Chapter Four

Stockholm, Sweden, & Copenhagen, Denmark

Date #7—The Viking Date
in Birka, Sweden

You’ve got to admire the nerve of the Swedes. At a time when the rest of the world was denying it had ever even owned a tank top, let alone worn a pair of beige slacks that fitted snugly around the (pre-thong) bottom, Sweden—in particular, Stockholm—was embracing and refining its entire 1970s back catalogue.

Man-made textiles were cherished, not vilified, and everything from couture to cutlery came in a variety of bold designs, resplendent in the entire rich spectrum of the color brown.

And then, as the rest of the world came back around to the idea that the seventies’ look wasn’t gauche after all but actually knowing and cutting edge, Stockholm was crowned the most knowing of them all. If cities were people, Stockholm, absorbed in its own fashionable introspectiveness, was Andy Warhol.

I’ve always wondered if the whole thing was just a double bluff. Was Stockholm really that hip, or was it more a case of not knowing any better than to have a soft spot for flares and flammable fabrics? Isn’t it possible Stockholm just got lucky that the rest of the world was too insecure to call them out and folded first?

The reason I’d been contemplating design issues was also the reason I’d been reluctant to get a later train: I had a Designer Date in Stockholm.

Date #6: Thomas Sandell, Designer—Stockholm, Sweden

Thomas Sandell was an über-award-winning Swedish designer whose interiors and furniture designs had earned him commissions ranging from the Swedish government to Eriksson technologies. He was even represented in the stores of what was arguably Sweden’s most effective cultural ambassador: IKEA.

I say the date was with Thomas, but it was actually with one of his designs. Stay with me on this: I’ll explain.

I was booked into the Hotel Birger Jarl, a hip, modern hotel in which all the rooms had been created by Sweden’s top designers. I was staying in one of the two rooms created by Thomas.

I wanted to test my theory that if your job is your most important relationship, it will eventually start to resemble you. I mean, dogs famously take on the appearance of their owners, so is the same true of a job? How much of who you are can be seen in what you do?

Specifically, would I get a true sense of Thomas by staying in a room he’d designed? I’d check into his room, then meet up with him in a couple of days, tell him the impression I had of him from his work, and see if I was right.

Feeling groggy from my weird new sleep patterns, and arms aching from dragging my case over cobbled streets (“God, it can’t be much farther” being the misguided mantra of travelers everywhere), I arrived at the minimalist lobby of the Birger Jarl. As I checked in, the desk clerk, chic and understated in his black suit and Bond-baddie wire glasses, handed me a number of messages.

I immediately wondered if one was from Anders. I didn’t think he knew where I was staying, so I doubted it, but that didn’t stop a flame of hope flaring up. So much for my trusting my instincts/he’s not the one for me moral high ground.

Scooping up the messages and the key to room 705, I went up in the tiny lift, en route to the first stage of my Designer Date.

A plaque outside my door told me my room was called “Mr. Glad.”

Oh, at last, an upbeat boyfriend, I thought as I slid my keycard into the lock and let myself in.

The first thing I did when I walked into the space was laugh. The room was long, bright, and silly. The windows that ran down the far wall were fringed with white window-boxes of bright green Astroturf. It didn’t even look vaguely natural or pastoral; instead it seemed like someone was growing green plastic broom-heads.

In the middle of the room, a white gauze curtain acted as a gossamer screen between the room and a larger-than-life bed, like something out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The white wall behind the pillow-laden headboard was covered with black-painted dashes, reminiscent of a cow-print design. The chairs in front of the bed were equally who’s been sitting in my chair–esque.

Putting my bags down on the floor, I clambered up onto the bed. The whole room felt friendly and funny, generous and openly welcoming. Thank God, I thought as I bedded down in a nest of pillows and fished the messages out of my coat pocket; I could so easily have ended up in the scary room with the black bed and claustrophobic black-and-white-checked walls.

Hotel rooms are like relationships: intimate and powerful. The good ones nurture, making you feel relaxed and happy. The bad ones get under your skin and fill you with impotent rage.

Well, I was Ms. Glad; so far my Design Date was going very well indeed.

I opened the messages. The first one was from Lorna confirming my 10:30 at the Nobel Museum in a couple of days. Second message was from my sister Mandy, just calling to check I was doing okay. Third message was from Maria, my Designer Date Wrangler. “Uh-oh.” I sat up on the bed, sensing bad news.

“Hello, Jennifer, I hope you have arrived safely and are enjoying the hotel. I wanted to let you know that unfortunately Thomas will be on business in Moscow for the next few days and may not be back in Sweden in time to meet you. He has left his number if you want to call him.”

