Bevar Christiania!

a travel story

Living in Sweden sometime in March 2003…. We take a bus from Gothenburg, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. There are about 25 Americans and maybe 10 Swedes. These Swedes are supposed to be showing us cool Scandinavian shit on this particular weekend, which inevitably means we must leave Sweden and go to Denmark.

We arrive in Copenhagen early and everyone is tired and in a shitty mood. We stay in a cheap hotel located on the same corner as a strip club and two sex shops (all of which will give you at least two diseases just by walking by.) Our floor, aka: the cheapest floor in the hotel, had shared bathrooms and showers. We all sleep for the first half of the day then scatter about to see the city.

We find ourselves in Christiania, a little hippie commune where it was legal to purchase and enjoy various kinds of soft-core drugs. Christiania only had semi-legal status as being an independent community and was started in the 70’s by a few hippie squatters who took over an abandoned military base. They fallow no Danish laws and have come up with their own laws and “government” for the area. These laws include; no cars, no stealing, no guns or bullet proof vests, and no hard drugs. Now everything sounds reasonable except why the hell are you not allowed to have bullet proof vests? Who the fuck cares if you are so paranoid you need to wear a bullet proof vest in an area where no guns are allowed any way? Crazy Danes… needless to say we came to get fucked up.

After blazing for an hour or so and growing bored with the other extracurriculars of the moment, Steph and I decided to eat shrooms and leave Christiania. Now Steph was an American who lived in Sweden for the past few years, spoke Swedish, and knew her way around. She always talked shit about the Swedes in front of them but she was our mediator so everyone loved her. She didn’t come to America with the rest of the Swedes and the last I herd she was studying in Paris.

So we go back to the hotel to meet up with everyone else and drink a bit. The Swedes tell us they know where a good bar is so we head out. As we arrive it is very clear that this bar is in fact a techno pop dance club. Even though I’m dressed to go to a bar, the bouncer lets me in because I am American, accompanied by several skanks, and have 56 Danish Kroner. Now it has just hit me that for the next several hours I will be listening to global dance-pop lyrics laid over top of 1 of 2 different techno beats proven to sound better with every drink you take. I get over this fact really fast when I find out that champagne and red wine are free all night. So, Steph tells me how to get them to not water anything down and we find Dita at a table.

About 5 drinks later I see Steph flying around the room like the reading rainbow butterfly and I know I am fucked up. Does this concern me at this time? No. After about 10 more drinks I stumble down to the bathroom, which was just a spiral staircase away (leave it to the fucking idiot Scandinavians to try to conserve space with a spiral staircase in a club full of drunks), and proceed to vomit up 12 hours worth of bad decisions. Then I pass out with my face on the toilet seat for a time frame that is unknown to me.

I wake up to the sound of someone saying my name and the same dance song playing everywhere in Scandinavia at the time (which will eventually and strangely become my favorite dance song ever). So I contemplate the will to move any part of my body and decide that my position is pretty comfortable and the toilet seat pillow isn’t that bad. Another stretch of time goes by and I finally decide I need to leave. I barely get up the spiral staircase and find myself in an almost deserted club with no Americans or fellow Swedes in sight. I walk out the door and decide it must be around 5 or 6 in the morning.

Now this happens to be the moment when I learned that when walking to a new place in a foreign country it would be best to pay attention to how the fuck you get back, know the address or even the name of the hotel, and always save some cab money for the end of the night. So right about now all I know is what the hotel looks like from 5 feet away and that I need to walk to my right. Stumbling along in the twilight of spring in an unknown direction I believe I got to realize Copenhagen as the beautiful city it is.

Somehow, by some crazy miracle, I see the dirty strip joint and know I am home. After waking up Steph and Dita and in some kind of inaudible slurred speech totally bitch them out for leaving me, find my room, wake up my roommate just for fun, and sleep for about 16 hours. Denmark, you dirty whore, I love you.

The one seat buffer

Every true American respects the one seat buffer rule with the exception of the homeless, rapists and sleazy Latinos, but for arguments sake they do not count. Whenever you are in a public seating area, be it a food court, bus, or movie theater, there is a one seat buffer that should always be between you and the stranger next to you.

The reasons are as follows:
1. People smell and someone you don’t even know should not have to smell your personal funk. It’s ok with people you know because you get the benefit of knowing that person and everyone has something to offer to a friendship. Oh and you can tell them they smell like ass and need to fix the situation immediately... without getting smacked.

2. Without the one seat buffer you run the risk of bumping elbows or accidentally poking a girl in the breast, which is equally disturbing whether done by a girl or guy. This contact will immediately create an awkward situation/interaction that we Americans were not raised with the mental aptitude to comprehend.

