The key to understanding the title is this: Danish girls are, well, pretty, and muffin is a word for a pretty young thing. Also, Danish is a type of food, as is a muffin. So you see, it was much less clever than you suspected. However, the point remains that my introduction to Copenhagen was punctuated by oh-so-beautiful exclamation points. Which isn't to say they have round bottoms, necessarily...
Anyway, before I get stuck on metaphors and puns, yes, Copenhagen is a lovely city. Mike and I arrived and, once again, ended up in a hostel about as exciting as a snail race on a salt track. Oops, more metaphor. I wound up in a room with an old lady and two girls from Hong Kong that were asleep both when I arrived mid-afternoon and when we got back that night. They wound up being on my tour (though we didn't talk to each other at all and I had no way of knowing) and when they're awake they're actually quite nice. The important thing is, this old lady (like 80) was in a bed across from me and creeped me out. A lot. And also gave me dirty looks. For entering my own room.
Anyway, we got out of there and explored the city as fast as we could, laughing about our luck, and stumbled on some cool stuff (most of which I would encounter the next day on tour). We met with Carissa (on our tour) and Juaquin (also on our tour) at 9:00 by the Hans Christen Anderson statue. Juaquin was quite amusing, going off and asking local girls for directions regardless of whether they were needed or not, and also snapping photos of local beauties (after asking their permission, we were told). It did come in handy as we found a very local jazz-funk club which felt a lot like Lydia's back home (except Norwegian). The singers would sing in English and then talk in Danish. Most Scandinavians are taught English in school and it seems to be mandatory. I have yet to run into one that doesn't speak English well, if not perfectly.
The next day was officially the first day of the Contiki trip, meeting at 7:00 at the campsite outside the city. So I spent the morning with Mike and the afternoon as well, moreso than intended as we got trapped on the wrong side of the river as I rushed to grab my things and head to the train station. I made it to the hostel just in time for the meeting and observed that I was not the oldest one but actually right in the middle of the pack, which is quite nice. The people on tour seemed to be generally cool too, albeit the Australian:others ratio was a little weighted (I think about 80% Aussies). Which is a nice change from my last tour which was all Canadian.
My first room was with Gord, the only other Canadian, Chris, a guy who worked in Canada for several years but is an Aussie and is back there now, and Rob, another Aussie who is also 24. So it was about as Canadian-friendly a start as could be expected given the numbers. I met quite a few more people at the dinner and, just for Mariah, even ate the mushrooms that came with it. Which I swore I'd never tell anyone back home, but here we are...
Anyway, tomorrow is a tour of Copenhagen, when we first board the Contiki bus, but I think tonight we're going to go out to pub and club. Well, okay, since this is written after the fact, we DID do the pub and club and Carissa had some post-clubbing coffee machine difficulties, and we all had a good time and too many Smirnoff Ice's. They were cheaper than back home!
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