Hootoo Visits Copenhagen
Created | Updated May 4, 2006
When is a meeting a Hootoo meeting? When two gather in Hootoo's name? When five gather? This is the saga of a mini-meet in Copenhagen, recorded by Hapi. Obviously everything told here is true, or rather true as far as I know, or rather true as far as I remember.
On a fair Friday I flew to Copenhagen airport. In Copenhagen I would meet Hati, who had been there for a few days, and from Copenhagen we would travel to the port where Pierce the Pirate resides. Travelling to Copenhagen was easy; finding Hati in Copenhagen turned out to be even easier. She was in the centre of Rathouse Square, the city centre. So was I. We (Hati and Hapi) met and we had coffee. And while having coffee we observed the behaviour of Copenhagen's city buses.
These busses are absolutely unbelievable. Observing them is a must for tourists. The 6A busses always are paired: one 6A bus chases the other. After some four or five pairs we decided it must be some sort of mating ritual. Later that afternoon, we noted two 6A buses closely followed by a minibus. It didn't have a number yet, but it looked a lot like its parents. The 42 and 43 buses were even stranger; they stopped and changed numbers. These are obviously hermaphrodite buses. We saw no obvious offspring — maybe it wasn't mating season for hermaphrodite buses.
So we travelled through Denmark to meet Pierce. Again, travelling through Denmark was easy. I was so pleased we were travelling by train and not by bus.
We (still Hati and Hapi) met Pierce and we had a great dinner, with beer, and then went off to the local pub. Danes are friendly by nature, more so if you meet them in a pub. A group of Pierce's friends hung around and we shared a few beers. Hati managed to get one of these guys pregnant with twins by whispering into his ear. Maybe not only buses behave differently in Denmark. Later that night we left the pub and Hati and me met Juan, but that's another story.
Saturday we had breakfast (mainly coffee), lunch (mainly coffee) and went out for channel spotting. For a second I thought we would find Pierce's pirate ship in the harbour, but it appeared the harbour was too small and not equipped for all that.
Meanwhile, the discussions were long and intensive. We discussed music and cathedrals and designed a new religion, but by now we all seem to have forgotten what this religion was about. It was probably something like the Church Of Mixed Threads or the Church Of Holy Procrastination or the Church Of Assorted Temptations. It was mainly based on procrastinating, foreplay to procrastinating or something like that. We were not going to start anything new, so afterwards I assume it's not a disaster we forgot all about it.
Time went by, as did Pierce's pancakes (excellent) and most of the beer (excellent). Hati and I met Juan again, later that evening. He was a persistent little guy, related to Antonio, I believe.
Sunday morning we got up early. Now, getting up early isn't easy. Getting up at 9.00am after almost five hours sleep is hard. But around 10.00am, supported by a few breakfast-beers, we were in the train to Copenhagen, there to meet Tartaronne and Santragenius V and to visit the Carlsberg brewery.
The brewery was nice; the company was great. There was an exhibition on beer, brewing beer in Denmark, beer in Danish society and, well, beer basically. During all the times beer was considered to be a vitally important drink. We all especially liked the bit of the Danish beer history that quoted thus: 'In my small household, beer is often lacking for 8 to 14 days ... at these times my children must either go to the water pump, if the water is drinkable, or I must with sadness see them become weak on tea water'. I just love the attitude.
After going through the exhibition about beer, Carlsberg and all that, we ended up in the souvenir shop. That was an interesting experience as well. Fascinating things like t-shirts with the brewery logo. The brewery logo looked, on a t-shirt, like a warped toilet seat. Never say this out loud in that souvenir shop. The main attraction was, of course, The Bar! The Bar where beer was served. We tasted several beers, some of which were interesting, others of which were just different. The coffee-mint-stout variety was an experimental product and we thought it would be an efficient way to have it all in one go. Wake up, get a fresh breath and get drunk all in one glass. Tasting it, we agreed that it tasted better than one would expect. The first impression was lousy ice-coffee. It smelt a bit like coffee. The beer moment came after that and frankly we all agreed we have had better beers. The taste of mint was really light and was present mostly in aftertaste. Altogether we thought it might be a nice drink for elderly ladies in a retirement home.
We left the brewery 15 minutes before closing time, just in time for me to catch the plane back home. Now I'm saving money for the next Northern Europe meeting: Estonian Christmas this August.
