Danes & Dogs.

I have been putting up bands on my living room floor, making them breakfast and doing my best to make them feel as comfortable as I can for years. This is sort of what I was expecting when I set out on this tour. Even the tour manager has told me we would be spending a lot of time sleeping on the tour van. I am yet to see a floor yet, so far it’s been hotels and an unbelievable amount of pampering and luxury.

I don’t know if this is just what it’s always like here in Scandinavia, but the food has been incredible! Even the food that you get at truck stops is amazing, lost of fish, meat and cheese on typically Danish open faced sandwiches called “Smorrebord” There is one called “dyrleagens natmad” which translates to “veterinarian’s night food” I have no Idea what the story behind this is, but all I can see is some nineteenth century Danish horse vet trudging through the snow at midnight to save some sick farm horse from an early demise, the only thing that gives him the energy to push through the night is this sandwich that his loving and hard working ninteenth century Danish wife has made for him. It consists of a slice of buttered bread, lettuce, liver spread, some salami sort of thing with onions and a slab of this stuff called “Skoot” which is actually spelled “Sky”. It looks exactly like cherry Jello but is made out of pig fat and some other things that I don’t really need to know about. It sounds gross doesn’t it? The thing is that it literally tastes like nothing. I couldn’t begin to tell you what the flavor was, if I was forced to describe it I would say it tasted like textured air. I just pretended it was cherry Jello.



Every venue and hotel we have stayed in so far has had incredibly fresh quality food. I can only assume that this is the way everyone eats here, because everyone looks really fit and healthy. You don’t see those bloated grey walking heart attacks that you get in the US and the UK from eating a diet of fast food and frozen pizzas every day. Maybe I just need to hang out with some poor people here, but something tells me that the social system here takes care of their poor in a way that we can’t imagine in other parts of the world.




7 Eleven! Going to 7 Eleven and making a suicide Big Gulp Slurpee is almost a right of passage for most kids in the US, specifically if you grew up on the west coast. When I moved to NYC in the early nineties there was a significant gap missing in my life that 7 Eleven filled, the only one I knew of was way out on Long Island. Well Denmark is full of them! They’re everywhere! Every truck stop has one, and they are a noticeable feature on street corners all over the place here. I haven’t had a Danish slurpee yet so I haven't noticed if they have any crazy Danish specific flavors, like, "Middlefart Herring Mania!" or "Green Tea Skoot". It’s really hard trying to make up crazy Danish Slurpee names, So I'll spare you the laughs that you would have never felt anyway.



The nature of this touring business is that you really don't stay very long in one place so you only really get glimpses of where you are and it's difficult to really soak it all in. I feel really lucky that my day off just happened to be while we are in Copenhagen. Once we all rolled in, parked the van and settled in to the hotel I immediately got my gear together and set off for a little night time exploration. Not far from the hotel is the harbor where there was an outdoor Christmas market going on so I set off down the street looking completely rediculous dressed in my tweed plus fours, knee high socks and white sneakers. For added tourist effect I adorned my neck with my 35mm Pentax K1000 advanced and ready to make me look like an asshole, a happy asshole, but an asshole none the less.




I know what your thinking about that picture. "WTF is that? Eww!" I might agree with you if I hadn't eaten the damn thing, It was the best hot dog I have ever eaten, No Joke! Danes love their hot dogs! I never thought I would say this, I have been a life long fan of a good NYC hot dog, but NYC has been left in the dust, They have a lot to answer for in the Hot Dog department. First of all in NYC you can get either a Hot Dog or a Hot Sausage (my preference), but in Copenhagen the Hot Dog cart is like the freaking ice cream man! You have a massive variety of not only Hot Dogs, long ones, big ones, skinny, fat, ones wrapped in bacon etc etc, but you have different kinds of buns too, traditional ones, ones that completely surround the dog like a blanket, seeded ones and on and on like that, it makes my head spin. I will be having another spectacular Danish wiener (I just wanted to say "wiener")before I head off to Hamburg! I bet theirs are even more delicious! I'll let you know.