3. Americans are fat and in denial. We still manufacture seats for teenagers in Frankie and Annette 1950’s beach party movies. Not that there were no over weight people in the 50’s it’s just back then they were considered less than human and sacrificed for the greater good of a nation ( their fat was used in the production of army boots for the sure-to-come WWIII ) The one seat buffer makes it possible for all of our American goodness to overflow into the next seat a safe distance from the fat rolls of the stranger next to us - the two fat rolls must never meet.

4. When two Americans are sitting right next to each other with no one seat buffer they feel the need to stir up some chit-chat. Since we're so used to the one seat buffer being there when we actually do have to sit next to a person we panic. Unable to cope with this new-found closeness, we try to talk to the person so they are no longer a stranger and make the one seat buffer obsolete. This only works 1 time out of 100. It's very unlikely that the person sitting next to you, aka: idiot who didn’t follow the one seat buffer rule, will have even a remote chance of something in common. Thus you will never be friends and always need the one seat buffer in between you. American chit-chat is bad too. Americans will start by mentioning the weather - mind you they are in a public place, so the other person did leave their house that day and did in fact come in contact with the atmosphere around them in turn knowing exactly what the weather situation is. Then we try to mention some current event that the other person definitely has no clue about (actually you don’t either. you just saw the headline in a news clip during the commercials for the OC or whatever crap you watch on TV that you will never admit to and pray they know less than you and don’t want to build an actual conversation off of it inevitably making you look smarter and more informed earning you the privilege of sticking your nose up and saying “oh you didn’t read about that” yeah like you even read – go you!)

There is also a few side regulations to keep in mind with this rule.

1. In the case of a bench seat, one shall still keep the distance of one seat. This actually puts a lot of power into your hands, you can either stick to the 1950’s ass-sized seat or upgrade to the wide load of the year 2006. Either choice still leaves room for only 2 people per public bench.

2. When put in a situation where there is no room for a one seat buffer - for example a crowded bus - you must stand. If the only room on the bus is in between two people, in their buffer seat, you must stand and forfeit the seat for the greater good. This rule is difficult because Americans HATE to stand, however, the hate of closeness to strangers and awkward situations totally usurps any other hate.

The one seat buffer rule is a universal rule that stretches across the entire United States. Children understand this rule. However, for some reason foreigners can never pick up on it. Why do they think we always sit one seat apart? This is a mystery I would like to solve. In any case this oversight is unbearable for several reasons,

1. Foreigners always smell bad. This is in part because most of them do not use deodorant, eat very pungent smelling foods that in turn oozes out their fragrance from their pores, and a foreigner’s idea of cologne involves pieces of dead animals and ancient oils used to summon some type of god (yeah, oils that are so caustic they could break through the force of space and time into the heavens (or depths, depending on what kind of god you are beckoning) and catch the attention of said being)

2. Foreigner’s idea of chit-chat involves war, holocaust, rebellions, American idiocy, and global politics. None of these subjects can accurately or knowledgeably be fully discussed by a stupid and painfully naive American.

3. Foreigners have accents. Americans cannot understand what they are saying and don’t really care since they are in America and every one should know how to properly pronounce words in American style English. Of course, when Americans travel abroad the people living in these foreign nations must also be able to do this in their homeland because the world must cater to the needs of all Americans. If they want our capitalistic blood-money in exchange for half-assed hand woven souvenirs they damn straight better speak perfect American style English.

4. Foreign people come from different cultures and ways of living that are different than our own and that is demonstrated in their clothing and appearance.
Translation: foreigners are creepy.

As I said earlier, there are a few groups of people who, although were born and raised in America, do not adhere to the one seat buffer rule. Namely the homeless, rapists, and sleazy Latinos. I feel the need to clarify why these people do not use this rule. I also fear they are the ones confusing all of the foreigners.

Well, the homeless are just cold and they need body warmth, so clearly the one seat buffer means nothing to them - except if they have their garbage bag filled with all their worldly possessions, in which case the one seat buffer gets used.
The intentions of rapists are obvious and need no further elaboration.
Sleazy Latinos are a rare breed of people that enjoy sitting disturbingly close to strangers, engaging in meaningless banter, and if you're a female “accidentally” groping your goods with sweaty, grease covered hands. They also take much joy in speaking slang Spanish to their friends while staring at you like a prison inmate that’s gone without anal while in solitary for a month. In this case there is nothing to do but move your seat or in the most annoying of situations get off the bus and walk away.