A Tale of Two Bars

It's 4 in the AM, Saturday. Just strolled in from my first Friday night out on the town. I feel like spinning some yarns, so read on as I tell all about my first Danish love, my first Danish heartbreak, and perhaps my second Danish heartbreak (if my first Danish love doesn't call me back)...


L.A. Bar
It all began on Tuesday, my third night in the city. The crew (more on them later) ended up at a place called L.A. Bar - yeah, radical, it's totally Cali in Copenhagen! A bunch of us guys from the kollegium (dorm) got a few drinks and just wandered about the bar, ogling the fine fine ladies; undressing them with our eyes and redressing them in Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfits, only to undress them again. One particular brunette caught my attention as I made my way up to the second floor - clearly Danish, sexy and alluring, seemingly untouchable. After more wandering and ogling, I spotted her dancing with a friend. The song ended, and I approached with something stupid like, "You like American music? You're beautiful!" We got to talking and it turned out she spoke better English than I did, with a British accent, as a result of spending 7 years in England. She told me she was 25; I told her I was 24. I bought her a drink, and the rest, as they say, is sloppy make-out party.

Her name was Caroline, and I pretty much fell for her right there in that bar. She was smart, funny, and super sexy, but above all, she was Danish! And she was really into my teeth. Apperently, it's hard to find a dude with a good set of chompers in Denmark, so all it took was a few goofy grins to snare my first Scandanavian. I ended up going home with her, back to her flat in Vanløse (15 minutes outside the city). It was a 130 Kroner cab ride - and she paid for it! What won't these Danes do? The next morning I managed to find my way back to the kollegium via metro (Vanløse was the end of the line) with Caroline's phone number and memories to last a few days...

The Happy Pig
She entered the upstairs bar, a radiant Danish goddess, and I instantly succumbed to her beauty. She was a whole lotta lady, standing a shade above six feet tall and weighing in at around 170 pounds - but in all fairness to my taste in women, about 20 of those pounds could be found resting comfortably in her breastses. Her flowing blonde mane draped her soft visage and pale blue eyes, but it was the red checkered pearl-snap cowgirl shirt she wore that gave her a Jessica-Simpson-as-Daisy-Dukes-meets-Brigitte-Nielsen-as-Red Sonja (minus the red) kind of look and made her irresistable. I slowly made my moves, a medley of popular American dance styles featuring the lawnmower, the sprinkler, and the shopping cart. We gotsta talking, whatever, whatever. Her name was Miriam, and she wasn't as good with the Engelsk as Caroline, but I didn't hold it against her. She told me she was 19; I told her I was 21. I later found out that she was 17 until April, and I much later found out that the age of consent in Denmark is 15.

I worked on Miriam for THREE HOURS. Three hours. I bought her drinks, I talked to the friends, I DANCED with the friends. I pretended to enjoy the crappy American dance music from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today, even singing along to it with emotion and gusto (note: Heaven is a place on earth, and that place is Copenhagen). I stayed in that bar, The Happy Pig, from 11PM to 3:30 AM, afraid to leave my blonde behemoth's side. These Danes party hard - when Jermaine Dupri famously stated that "the parties don't stop till eight in the mornin," he may have been talking about Atlanta, but he most assuredly had Copenhagen in mind, or packed in his lip. The Danes usually start the evening around midnight and stay out well beyond the break of dawn when some bars announce their last calls just as others are opening their doors. This philosophy is summed in Denmark's country motto: "Sleep is for pussies, and the Swedes."

Unaccustomed to this nocturnal way of life, I told Miriam that I was calling it a night, well before it was appropriate. She didn't seem too disappointed. After an awkward hug, I went in for a goodnight smooch that was met with a just-get-the-hell-outta-here grimace. With my confidence shot down to Hannah Geller-era levels, I picked up the pieces of my broken heart and beer bottle (motor skills are the first to go) and quickly hustled out of that sleeze tavern into the cold streets of Copenhagen, alone. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.


So what can be learned from these first encounters of the gorgeous kind? How about more Danish, especially phrases like, "I'm sorry, that's never happened before," and, "In America, this is as big as they get." And when my Danish fails me, I should just let my teeth do the talking.