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Reports

During my travels, I received free accommodation for a night in exchange for writing a daily travel diary. This diary documented how I reached my next destination, the hosts who welcomed me, the food I was offered, and other experiences along the way. Below, you will find the archives of these extensive reports. Please note that English is not my native language, and most entries were written quickly, often around midnight. Enjoy!
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Wednesday, 8 August 2001
--> Copenhagen (DK) 2nd day

100
LET-ME-STAY-
FOR-A-DAYS!!!

Thanks for all the support (in messageboard and by friends and family), invitations (hosts and future hosts) and help (backup team)!



From Søren Pors place in Copenhagen, I moved on to the address of Lars Vinther Smidt, coincidentally also productive at the Danish Radio. Time to explore the city now!

Waking up in Copenhagen for the second time and it still feels good to be here. Together with Søren I had breakfast and coffee. And as it was the last day at his place, it was time to present him another thing he didn’t knew about. I know, not many people know it, because I only write about it in the report, it isn’t mentioned anywhere else on this website.

The Gift is from Dan and Karen Hawtrey in London and is given to my next host, as every host I visit gets a present from the previous host.

Søren was very surprised with the little Buddha statue he got as the gift, but he didn’t actually know what to give to my next host, Lars Vinther Smidt, whom I will meet at the Danish Radio today.

After breakfast we took the bus again and again it was raining outside. But this time I had my rucksack with me. When we arrived at the youth department at the Media City of DR, I met Lars.

Lars had also invited me over after reading this internal email at the office, but he didn’t know that Søren had also did that.

Lars had to work ’till somewhere in the afternoon, which was fine for me. I did some more writing and was surprised at the impact the Steve Wright show had yesterday. Suddenly I got even more invitations in the United Kingdom again, but I won’t go there for a long time. Also a lot of people in Spain are doing good, after I seem to be appeared in two big national newspapers. That will be something for the near future, but know: Europe is pretty big.

At his work Lars will do a radio report about me for the first upcoming show in September and he tried to get me on the air for tomorrow. Some station should be interested, wouldn’t they?

I said goodbye to Søren when we left and headed for the city centre of Copenhagen, just where Lars lives in one of these streets where people are always walking along galleries, little restaurant or speciality shops.

Lars lives in a cosy two-room apartment, which he shares with his colleague Jannik.

We had to buy some groceries for dinner, so it became a little tour around the centre and Lars showed me Rådhuspladsen, the big Town Hall Square that is fully lit by neon commercials at night and the longest pedestrian mall on earth: the Strøget.

At a little shop near the Nørreport train station, I noticed that Lars is very into ecological productsand has his own section in the supermarket. He has this good thought that one person can make a difference on this world.

Instead of buying cheap orange juice that is made of left over oranges that are picked up from the ground, he buys the more healthy juices of handpicked oranges. It’s just a different way of thinking.

It ended up that he would cook spaghetti. While Jannik was playing a computer game on the television, I used Lars’ computer for an email check.

After dinner, Lars let me use his computer because I just had to plan some dates ahead for the rest of my Denmark leg of this journey. It meant contacting people who’d invited me and placing new invitations on my map.

Around this time Lars got the confirmation that the radio station P3, a DR radio channel, was interested to have me on their show tomorrow morning, for a small talk about my project. And I hoped it would get me some more places to stay. I would just regret it to travel through Denmark within a few days.

At night Jannik and Lars took me out to the pubs, where we discussed about the fact that I think that Britney Spears and Eminem are just marketing products and no real artists. This way I also found out that Lars is a big fan of the Counting Crows, which is my favourite band too!

The song Mr. Jones is just my life song!

From one place around the corner we walked to another pub, where we ended up in the basement where Lars knew the deejay. The only problem was the heath down there, they don’t seem to be able to get some fresh air down there so I was sweating my hairs off (and I am already getting bold!).

After a few Danish beers, got to try them all for the taste, we got back to the apartment.

Speaking of alcohol. Public drinking is common here. It’s okay to drink beer at train stations, walking up and down the streets with alcohol, and even in your car! “As long as you don’t go over the legal limit for alcohol in your blood, who cares where you drink," seem to be the only logical statement.

Lars placed a mattrass in the livingroom where I could sleep and we all preceded ourself to dream land.

Good night Copenhagen!

Ramon.


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