Not wanting to think about how much it would cost on my cell phone to bounce my voice via satellite from Sweden to England to Russia to England and back to Sweden, I decided to call tomorrow. It was a lovely evening; I was going to take a walk, find some food, then have an early night. I was dating a Viking tomorrow and needed to catch up with myself.

The hotel was a short walk from the funky Odengatan and grungy Kungsgatan areas, and I soon discovered that my trip to Stockholm coincided with a big Metallica concert and that the fans owned the city that night.

Heavy metal was king in Scandinavia, and Metallica was probably its oldest ruling dynasty. The streets were crammed with roving gangs of teenage boys looking strangely like baby hedgehogs, the backs of their denim jackets spiky with tiny metal studs. The bars spilled over with long-haired bikers—fueled by excitement and Jack Daniel’s, they roared across the street at each other like Norse warriors going into battle.

I have a bit of a heavy-metal soft spot and ordinarily would have enjoyed the display, even seen it as a warm-up act for the Viking tomorrow. But the atmosphere seemed tense and volatile rather than fun. I stopped at a supermarket for some chips and cookies (just because I was traveling was no reason to let my diet go) and settled in the hotel bar with a book and the internationally ubiquitous chill-out music of designer hotels.

Date #7: Ny Bjórn Gosterssen, Viking and Archaeologist—Birka, Sweden

At 10 a.m. the next morning, I boarded a ferry from the quay outside City Hall and set sail for Birka.

Birka was an island, situated one and a half hours west of Stockholm, along the inland archipelago of Lake Mälaren. Although there wasn’t much to see now, this UNESCO site was an important part of the Viking heritage. Founded in the eighth century, Birka had been Sweden’s first city and a busy trade center between Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea. It also contained the largest Viking-age cemetery—more than 3,000 graves scattered throughout the island—and excavating archaeologists were still uncovering important finds.

It was actually one of the archaeologists I was on my way to date. Each summer a number of them, specializing in Viking-age studies, stayed on the island as part of a living history display but also to learn more about the Vikings by emulating what is known of their living conditions and habits.

This was all good news for me, as I wanted to date a Viking.

I know this is going to sound terrible and wildly politically incorrect, but I’ve always thought the Viking image deeply sexy. Ruthless warriors conquering all in their path, Vikings always seemed to be depicted as having big hair, bad attitudes, and hard, hot bodies. I realized as a peaceful vegetarian I should have found this image appalling rather than appealing, but there you go, that’s hormones for you. Vikings were the stuff of daydreams, as far as I was concerned, and this was my chance to find out if my fantasies survived scrutiny.

 

Stockholm had been really warm when I’d left, but as I walked from the ferry down the metal gangplank into the steady drizzle that enveloped Birka, I didn’t need to be told I had got my outfit completely wrong. Although I’d thought to wear a waterproof coat, underneath I was freezing and being bitten to death in my open-toed sandals and capri pants. Rain and mosquitoes? I was failing Viking 101 from the outset.

I followed a gravel path toward a thin copse. The sound of wood being chopped rang energetically through the trees and echoed off the rocks, scaring dark clouds of guttural crows into the darker rain clouds that hung low above Birka. I knew that Ny Bjórn, archaeologist and part-time Viking, was re-creating a Viking-age kitchen with his fellow archaeologists. Unless IKEA dated back much further than I realized, I guessed that sound was them cutting up trees and building the kitchen from scratch.

As I came through a clearing, I saw a group of people surrounded by tree trunks stripped of their bark and piles of fresh shavings. The stakes were loosely laid out on the forest floor in the shape of a small one-room house. A cold-looking woman in a long woolen dress was crouched at the edge of the clearing, stirring a cauldron over an open fire. The rest of the group were men and stood in the center of the clearing, blunt saws and axes at their feet. Two wore long, woolen, monklike robes, cinched at the waist by long twists of thin rope. The rest wore sturdy leather trousers and boots, topped with rough woolen shirts and tweed jerkins. They all stared at the arrangement of wood, hands on hips and nonplussed expressions on their faces. Maybe it was early IKEA after all?

Catching sight of me, they immediately busied themselves, moving around bits of wood and generally trying to give the impression that they were very busy and knew exactly what they were doing. I was touched that they were bothered about impressing a woman who was dressed as if going for coffee in the south of France, when actually on a rain-sodden island that clearly hadn’t seen the sun in months. But I suppose none of us would have been on the island if we didn’t have some issues to work through.

