30

My birthday week – its hard to imagine I’m 34 now, twice the age of idyllic freedom and teenage joy and mirth when I would blog about playing football at the beach and eating mangoes. When I was a teenager, I was criticized for being ‘happy-go-lucky” by my mother and my teachers, if only I could have still carried some dregs of that evanescent superpower, I would have savored the beautiful moments so much more now that I am older.

That being said, I still cling to the vestiges of that mentality, and as I turn into the what seems like a number that increasingly sounds older than the year before, its now more important to me than ever, to try and retain some of that quality that my elders so politely associated with me as happy-go-lucky, but what I would I call, not giving a fuck.

I took the day off for my birthday (as I do every year) and this year I have been blessed by it being a Friday which means that I get a long weekend. Wouldn’t you know though, today is Sunday and that weekend has quickly sailed past. Why is that time flies when you are having fun? In my happiest days, time dilated to feel like a lifetime and yet here I am, on the cusp of a Monday with the entirety of the weekend behind me feeling like a dream, and what a lovely dream it has been.

It started off on Friday, Agnes and I bicycled to Hellerup to try out Frederik Bille Brahe’s ‘Atelier September’ for breakfast. I had planned on visiting Juno but saner minds prevailed when I realised how much we would have to bicycle that day and we chose the closer of the two. It was a good choice because it ended up being a really lovely breakfast in what felt like a little oasis of calm along Hellerup’s main street. I had the almond pancakes which really subverted my expectations of the second half of their descriptor but were absolutely delicious with a blueberry compote poured over the top. They were the most “cake”-y pancakes I have ever tried but also then most delicious “pancakes” I’ve ever eaten. Agnes and I swapped what we were eating in true couple’s economic fashion and whilst her omelette with avocado was delicious, it was the bread and whipped butter that really stole the show.

We sat outside with grey skies and the threat of rain, (a right of passage for every birthday in my 34 years here – its not my birthday, without some delicious rain) watching people heading for the countryside in their Range Rovers, stylish old men heading to the supermarket in full suit and tie, gangs of geriatric bicyclists that would put me to shame with their peddling wattage and couples in laidback expensive outfits with dogs in their purses. As I sat there and sipped my delicious flat white (I don’t know anything about Scandinavia’s light roast or the other pedagogical aspects of coffee brewing but all I can say was it was lovely), my mind drifted to work, and the tasks that I would have to get back to when I got back to work on Monday and I had to fight against my mind, to bring it back, to look at everything around me and how grateful I am to be in this spot at this very moment, something I was ready to die for, and did just a year ago.

After polishing off our plates, we cycled into the town centre to Books and Company (no doubt a take on the iconic Shakespeare and Co in Paris), a charming little bookstore that housed English books as well as a cafe. The interior was cozy and I could tell that a lot of thought had been put into making it a space that would welcome readers and embrace them into a community rather than just a bookstore. I can’t say that the selection was the best and I asked myself why would someone use up valuable space in a bookstore for run-of-the-mill coffee when Emmery’s was just across the street and Atelier September was two minutes away and Juno about five minutes if you could pedal as fast as one of the 70 year olds that passed us. Why not have a larger selection, more sections, better shelving? – until I realised what I was describing was Bogs og Ide down the street, a storefront for the Danish bookstore chain, and Books and Company rightfully wasn’t that. After picking up a copy of Granta Scandinavia we walked out into what was slowly starting to be a light drizzle when I noticed a really nice florist right next door. I realised between both stores, this was a dream I had when I was a teenager which Tiktok has now turned into a Ghibli-style thought montage for millenials, owning a bookstore with a cafe and a flower shop together.

Blomster Bjarne was beautiful, and exactly like a florist shop from my dreams – raw Scandinavian aesthetic, high ceilings and beautiful rows of flowers and plants. It smelt incredible, that lingering smell of wet soil mixed with the heady sent of flowers trapped in a shop covered in old brick, a smell that would easily sit into Hermes’ Jardin flankers, very classic Jean-Claude Ellena. The ladies working there were kind, knowledgeable and most of all, green thumbs. This wasnt a Tiktok fueled mirage of a idealistic aesthetic, but real people working with flowers and plants. I managed to score a beautifully large and dramatic phylodendron squamifarum (that I would come to pick up the next day with Agnes along with a rainy, second coffee at Emmery’s) and map out another red thumbtack into a mental map that I am now slowly calling home. I realised later that there was an authentic father-son Italian deli next door too but they were closed taking a (well deserved I’m sure, reading the reviews) break for the summer.

