Denmark to India

When we arrived back in Denmark it was still the same dull gray color sky with some very light drizzle. I hate that type of weather by the way. We spent some time with Kirsten's family and going out here and there at night. We shopped for flights to India. I wanted to fly somebody high class like SAS or Singapore Airlines but we were frugal and ended up finding a flight from Copenhagen to Bombay on Air India.

Just before we left Denmark the sun came out one day. The entire country went outdoors and soaked up sun. Most of the Danes were fair skinned with blond hair, blue eyes and with very white skin from lack of sun exposure. While the lack of sun may be healthy according to dermatologists, the Danes make up for it by going out and getting seriously sun burned when the sun does finally come out. That is what we did. It was almost Christmas and we went to Den Gamle By again the old town park in Aarhus. Then we went home and sang carols around the christmas tree decorated with real burning candles.

We followed that up with a feast of food and drinks. There was rice pudding with almonds, roast pork, fish, roast goose, cherry wine, chicken dumpling soup, liver, potatoes, sausages and all the usual smorrebrod and fixings as well as lots of beer and some holiday glogg which is like a hot mulled wine made with red wine, brandy, spices, raison and almonds. We ate and drank like kings. When it was all over we packed up for our flight to Bombay.

Our flight to Bombay started out poorly. Again we could not fly from Aarhus to Copenhagen like we planned. We got stuck taking a ferry which made us miss our original flight time. No worries though as the whole plane load missed the departure. The plane waited for hours to allow everybody time to get to the airport in the foggy conditions. We finally departed about eight hours later than we planned. We were tired out from the hassles of getting to and on this flight and so was everybody else including all the other passengers and the crew. It turns out that the crew had planned on doing a round trip from Bombay to Copenhagen without changing crews or resting between the two flights. We paid dearly for that overtired overworked crew. The service sucked. They didn't have enough food for us all and they were grumpy serving what they did have. We were in the air for hours before the shit finally hit the fan. The crew decided to just up and quit working entirely.

The pilot tried to get them to go back to work but they just refused. He begged them over the intercom to come back to work otherwise by international laws, he would have to land the plane and it would be an even longer time before the crew got back home. The crew did not go for it. The pilot decided to land the plane. The nearest airport was in Kuwait so he corrected his flight plan and radioed the airport that we were coming in for an unexpected emergency landing. They responded by saying that if the plane even entered their airspace we would be shot down. The pilot put on the loudspeakers so that the entire plane could hear his discussions with the tower. Jet fighters appeared at either wingtip, above us, below us and behind us. They were practically touching our wings with theirs and the pilots of the fighters were glaring at us. The pilot explained that under international rules the airport had to allow us to land safely. They insisted that we would be shot down because we were unclean. The pilot told us he had no choice and had to go in for the landing. He sent out mayday signals and turned the plane to land at their airport despite the tower telling us we would be shot down. Since I am writing this, we clearly were not shot down that day. However when we landed we were immediately surrounded by military vehicles with large caliber machine guns mounted on them and ordered not to open the doors or we would be fired on.

So we sat on the runway in blistering heat and the pilot negotiated with them. We needed some fuel and they agreed to sell us some after much debate. Only one little problem, they did not take Shell Oil credit cards which is all the pilot had with him to pay for fuel. The pilot's solution to this was to come out and ask each passenger for some cash and then he wrote an IOU for whatever amount you gave him that would be refunded in Bombay. I threw in twenty bucks and eventually we had enough money to buy fuel so that we could take off again but only if the crew agreed to go back to work. They decided that it was better to go back to work than to die of heat exhaustion from sitting on a blistering hot runway for hours in a closed plane with no air conditioning going. We were all sweating like pigs and it would not be long before the weaker ones would start passing out and dying. They fueled us up and escorted us with their gunships and we took off again about five hours after we had landed in this inhospitable country. The flight the rest of the way was uneventful. The crew was extremely nice and almost apologetic for the delay. We were all very tired by now and just wanted to get to Bombay and get some sleep.

Though Europe to Denmark

We kind of rushed from Italy up to Denmark. I don't have much to say about the ride north because it went to fast. I liked some things along the way like the Salt mines in Austria. That was a fun side trip, sliding down into the mine on a toboggan and then taking a boat ride underground. I loved all the old buildings throughout the Austria and Germany on the ride north. We flew through until we got to Amsterdam in Holland. We hung out there for about a week.

I had been to Amsterdam several times by now. This time I was traveling with a girlfriend which was a bit different for me than the previous visits where I was single. We had a blast. We checked into a hotel down by the train station. I had to go stay at this hotel again. The last time I was at this particular hotel I spent three days having a French girl just knocking my socks off all day and all night. We finally had to emerge for food and we received a standing ovation from the staff of the hotel. I thought that was pretty memorable and I was afraid the staff might recognize me but thank god for small miracles none of them did.

