Copenhagen: The Lovely Danes

If the Dutch had been nice, the Danes are positively brimming with positivity.  After switching trains in Hamburg and crossing the Baltic on a ferry that the train just trains onto and then off of, we find ourselves seated next to a couple of Danish girls, and well naturally, we get to talkin'.  They're students and they've been studying abroad in Australia.  But they're heading home now, back to Copenhagen for the first time in a year.  We tell them we're couch-surfing, and we tell them we've never been to Copenhagen before, and we tell them we don't know where exactly we're going.  Marie, our future host in Denmark's crown jewel had given us her address, but she might as well just have given a monkey a condom because we don't know what the hell to do with it.  We GPS it on Grant's phone and we're shown a little dot on a little map of a neighborhood called Norrebro, and according to the googleMaps map (and my impeccable understanding of distances between both time and space), Norrebro isn't anywhere near Copenhagen Central Station.

This is a fact only confirmed by the Danish girls. "Oh, that's far.  On the other side of the lakes."

Ah yes, the lakes.  Lovely.  Their English is perfect.  And so they tell us which bus to take from the station and which stop to get off at for the transfer to Norrebro.  And then we tell stories and laugh, and make funny faces and the noises animals make in Danish.  They speak about the tap water like one speaks about the thing they miss most from their childhood.  "Oh! You will love it!  It is so good!  So soft!"

And I cock my head because I don't think I've ever heard water referred to as "soft".  So they explain, smiling and giggling as always.  As opposed to "hard" water, soft water is apparently devoid of most or all minerals.  It's pure, and it tastes light, like the water of the gods.  "You will see!"  And we would.  Later at Marie's.  My first sip from her water would coat the throat like heaven, and I'd close my eyes and see those smiling Danish faces from the train.  At the final stop, Copenhagen Centraal, it's all fond farewells and smiles and kisses on the cheek, and we promise to meet up again in Copenhagen while we're there.  But we never do. Oh, well.