Café Night

Our last act as a Survival Danish class was a mandatory “Café Culture Night”, the point of which was… well, I’m not sure entirely. I assumed that it would be some kind of test— that we wouldn’t be fed unless we could order our food in Danish, but as that didn’t happen, I’m left to wonder. I should point out that it has been a week since our last Survival Danish class, and at this point, those of us taking Danish have been dispersed into our regular class sections. For me, it doesn’t matter either way; my Survival Danish teacher is also my section teacher, Charlotte (pronounced shar-lot-eh). Charlotte is a tall, trim woman of indeterminate age (her face looks rather young, but her hair is graying slightly), whose accent makes her sound vaguely Australian.

The café we were assigned to (each group was assigned to a different café) was on Landskronagade in Østerbro, the eastern part of Copenhagen, about a ten minute train ride from the station closest to the DIS center. Because the weather is still moderately nice in Denmark (i.e., not raining), my friend from studio and I decided to walk to the café in order to see the city better. Google Maps said that such a journey would take a little over an hour, and so we left DIS at 5:30 in order to be at the restaurant by 7:00.

Østerbro can be considered Copenhagen’s “ethnic” area. I say this lightly, because although there are a fair number of immigrants in the city, their numbers are few when compared to New York, or even Boston, both of which have areas that are filled with nothing but immigrants from a certain area. Østerbro by comparison has a mix of different people from all over— we saw Mexican food, Chinese food, Japanese food, Thai food (the Turkish food is out west in Vesterbro)— the biggest compilation of foreign food either of us had seen since coming to Denmark. And it all smelled delicious!

By the time we arrived at the restaurant, we were both starving… and it was only 6:34. The entire journey, even with stopping for photos of swans gliding through the canal, had only taken an hour and four minutes— just as Google Maps had said it would. We sat down in the side street, feeling it would be sketchy to walk into the café half-an-hour early.

At about a quarter-til, other people from our group started showing up. Feeling that there was safety on numbers, we all ventured hesitantly into the restaurant, only to find that the proprietor happened to be a British ex-pat. We sat down, six to a table, and started chatting, waiting for the stragglers and our teacher to show up. As it neared seven, a one more boy entered the café.


“I thought she would be here early,” said the girl across from me, referring to Charlotte, “so we would know if we found the right place or not. And I mean, aren’t Danish people anal about being punctual?”

“Yeah, but that just means they show up exactly at that time— not earlier, not later,” explained another.

“Here she comes,” said a girl from another table. Sure enough, Charlotte could be seen with her white coat and backpack striding down the street toward the restaurant.

“Is it exactly seven?” quipped a guy. There was an uproar of laughter from the tables. The Danes in the café looked up curiously.

“Way to stereotype,” laughed the girl, as Charlotte stepped into room.

I looked down at my watch; it was seven on the dot.