One of the group, in leather trousers and a crazy flat cap, smiled and strode toward me. “Auch, hellooo, Jennifer, welcome to Birka,” he called out in a broad Scottish accent. I was confused: I thought my Viking was Swedish—Ny Bjórn was surely never a Scottish name?

He got close enough to shake my hand, by now so cold it was shaking anyway.

“Hello,” I said. “Are you Scottish?”

“Ooh, noo,” he replied with a grin. “But I’ve done a fair bit of excavating in the Scottish Highlands, so I’ve got a bit of a burr.” He actually had so much of a burr that just saying the word took him about fifteen minutes.

“But you are a Viking?” I asked, looking to establish some facts. “Or at least you’re dressed like one.”

“Yes,” Ny Bjórn replied, “or as we assume they dressed, from the remains we have found in Denmark, York, and Northern Germany.”

Rather than the ruthless warrior I had imagined, Ny Bjórn actually looked more like a wandering minstrel. My first impression was of a tall, thin, and engaging man, clearly having the time of his life on this cold, wet island. His long reddish-blond hair tied back into a ponytail, Ny Bjórn had a mischievous-looking face, punctuated by an energetic goatee that wagged up and down like a happy dog’s tail when he laughed. I knew straight away that he wasn’t my type: He looked like the smart kid you enjoyed chatting with because you sat next to him in chemistry but never fancied. I didn’t mind, though; I was still fascinated to learn more about him and what he was doing here.

Ny Bjórn and I retreated to a large, cold rock to talk. He explained that until they finished building the cookhouse in two weeks’ time, they would be sleeping rough on rainy Birka.

I had my first inkling that maybe Vikings were tough not because it was cute and sexy but because they had to be. And I—with my pathological hatred of the cold, not to mention mosquitoes—might not find myself a natural fit into Viking society. I asked Ny Bjórn to explain who the Vikings actually were.

“The word ‘Viking’ is used for all people in the North cultural sphere, but Vikings were really just a tiny part of the community, mostly those who went raiding and taking things with force,” he replied.

“So they were like unionized burglars?” I asked.

“Exactly, that’s the Viking part. They were seen as heroes by the local community who watched them come back loaded up with bounty, but by the end of the Viking age, to call someone ‘a Viking’ was really seen as quite rude.”

“Umm, so as a Viking you could be fairly prosperous, by the sound of it.” I found this reassuring from a comfort point of view, but what about from a dating point of view? The key question (which I was too ashamed to ask outright) was, exactly how hot were the Vikings?

I paraphrased: “We have an image of Vikings as being rough, roguish types and you’re sitting here in leather trousers, which have gone on to become the uniform of rock stars. Were Vikings seen as the sexy rock-star gods of their age?”

That was me—a Pulitzer just waiting to happen.

Happily, Ny Bjórn didn’t seem to think the question too idiotic. “The famous ones, absolutely. You just need to look at the Icelandic sagas to see that: Gretty the Strong—”

“Ohhh, I like the sound of Gretty the Strong,” I cooed, all pretense of dignity completely abandoned. “It sounds like the lead singer in a heavy metal band.”

“Oh, yes,” Ny Bjórn replied with equal enthusiasm, clearly warming to the subject. “He lived in the early eleventh century, and although he was finally killed, he was outlawed for eighteen years and seen as the superstar of his days.”

“Really?” I swooned, knowing absolutely nothing about him, but instantly having a huge crush on him anyway. “What did he do that was so great?”

“Well,” said Ny Bjórn excitedly, suggesting that if he wasn’t a man and a Viking and a thousand years too late, maybe he would have had a bit of a crush on Gretty too, “he did a lot of things: He was a great warrior, he was really strong, and he was a good wrestler.”

The idea of wrestling cooled my ardor for a moment, conjuring up images of bouffanted fools basted in baby oil working the WWF circuit, but then I had a mental picture of huge leather jerkins being ripped off broad, sweaty chests, as muddy warriors grunted and rolled around on the ground for real. I could barely contain myself. This was great: Vikings were every bit as sexy as I had imagined.

“He even killed a ghost once….” Ny Bjórn boasted, like a kid getting carried away in front of a playground audience and saying his dad could beat up all of theirs.

“Huh?” Dragged from my daydreaming, I picked up on Ny Bjórn saying something about ghosts. Ghosts? I wasn’t interested in “ghosts.” Ghosts weren’t sexy.

