I'll try and sum this up pretty quickly cause we're trying to get out to see more of the city before we have to fly to Barcelona tonight, where I don't think we'll have internet access.
I flew in to Amsterdam in World Business Class again. Always great. The seats are so comfortable and it's so easy to get to sleep, so I got some good sleep, which probably helped me adjust to the new time zone. When I got to Amsterdam, I realized my phone wasn't working, which was not what I expected. I went though a whole process with T-mobile, and typed a code into my phone, blablabla. But no dice. This phone was pretty much the only way I was going to get ahold of Sarah when I got here, but now that was out.
I proceeded to the KLM coutner where I had an agent list me standby for the KLM AMM-CPH flight. I asked her how the flight looked, and she seemed unsure. "Minus four in coach, but eight open in business." I wasn't sure if that meant I was going to get on or not, but I was hopeful at this point.
I walked my way to the gate a couple hours early, thinking that it was techinically an international flight, so I should be there pretty early. I waited for an hour, when another flight boarded, litereally 15 minutes before it was to take off. So there was no hurry, but I sat tight.
Waiting for a flight standby is like walking through a swamp (i could use nastier imagery here...) to get to a nice field, but you don't know how big that swamp is. See everyone has to walk through that swamp, but most know where the field is, so the swamp doesn't smell so bad. 3:15 p.m. in this case. But my field may have been 3:15, 5:00, 10:20, or even the next day. who knew? Well luckily, my green grass came at 3:15, when a KLM agent called me up for my business class ticket! So we all boarded a buss that took us out to the parking-lot-like tarmac where several KLM planes were parked.
All the seats on the plane were the same, in a 2-aisle-3 configuration, but the seats up front had different seat-head covers. Europe select, they call it. Well when they brought the food through, coach got normal little metalic bags with who knows what. Us lucky ones in front (well, the rest of them were probably just rich or work at a nice company) got a long cardboard box with two small dishes in it. One had a salmon cube, a skewer with three oysters and another small piece of fish in a white dipping sauce, and the other had three small mousses, dark and milk chocolate, and vanilla in an apricot sauce.
After a short, pleasant flight, I got off the plane in Copenhagen, hoping I was going to be able to find Sarah in about five hours. I spent a good two hours walking around the airport trying to figure out what I was doing. Eventually I found an info booth that was open (others were closed). Once I found that, I got a map of Copenhagen, and where to catch a train to the station I was supposed to get to. After trying to decipher hand-copied directions from an e-mail from sarah along with the map, I asked the ticket booth operator how to get to Norreport station. Turned out to be pretty simple, so I got on the train, counted 4 stops and got off. Still unsure of where I was going, I emerged from the underground train station and tried to pull out my map to figure out where I was going. Holy Hannah, wouldn't you know it, I already lost the map.
Amazed at my lack of city survival skills (I'd die in five minutes on Man vs. Wild), I asked where to find Stroget, one of the main shopping streets in the city. Lucky that he understood me (wait till later), I was directed south of the station. So I took off for Stroget. Sarah told me to go there, as it would be a fun place to hang out waiting for her. Without a phone, I thought maybe we'd meet up there, or I could keep calling her phone from there.
The sun started setting and I was walking several blocks until I found a bar near some pay phones, so I decided I'd grab a beer and wait.
"60 Kroner" the bar tender said. I handed her a 100 DKK bill as I tried to figure the exchange rate in my head. carry the zero...five, ten, fifteen... $12. A $12 beer. At home, I'd be wasted just touching $12 of beer. But now I had a pint, a book to read, and about two hours till Sarah said she'd probably be back.
So after that beer, about 20 pages, and another beer, I began trying to call sarah. I got a message in danish and a beep. Could have been her answering machine, but it didn't matter. She doesn't know how to check the messages. So I kept calling her every 10 or 15 minutes. 9:15, 9:30, 9:50, 10:00, 10:30. I decided this wasn't going to work. So I pulled out my phone, which I used to take a picture of her address from an e-mail, and showed it to the bartenders.
"Do you know where this is?" I asked. They could barely read it, so I read off the letters. They had no idea, but they wrote it out for me and told me to find a cab.
The cab driver didn't know where it was, but typed it into his GPS, and we took off. After an amazingly short ride, I paid him about 50 DKK ($10), and stood in front of her dorm (kollegeit - not exactly a dorm, cause it's in the middle of the city and doesn't "belong" to one school). The doors were locked, but one of the residents let me in, and I walked around, trying to find out where her room was. D111. I found the hall and figured I'd wait there, hopefully she'd show eventually.
Meanwhile, Sarah, her friend Vicky, and Vicky's new danish boyfriend, Torbin, were racing around Norreport station trying to find me. My phone didn't work, and, I found out later, Sarah's phone wouldn't turn on, so she was calling me from Vicky's phone. After going through the Norreport station, and checking out a couple of places, Vicky's very smart boyfriend said "he's probably back at your place, I'm a man, and that's what I'd do."
So after my waiting at her building for about 20 minutes, watching each group pass by, hoping to see Sarah, I looked over and saw the short blonde hair and her pink scarf. Holy crap, it worked, I thought.
So yesterday we ran all over the city, saw a bunch, which I'll write about later. Time to get t0 Barcelona!
