Paco´s Life: Madrid

Copenhagen Nightlife

Hi folks,
It’s been a few days I dont write here and not because nothing happened but because of oh! Surprise! I am working. Well, not too much anyway, don’t get scared, let’s say I am spending around 4 hours per day but that’s believe or not, a lot for me. Therefore, after such an effort, I get totally exhausted and unable to write here.

Last time I promised to talk about Danish night life, something I am starting to discover. Let’s start with the reference place: The Moose. Why? Because it is the typical cheap place that I like very much for starting the night. Very very cheap, in the happy hour a pint of Tuborg beer costs 15 krones (2 euros) and not sophisticated at all. This place is always crowded and full of drunk Danish people, you always end up talking to one of them. The is a dark and painted room at the back of the place where you can enjoy the bat atmosphere and one of these “Trainspotting” toilets. They have one of these machines for selecting your own music. Of course they only have stuff like Guns and Roses, The Doors, Nirvana… This bar is not suitable for sophisticated persons who like expensive and stylish places, full of beautiful women. Of course there are also some nice women around but to the Moose you go for drinking

After the Moose the night usually becomes confusing and I normally let Giorgos or Leo be the guides so I end up in places whose names I don’t remember later. An exception is the LA, close by and, depending on the day, more or less crowed. Copenhagen, like England, allows you to go out every day as long as you show up in the proper place. Actually is much better to go out during the week rather than the weekends. As everywhere, open till late discos charge the entrance, in weekend you pay around 50 krones (7 euros) to get in, drink is not included. The environment is in general pretty nice, usual music, not very different from Spain in fact apart from the higher density of blonde girls…

A funny place you could go during last month was the “Love boat”, very similar to the mythic Newcastle’s “Princess Tuxedo”. It happens to be a disco made out of a boat in the middle of Copenhagen’s main channel. Essential for those who want to extend the night until the end. Here is where Danish get definitely wasted and is not rare to see them jumping naked to the channel afterwards (remember, this is Denmark, everything is normally cleaner). Anyway, the Love Boat is already gone and wont be available again until the next summer.

So mainly, this is the way you hang around here, apart from some special days like the last Saturday: difficult situation, few people, Giorgos is traveling in Norway and Leo in a barbecue. Ivan and me where deciding what to do when my dannish flatmate (the 24 years old, the teenager is gone, sorry fellas) tells me about an “illegal party”. An illegal party? What’s that? It happens to be, that there is a group of dannish organizing big partys in empty buildings, like okupas. You never know when the party will be until a couple of hours before it starts, when you get a sms with the place. It seems Anne knows about this stuff, great!, she tells us where the party is and there we go. Great thing dude! A huge empty warehouse absolutely crowed of dannish people. They have set up a massive stereo music system and people are hanging around in the semi-destroyed and dark rooms of the warehouse. Some guys climbing the roof immediately get my attention. Climbing roofs is something I always considered a good idea when I was drunk. It seems that I finally found something in common with these people! And I bet Ivan and me are the only Spanish around! So, the thing was looking really good but… after half an hour the music stops and… police shows up. Plenty of them. Everybody leaves the warehouse to the street but they stay there. One of the cops use a speaker to tell something to the crowd, the street traffic gets interrupted. People start to yellow at the police, some of them start to throw bottles. Ops, situation is fucked up, I am sure there will be violence here. Noooo… this is Denmark, here even police is friendly. They don’t react and the situation becomes surrealistic, people all over the street, drinking and shouting and cops in the middle of the mess, totally quiet, without pushing anyone, like apologysing for been disturbing there. It is like if they had politely asked people to leave but they don’t want them to rush but to take it easy. And the situation continues like this for a long time, actually it even seemed that people were going back to the warehouse to keep the party going. Police got back to their vehicles. But they didn’t leave, they stayed there, blocking the traffic but without disturbing the party guys. At this point we left so I don’t know how the thing ended up.

The other cool place to go is the Studenter, yesterday we went there for the first Wednesday international meeting. The new generation of Copenhagen Erasmus is about to come and there was already a few of them around. Well, actually a lot of them, the place was crowded. Typical Erasmus bar, it reminded me a lot to places like the Hancock in Newcastle or Cardiff’s Toad. You could feel the same kind of environment. Is funny to see situation from outside, all these groups of recently arrived people getting to know each other, “where are you from?”, “what do you study?” and these kind of starting questions. Lost guys hanging around without knowing anyone.. The ones not wasting the time and already trying to pool all the girls… Pure Erasmus in its launching stage, when you are still getting adapted to the new place. Fuck, what a memories, I am getting old. I think I will be a frequent here

Special plan for this weekend, the time is getting close… first experience in Sweden. We are going to Malmo festival, Malmo is a Swedish city in the border with Copenhagen, 20 min away by train. I am going to spend one year in that country so I guess I better take a look first. I will tell you about it in the next post.

PD: as I lost my camera in one of those wild Madrid ICEX nights I can´t provide any graphical stuff. But hopefully I will get one in Singapore!