“Oh, yes, he was the idol for people back then,” Ny Bjórn continued unabashed. He was on a roll, delighted to have an audience for a subject that he clearly lived and breathed. “People who were ‘good at the trade’ of being a Viking were pretty much the role model of what men should be back then. There was deep resentment about the Vikings who came to settle around York, or Yorvik, for example, because they took away all the women from the Englishmen there. And the reason was that the Vikings washed every Saturday and combed their hair, etcetera. They were really well-groomed by the standards of the times.”

Back on safer ground and feeling that we shared an appreciation, albeit for different reasons, I summed up: “So can I just clarify, the Vikings wore leather and washed?”

“Yes, yes,” Ny Bjórn replied.

I gave a big happy sigh. “This just gets better and better.”

We both laughed.

I knew why I was into Vikings, but what about Ny Bjórn? What was the appeal for him? The leather? The machismo? The beards?

“No, no…” he spluttered. “It’s…”

“Oh, come on,” I persisted, determined not to let him off the hook.

“Well, okay, yes,” he admitted sheepishly. “But the real attraction is I’m totally into artifacts. I really like ‘things’ and gizmos and how they were made. This is a great way for me to increase my understanding of things made by the Vikings.”

All my instincts went on “geek alert” when Ny Bjórn said this, but I suppose you don’t live on a cold, wet island for the summer unless you are seriously passionate about the place, and who was I to judge? I was passionate about Vikings; Ny Bjórn was passionate about Vikings’ “things,” that’s all.

“I mean, cooking fish over an open fire in an enamel pot,” he continued, now lost in a romantic reverie of his own, “it worked back then. If we can make it work here, we can learn from it, that’s one of the main reasons I do this.”

I was proving myself to be superficial and shallow: I wanted to go back to hearing about strong men wrestling, not how to cook fish over a fire. I guess that was the thing, though—the guys who were satisfied with leather and machismo were the ones who’d been gathering for the Metallica concert in Stockholm the night before. Here on the island, the fascination was with the life behind the myth. I’d arrived a thousand years too late.

Frozen to the core, I stood up and gently massaged some blood back into my hands and feet. The ferry back to the mainland had just docked and it was time for me to go. I had loved meeting Ny Bjórn, even if he hadn’t turned out to be the Viking of my dreams. I was interested to see how immersed he was in his work—even if my Designer Date didn’t end up proving my you look like your job theory, Ny Bjórn certainly did.

I wished him luck building the cookhouse and for the summer ahead, then walked woodenly back to the warmth of the boat and the challenge of the next seventy-three dates.

 

Sailing back, it was so cold and wet I had to sit below deck. There was one spare seat at a coffee table, where two women leaned toward one another, deep in conversation. They invited me to join them and I did, but although busying myself with my book, I found it impossible to ignore their conversation.

Sarah was in her thirties, from London but working for the EU in Brussels. Katia was in her fifties, living and working in Stockholm. She was a part-time therapist who also made money selling diets over the Internet. They were several hours into a conversation about their love lives.

Sarah was torn between a relationship with a cute commitment-phobe in Brussels and a safe-bet/dull-as-ditchwater back home in London. The thing she was really struggling with, though, was, as she put it: “We are all born alone and die alone.”

I could see how that would put a damper on the evening.

Katia only had the one relationship to contend with, but it was more than enough by the sound of it. She was in love with an ex–Soviet general and was unresolved as to if and how she could accept or change his fierce anti-Semitic views.

The places, faces, and details changed, but I had had these conversations a million times on the road over the years. Wherever you travel, there will be women struggling to come to terms with the big, emotional issues in their lives. I liked to think I was less desperate and better dressed about it, but I had been that woman over the years, too. Who knew, maybe I was that woman now. As I watched Katia pick up her copy of The Answer Within: Learning to Love Yourself and disembark with Sarah, I knew I would never discover how their dilemmas worked out. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Having the chance to think and talk about your issues was what was important. Perhaps that was where the idea for my Dating Odyssey had come from, except I didn’t want to talk about my past, I wanted to be talked into my future.

 

When I got back to the hotel, I called Thomas in Russia. We agreed I would email him my impression of him and he would email me back his response, so, in a way, our date would have taken place in spite of his absence. I got to work immediately:

Okay, so to my impression of you from your design:

CARING—You wanted me to be happy.

CALM—The room, although bright, was very tranquil.

THOUGHTFUL—The room had “breathing space,” like you were encouraging me to take the time to think about things.

SMART—You knew how to control the mediums and get the effect you wanted.

FUN/SENSE OF HUMOR—I loved the larger-than-life bed—it made me think of Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

SENSITIVE—Feeling for textures and subtle form.

In short, the sense of you that I got from your room is that you are a kind man and selfless friend. Someone who listens, returns calls no matter how late, and puts others before himself. You are reliable and thoughtful.

