Melancholy Danes and Gomorroah

Hamlet really had nothing to whine about. Denmark is awesome. Well, I only saw Copenhagen, but if that city is any indication of the rest of the country, I see absolutely no reason to drown oneself in a stream or poison one's brother in the ear (as creative as that is... you go, Claudius!) or, you know... stab people who are hiding behind drapes. I just didn't see the provocation for that. Like, there are literally 7-Elevens on every street corner. Go get a Slurpee, Hamlet! That always cheers me up!

You might have heard about Copenhagen lately, because the President went there for a summit on climate change. And wherever the President goes, the news media follows with a cheesy slogan/spin. Hopenhagen? Ring a bell? Yeah.

My initial reaction upon getting into the city was "holy neon, Batman! They call this energy efficiency?!?!". It was pretty late at night, and the entirety of the town center was lit up with advertisements for Carlsberg (Probably the Best Beer... probably the best slogan ever) and T-Mobile and everything else you could think of. Diapers included. And so, you see, my initial reaction was that Copenhagen is a big old hypocrite. Big neon sign for disposable diapers? And you call yourselves green. Shame.

But when I woke up in the morning (after having spent the night with both my hat and gloves on in the sweltering dorm room for fear of bed bugs... this hostel was very sketch. I was glad I only stayed one night), I found myself warming to Copenhagen, and not in a global manner, either. The city is really clean, and it was the first place I had been thus far that did not make me look like I'd been wading in a river from the knees down. Oslo, Stockholm, take note please. This is how you shovel a sidewalk.

And Copenhagen really would stop if the sidewalks were slushy... or rather, if the bike lanes were. I can literally say that I had, up to this point, never seen that many bicycles in one place. They're EVERYWHERE. You have more liklihood of being hit by a bicycle in Copenhagen than you do of being hit by a car, because they outnumber cars probably 4:1. But don't let this go to your head and think you can just walk out into a bike lane all willy-nilly. Remember Pierre Curie? Yeah... nobody does. Marie gets all the press in that marriage, but he did do something pretty revolutionary in his own right: he was the first guy in Paris to die after getting hit by a bike. It happens. It almost happened to me on numerous occasions on this day. Be careful.

I amused myself for quite awhile in the morning by merely walking from one weird-ass spire to another. These are about as prolific as the bikes in Copenhagen, and much more entertaining to one who has been hanging out in the city of domes, but not spires, for a long time. I think there's some sort of meridian that marks where churches stop being topped with domes and start having really fun spires. I don't know where it is, but it's between Berlin and Copenhagen, anyway. The spires in Copenhagen are so random as to be a little confusing. I think, not having had a whole lot (read: no) experience with Russian architecture, that I wouldn't be wrong in saying that these were very Russian-inspired structires, with piles of balls and ice-cream swirls and dragon tails... I had a heck of a time just laughing at each one as I came upon it.

I also went to the Danish National Gallery, which was FREE and really fun. My favorite part was the modern-art (gasp! Maggie liked a modern installation?!?!?) show that had been set up by foud different artists as part of the climate-change conference. Two were films, one was a giant series of bio-domes, and one was sculpture. Reading the artist's abstracts sure made them easier to understand, and I agreed with a lot of the themes they were working with. Plus, one of the videos was visually just stunning. I think I watched it four times.

As for Danish food: 7-Eleven seems to be the national emblem. I come from a state where we don't have those stores, and I've only ever been in one once in Vegas at one in the morning. A Slurpee is welcome when it's still 100 degrees out in the middle of the night, but not when it's 20 degrees at noon. I don't get it. Also, I'm not a big breakfast food person, so I wasn't inclined to get that pastry we call a Danish, but I guess the Danish must just call a pastry... and I couldn't find any other foods that were authentically Danish. So, I went to a Chinese buffet.

WAIT! That really is authentically Danish! You would be shocked by how many times I saw the word buffet in only one day in Copenhagen. If 7-Eleven is to Eagle, then ethnic food buffet is to baseball, if we're comparing the States and Denmark. Even Let's Go Europe told me to try out a buffet. And the book don't lie.

So, full of MSG and frying oil, I happily (if a little shakily... MSG is weird that way, right?) made my way to the train station for the overnight train to Amsterdam. It actually wasn't bad. I didn't spend the money to get a bed, or even a berth, but the compartment I was in was deserted for most of the night, so I got a whole bench of seats to myself. Of course, it wasn't a full night of sleep by any stretch, since people were coming in and out all night, demanding my ticket in strange languages that I wouldn't have understood even if awake, but it wasn't a bad night. I'd do it again.

Amsterdam. (Que ominous Bob Marley-esque suspense music here). It's gorgeous. Seriously, I'm very sad that it has the reputation it does, because people should literally just go there for the buildings. You know how you want the Netherlands to look? With the water, and the tall, skinny, bright-colored houses? That's Amsterdam. It's beautiful. Just freakin' gorgeous. Google image the train station and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

But, unfortunately, Amsterdam has the reputation it does for a reason. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Red Light District. And it brought up some questions for me that I was surprised by the answers to.

