Travelogue: To Copenhagen
The first thing you notice about the Toronto airport is the garbage on the floors of the terminal. I’m using Air Canada for this trip, so it means connecting through Toronto on the way out and Montreal on the way back. I got off by flight from Lagos, went through a maze to arrive at the end of terminal. The other flights are to Asia, so the terminal has the feel of the British Empire. That would be the dirty, squalid part of the empire. I feel as it I should be wearing a pith helmet and khaki shorts.
That explains the trash on the floors. The terminal is full of Sikhs, Chinese and various South and East Asians. Canada has a lot of Sikhs. Those are the swarthy looking guys who wear the interesting headgear. I think the name for it is Dastar, which comes from Persian, suggesting the people under the headgear also come Persia. That part of the word does not interest me, so I will not bother looking into it. What matters here is those guys were all over the terminal, as passengers and employees.
Why Canada imported so many Sikhs is a mystery, but the lunacy of western ruling classes should be considered a feature at this point. Most likely, the usual suspects were behind the idea of importing Sikhs into Canada for the usual reasons. This has given Canada a criminal element that it would otherwise lack, so there’s that. Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa is one of the nation’s most notorious criminals. Since his journey to a Canadian prison came via America, they can blame America for it.
Anyway, the garbage on the floor of the terminal is probably due to the Asian population. I saw several Chinamen toss litter on the floor. Another East Asian, probably Chinese as well, ate something with chopsticks and then left the remains on the floor of where he ate them. Sikhs, of course, like all south Asians, are dirty people. In Lagos, you see them littering all the time. They seem to think the ground will magically clean up after them. Maybe they just don’t care, as back home they live in filth….
Travel in the modern age is the worst part of traveling. All of us are now tethered to our work by e-mail, mobile and text. That means a vital part of travel is making sure you have access to the internet. Of course, the intensely on-line start to come unraveled when disconnected from their favorite platform. Young people, of course, may as well have their mobile embedded into their skulls. They are glued to the things. The result is the airport is a life and death struggle for access to charging ports…
While I was watching chickens and goats scurry about the terminal, an elderly Chinese man approached me. In not so good English, he explained that he was taking a survey about how people enjoyed their time in Canada. Apparently, this is something sponsored by the government. Perhaps the fact that I was sitting in what looked like a rail station during the British Raj should be their focus. Maybe if Canadian cities were full of Canadians, there would be no need for such surveys…
On the plane, a big black women immediately broke open her picnic basket. This is something you notice when you travel. Black women love eating on planes. They bring massive amounts of food and spend the fight eating from various baskets and bags they pull out the entire flight. This woman was eating soup as a first course, which was a nice touch. I fell asleep, but as we approached Denmark, I noticed she was grazing on what looked like my cat’s dry food. I guess that’s the kibble course…
A funny thing I spotted on my last trip to Copenhagen is that the Danes cannot control their body temperature. As soon as the temps fall before the mid-70’s, they break out the winter gear. It is about 15 degrees Celsius, which I roughly 60 degrees American, a beautiful fall day by our standards. All over the city I see locals bundled up like is the dead of winter. Clearly, they are not cold blooded, as there are no sunning rocks, so I’m guessing they just like winter. It is an odd customer nonetheless.
At the airport, I hire a car from a place that is new to me. Sixt is a rental company that operates in Europe. The clerk is black, West African, but she speaks English like native Danes, so she probably grew up in the country. She needs constant supervision, another thing I have noticed about vibrancy in the Nordic countries. Maybe the point of their open borders policy is to give their people a hobby. Rather than the normal, boring efficiency that comes natural to them, they are punching things up with diversity.
In my trips to this part of the world, that’s what has always jumped out to me. America has been multi-racial since the beginning. We have evolved our systems to accommodate the decedents of slaves. That made it easier for us to integrate the recent waves of brown people for over the horizon. Our retail and administrative systems were built to be operated by morons. That’s not the case in this part of the world and it really shows…
I’m staying one night in Copenhagen to get rested up, then I’m off for a day trip along the Swedish coast into Norway. I rented what appears to be q child’s toy. It is a Renault Scenic, which is about the size of a Prius. It’s diesel and manual transmission. I was less than enthusiastic, but putting around Copenhagen, I see the utility of having a tiny little car. Dodging the damned bicycles is a great challenge. On foot, it is a hassle, but in a car, it is maddening. Driving is like the old arcade game Frogger.
I got lost, of course, as the hotel is tucked away in a residential neighborhood outside of the airport. What has always struck me about the residential areas of Nordic countries is the sublime pleasantness. Even the working-class areas have the community feel to them that you only see in the tonier neighborhoods of America. Seeing white people, quietly walking the streets, commuting on bikes and shopping at local stores in an urban area is quite jarring when you come from Lagos on the Chesapeake…
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