsh and beloved desert home.
There was a sustainability festival going on, and an architecture run. The runners were bouncy and excited and hopped up on caffeine, ready to run through the strange mix of new harbor buildings and ancient churches. Stretching and taking off this long-sleeved thing and that long-legged thing and stretching some more. Tying and re-tying shoes and patting each other on the back. Numbers pinned to their shirts and hair pulled into ponytails so tight, the skin around their eyes stretched back.
Smooth triangle and square pavers with a little cobblestone on the sides. Copper roofing bled to green long ago. I tried to zip my jacket a bit more, but it was already to the top. 58 degrees.
Aalborg fought the Nazis hard during WWII. For two days. Then they started cooperating when they realized they didn’t stand a chance.
The streets were small and wound around like a creek and were for walking only. Tiny-Creeky-Streets. The houses highly sought-after. $800,000 for a little tiny row house near an old big church where they don’t ring all the bells in the tower at once for fear the building will collapse. I figured it would be pretty hard to get a couch from your car to your house. Moving must suck. Stickers were on pipes, but there was little graffiti. The town square had weddings and be-headings and hangings all the same spot, but they were careful to only burn witches outside of town just in case a wind popped up and burned up the city. Little holes were bricked up in the old post office where carrier pigeons were turned loose back in the day, and the architecture runners kept weaving around us as we toured. We cheered at them and clapped a lot when they went by.
And their red faces broke into beaming grins.
We imagined chickens and pigs and dogs and cats and geese roaming the streets. We pictured trying to walk to the store without stepping in shit.
Ancient brick buildings and buildings whose walls bowed dangerously out toward the street but still cost half a million dollars. And a Viking castle with a silly performance in the courtyard. Actors dressed in period garb, selling trinkets and giving sips of meade under canvas structures. Cow horns and carved dragons and beaded bracelets. Asking for donations for their performance and for encouraging ‘less rape and plunder, more meade’.
The castle with a hole near the corner that was a dungeon meant to hold nine witches and was impossibly small even for three. The convicted witches had their tongues cut out to prevent them from casting spells, or were run through with a hot poker to see if they felt pain. If the hot poker hurt and they screamed, well they weren’t a witch. Obviously. But then they’d die from the wounds. And anybody could be accused of witchcraft. If you yielded healthier crops than your neighbor, the bitch could accuse you of witchcraft and then Here Comes The Poker.
Within 500 years, they burned 50,000 poor souls as witches.
We got back on the ship in time to attend High Tea at Wintergarden with its fancy finger food and jasmine-ginger and black-breakfast and mango-something-or-other individual pots of loose leaf tea. I had on my new Copenhagen Bicycle Town sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and the back of the couch was way too far behind me to sit comfortably. I grabbed a finger sandwich and slouched way too far back and spread my arms on the back of the couch and let my knees drift comfortably apart until Mom scolded me of not acting appropriately during High Tea.
And I broke into a beaming grin.
And she took a picture.