With some time to kill before heading to Gentofte Kino to watch Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, we ended up exploring the lush grounds of Odrupgaard before realising that the museum/gallery wasnt open yet and having to make alternate plans – bicycling to Charlottenlund Strand. This time we climbed up to the little fort that overlooks the calm waters of the Øresund, another lovely place to people watch, falling in love with the little hums of humanity coming to visit the sea. it was fun picking up people, guessing what their lives must be like, admiring a couple that dressed almost identical although they didnt seem like they knew each other a very long time, it could have been a meet-cute montage from a movie – her picking up shells at the shore, him trying to find her by her silhouette amongst the sands, beautiful people, creating what I hope to be beautiful memories while we had our own reading the introduction in Granta and watching them. When I was writing this, I had to go back and look at the pictures I took, just to reassure myself that I was describing my life, almost like a dream. I have to learn to stay in these moments better.

A cheese sandwich for fuel and off we went to Gentofte Kino, by now my Swapfiets was getting the better of me, my bicycling acumen not being used to pedal breaks, stopping at random lights on slopes started wearing me down, it was both mercy and relief then when I saw the facade of Gentofte Kino glittering in front of me. The day before, I was torn between going to Kino versus one of the larger chain multiplexes in Copenhagen (looking at the ‘Vue’ pun intended) and I’m so glad that I chose Kino. The theatre feels like home, something from old newspaper comic strips with its old-school cinema facade, a lovely retro-classic cafe with designer furniture and opens up into a really nice courtyard where there is, (and I truly cannot get enough of this) a plantskole (nursery) where I was tempted to wheel home a giant olive tree if Agnes would let me. Coming back to the movie and the cinema, it was such a lovely experience watching the Odyssey in 70mm film, in a theatre with incredible legroom and a break that lets you walk around a hygge courtyard with a couple of beers in the sun. The Odyssey, for all its controversy around the trailors, was a wonderful watch, and in true Christopher Nolan style, was very cinematographic, captured the tale with poignancy and had many moments that sent shock and awe through your body.

I would have been incredibly happy with just the day ending there, but it ended instead with truly an incredible dining experience. After getting back home to change and rest a little bit, we headed back into Copenhagen, this time to visit Høst, a classic Copenhagen restaurant on the corner of Nørre Farimagsgade and Ahlefeldtsgade, set in a property with raw brick walls in the company of Danish design furniture. I will save my thoughts about dining there with a more detailed documentary of our dinner for a different post, but to sum up the night – the food was incredible, very high quality ingredients cooked with respect and ingenuity but without the pretentiousness of W50B or Michelin looming its sour surreptitious shadow over the dining experience. It was also their first day with the new summer menu which made it extra special with some lovely surprises between courses. Lately I have been disillusioned by the direction dine dining (especially Michelin starred restaurants and W50B) has been heading so to go into a space that is curated so well, with service that is relaxed and friendly, food that is cooked and demonstrated to very high standards and wine that is not just driven by vintage and labels but is straight up fun, a tickle, a dance, a delight on the palate, it was a breath of fresh air, and an amazing breeze over a rainy, sparkling, effervescent and aging evening.

And so it came to be that with our bellies full with some amazing food, and our hearts giddy with joyful wine and our minds filled with memories of a really nice day that we headed home. Tillykke med fødselsdagen!

Cheers to 34, and I will live this year like I lived this day, doing the things that I love, the things that I died for, the things that I now live for, and the things that I willed into reality – from a rainy day, in my dark, damp room, sitting and watching labourers carrying sacks of concrete moving the universe with them, from the putrid malaise of urine in bottles, to sparkling champagne, from the rancid rottenness of food and flashbacks to filet mignon and fantasies of still beautiful days ahead, from nothing, to something, to one day, everything.

Age 34, stage left, exit the man, stage right, enter the king.

Graças a Deus.