I am an art history major. Specifically, I study the Renaissance and the Baroque periods of art history (that's not at all specific, but... I digress). Basically, this means that I study naked people and sex. And religion. But the Renaissance and the Baroque both really liked the Greek/Roman gods, and boy, did those guys have a lot of sex. And they never wore a stitch of clothing. And so, given Zeus's promiscuity and Michelangelo's penchant for naked guys, I consider myself pretty comfortable with the ideas of nudity and human sexuality. I am. Sex is a natural occurance, and none of us would be here without it. We were all born naked. It's our natural state. Nothing wrong with either of these things.

What really bothered me as I walked through the Red Light District (in the middle of the afternoon. I was not going out there at night) was not the stores selling sex toys and lingere or the theatres advertising private cabanas (ew!). It was the prostitutes. Women standing in windows wearing only their underwear, pressing themselves against the glass and, in many cases, looking really bored. Desensitized in the extreme.

I consider myself a feminist. I thought I was of the opinion that prostitution can be empowering when it is of the woman's own choice and gone about in a healthy manner. I thought that sex has always been a commodity, and in a supply and demand society, it should perhaps have the same economic opportunities afforded to the alcohol, gambling and tobacco industries.

There is nothing empowering about what I saw in Amsterdam. It is not healthy for anyone, in any way, and reducing women's bodies to products that can be bought and sold like cigarettes is setting us back farther than anti-abortion legislation, workplace discrimination or any of the other challenges facing women in the developed world today. Prostitution can never be an empowering decision, because, even if it is an action undertaken of a woman's own volition, she is still making herself the object of a gaze that does not see her as a human being, but as a means to one's own satisfaction. Watching the dumbass young American and Austrailian guys oogling the women standing in windows like clothing mannequins gave me the heebie-jeebies, because I could also see the women, and see that they were used to this. They're used to much worse than just being leered at by young foreign guys.

I live in the 21st Century. I do. I know that my generation has a different conception of sexuality and sexual freedom than those of our elders, but I would also hope that we have a more egalitarian way of viewing the world, in which women are not inherently second-class citizens who can be objectified with impunity. I know this isn't true. Women are all-too-often reduced to a pair of breasts or a butt in the media, and so it follows, I suppose, that prostitution, which is the ultimate form of objectification and subjugation, should not be frowned upon. The fact that the Red Light District exists indicates to me that we have a long way to go before sexual equality is reached. The term "the oldest profession" indicates to me that that goal might never be achieved. As long as women minimize their worth to purely physical, to be enjoyed and approved of by men, we'll always be the weaker sex.

This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people. I don't want to sound like some man-hating, bra-burning militant. That's not how I mean this at all. I don't think that men are exclusively responsible for the sex industry, even if they are often the most prolific consumers of it. I think that there is guilt on both sides of the sex divide, and the only way to bring about any kind of meaningful change is by really examining the effects of it. I saw it in the eyes and postures of the women in the windows. Even if they chose that life, they're victims of it all the same. There's no passion there. No real emotion at all. Sex becomes merely the satisfaction of a physical need. What, then, is it that separates us from the animals?

There will never be an agreement reached on this topic, as there will never be an agreement reached on many others. You can't get everyone to look at things from your point of view, and the world would be far less interesting if they did. But it surprised me how vehemently opposite of my expectations my reaction was when confronted with the fact of prostitution, and so I'm asking you to think about it for a few minutes. Just think. Be aware.

That said, the women in windows were not the only shocking and usually illicit thing that they deal in in Amsterdam. I have never smoked pot. It's illegal in the States, and, apart of jaywalking and the odd house-party, I don't do illegal things. I was too scared to try it, even though it's legal there, but walking through the District, I didn't really get a choice. Ever heard of a contact high? I literally sat down on a bench after walking through some little side streets, and started freaking out because of how weird it felt to move my fingers. My legs felt like they were sinking into mud. I couldn't stop staring at the lights on the river.

I don't know how legit this is, but that's what I felt, and it was enough to make me sure that I will never try pot for real. It creeped me out. I really didn't like it. And the smell of that stuff... ick. So... this is a PSA from your local goody-two-shoes: pot will make you feel creepy. Don't do it. Eat french fries instead. They're delicious. And bad for you in a far less sinster and ambiguous way.

I went to the Van Gogh Museum, too. Literally, it was the most expensive museum I've ever been to. 14 euros! Vincent's museum is the proof that "if you build it, they will pay through the nose to come". I paid the 14 euros and entered, feeling all the time like I was at Disneyland, for all the crowds. Holy cow.

The irony actually depressed me a little. It was both the most expensive and most crowded museum I've been to in Europe (with the exception of the Sistine Chapel, but that's a different post), but Vincent died with basically no wider recognition. Dude shot himself in the chest in the middle of a field. You don't do that when you're happy. Selling paintings generally makes artists happy. He went from being completely unknown at the time of his death to having crowds lining up around the block to buy merchandise with his work on it. And he didn't get to see this. It's a little depressing, right?

But the museum is beautiful, and thought provoking. Actually, the entirety of Amsterdam was incredibly thought-provoking, from the angry thoughts about the women in windows to the amazed thoughts while standing in front of the Anne Frank house...

I think my favorite thoughts were still about the french fries, though.