Kirsten and I walked around the red light district the first night and watched the shows in the windows. She liked the sexy atmosphere in the red light district and so did I. We went into a few bars and had beers. We were walking to another club we had hears about when a man walked up to us and offered us a job. He told us he would pay us $100 per hour each if we would get naked and play around in a net suspended over a club. There would be other couples doing the same thing so we would not be alone. We were kind of broke and if we worked a couple of hours each we would have enough to pay for our entire week in Amsterdam. We are talking 1972 prices here not 2010 prices. The minimum wage was $165 and hour and my flight from New York to London was only $78 so $400 for a couple of hours was not bad. We went for the job. He paid us upfront for two hours each. Then he led us to a small door around the corner from the front entrance and up some narrow stairs. There was a small room with lockers and we disrobed right there then we had to crawl through a small opening and there was a strong soft net hanging from the ceiling which we crawled out on. Below us the patrons of the bar were going about their club business while watching the people up above them. Some of them cheered and clapped when we entered, maybe because we were fresh new meat for the show. We were not required to do anything in particular. The idea was that we would just be naked and playing together but no sex was required in order to get paid. We started just looking around the club and relaxing as much as we could to get used to being nude in front of a hundred or more people below us. I had spent many months at naked beaches already so the nudity did not bother me at all. The other couples were making out and dry humping or even masturbating each other. We enjoyed watching them as much as the people below us enjoyed watching us. We started to play with each other and we got horny as hell. Kirsten was very excited and we ended up doing the wild thing. It was a bit tough on a floating net that moved every time we did but with a bit of practice we figured out the timing and we had a blast as did the people below us. I hope none of them got too wet. When our show was over we went back to the hotel to continue until our hormones returned to more normal levels.

We got a ride the rest of the way up to Aarhus Denmark where Kirsten was raised. It was the beginning of winter and the weather sucked in my opinion. It was cold, gray, wet and drizzling weather that I could not take after a few years in the tropics. My body just did not like it. We stayed at her parents house in her old bedroom. I got along fine with her mom and sister but her dad was not too happy with her bringing a long haired hippy home.

I helped her mom make dinner and stuff like that which kind of surprised her I think. I wanted to learn how to make Danish food and what better way than to help a real Danish housewife make dinner every night. I learned how to make frikadeller and kartoffel which is a meatball/patty and boiled potatoes with usually a white gravy or sauce with cabbage in it or some other flavor like celery root. I learned how to layer and stack up smorrebrod which is basically a piece of bread usually a soudough rye either dark and dense or maybe a little lighter in color and texture sometimes that is covered in butter or lard then layers of cheese, pate, sliced meats, poultry, eggs, condiments and more until it is almost impossible to eat it. I loved them. The Danes eat all day long. I don't know why they aren't all 350 pounds. I was still trying to regain the weight I lost when I got sick in Ethiopia so I ate everything. Maybe my huge appetite had something to do with her dad and I not getting along so well.

Kirsten and I needed some money so we went looking for work. She found something right away but I didn't speak much Danish yet so it was harder for me. I almost got a job making Danish pastry. When I applied he was surprised that I already knew how to roll out the dough on the machine and how to shape the pastries. I had worked in a bakery in highschool and that was part of what I did. The bakery decided that I did not speak enough Danish to work there but told me to come back when my Danish improved a little. It ended up me not being able to find work. Kirsten and I decided to go to the states to work where I could make really good money. We went to the American Embassy to get her a visa and they told us she could not get one unless we were married. So we shrugged and got married.

We had a little private ceremony in Copenhagen with just her family there. We had one hell of a time getting to Copenhagen though to get married. We were going to fly but the fog was too thick so we ended up busing it south and taking a different flight. We made it eventually and got married. The embassy gave her a visa right away. I also got Danish papers while I was there so that I could work, if I could have found a job.

We had a good time in Denmark. We didn't have a lot of money to spend going out on the town but we did go out enough to know the place. Almost everybody in Denmark speaks excellent English so I was having a hard time learning Danish. The only two that I can think of that spoke no English were her dad and the people at the bakery. I had a lot of fun. Her friends that had gone to Africa were happy to see that I didn't hack her up and feed her to the lions like they were afraid was going to happen to her. We spent a lot of time with her sister and her sister's boyfriend. We went out to coffee shops and later at night we went to clubs. The drinks were not cheap so we ended up going home early most nights.

We went to Den Gamle By or Old Town in English. That was nice. It is a bunch of historic old buildings that they moved to a single central location and made an old fashioned town out of them. Most of the businesses were up and running using the old style ovens for the bakery and so forth. I enjoyed the place. Everywhere we went there was street food available. The bright red hot dogs were always popular for street food but there was a plethora of other things to eat. The influence of all the Middle Eastern immigrants made curries, falafel and shish kabobs common street foods that I enjoyed. Restaurants were kind of pricey so we only went out to a few restaurants but when we did it was for hours of eating and drinking. There did not seem to be any in between choices for a quick short restaurant meal. All or nothing seems to be the Danish motto for eating and drinking. Let's party Denmark.

After a few months we had arranged her visa and found a flight to Toronto Canada that we could afford. Our plan was to hitch hike to Wisconsin from there and see my family then hitch hike to California where I had a well paying job waiting for me. We only spent one night in Toronto. It was still cold and wet just like Denmark. Then we hitch hiked to Niagra Falls and spent a night there too. We had to do the falls since we just got married. When we left Niagra Falls it was snowing but we were lucky as always and found a quick ride all the way to Janesville Wisconsin, my hometown.