There is a darker side that most don’t see, though (the bathroom has an utterly different mood to the bedroom): You feel the need to keep that out of view and compartmentalized “for yourself.”

You are also a passionate perfectionist, with a strong, restless vision. You cannot rest until a project has been completed to your high standards.

Thomas, I do hope I haven’t said anything insensitive or too personal here. You came across as being utterly lovely from your room and I hope that is clear in what I have just written. I’m curious as to how right and wrong I am.

Take care, Jennifer

Date #8: William—Nobel Museum, Stockholm, Sweden

The next morning I walked to Rådmansgatan Station and caught the Tunnelbana metro to Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s medieval center. It was built on an island and was good for lazy sightseers, as the charismatic castle, cathedral, parliament buildings, and museums were all within spitting distance of each other.

It also meant that it had the highest concentration of tourists, expensive ice creams, and customer-only toilets of anywhere in Sweden. I bypassed all of these and headed straight for the Nobel Museum and my 10:30 with William.

William was a student here. He was also the brother of my friend Lorna from Australia. I had more than enough Swedish dates already, but Lorna had begged me to meet up with him:

Think of this as a favor to me, Jen: He doesn’t know a lot of people there as he’s pretty shy so a bit slow making friends. I know he’d love to have the chance to talk to someone. I’ll owe you big-time.

To be told someone will “owe you big-time” means you’re pretty much being told to expect the worst but for noble reasons. It wasn’t the Nobel Date I wanted, but “it’s just coffee,” I told myself firmly as I hiked up the steps outside the Nobel Museum. “It’s one morning out of my life.” Get in, date him, and boom—I could be heading out of the country and on to the next date in under four hours.

It had just gone 10 a.m. as I walked into the entrance hall. I wanted the chance to have a look around before I met William. The Nobel Museum honored the 743 laureates who had tirelessly devoted themselves to the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics, and, of course, peace.

The museum was wonderful: As you entered, a huge Orwellian tract ran around the ceiling of the entire building, laminated portraits of the laureates rattling along it on hangers. At various points the track dipped down so you could read the profiles.

The museum was divided into sections by solid screens of what looked like chicken wire covered in Plexiglas, white fiber-optic lights glowing inside. I bumped into the publicist, Anna, who pointed me in the direction of the electronic museum, where I wanted to surf the online database of the laureates’ acceptance speeches.

Martin Luther King Jr., Marie Curie, Samuel Beckett, Kofi Annan, Mother Teresa…Reading them, I was struck by how much passion these people had poured into the ideals they championed. Out of curiosity, I entered the word “love” and searched for references to it among the speeches.

The screen filled and I scrolled down. The laureates’ love of ideas; their love of humanity, freedom, God, science and discovery, home; even their love of cars. It struck me very powerfully that this kind of love was a dedication: a devotional love, abstract, not interpersonal. There was no mention of romantic love; no real celebration of people other than as concepts or ideals.

Clearly the laureates were accomplished, unique people. But was being accomplished and unique at the expense of something more everyday and vital to our happiness? In short, to be a great idealist, did you need to be pretty self-centered and emotionally unavailable? Were they just a smarter, more noble version of me, choosing a job over a partner? But since they were making the world a better place rather than writing about where to go on holiday, did that make it okay?

Another thing that really struck me was how few of the laureates were women: only 31 out of a total of 743. What did that say about gender roles and the pursuit of ideals? Were women more interested in people, and men in ideas, or was the judging system just crap?

But it was time to meet William. As I walked back out to the lobby, I bumped into Anna again. I asked her if she thought it was true the laureates didn’t value romantic or personal love.

Anna smiled wryly. “You know, when I started working at the Nobel Museum, I was told: ‘Here you are not loved for being witty or beautiful, you are loved for your ideas.’ Most of the people associated with the Nobel Prizes—winners and staff—give up their families and well-paid jobs so that they might explore and prove their ideas. It takes a certain type of selfishness to be so dedicated.”

So it was as true for Nobel Prize winners as it was for guidebook publicists: Too much work wrecks your love life.

 

William and I had arranged to meet at the Kafé Satir. Modeled on Café Museum, the Viennese intellectuals’ hang-out in the early 1900s, it was where the Nobel Museum encouraged you to debate and reflect. I figured if William didn’t have much to say for himself, at least there’d be enough going on around to distract us. The café was small; I should have no problem spotting William: brown collar-length hair, bookish, and “normal-looking,” according to Lorna.

There was only one person in the café when I arrived. Sunk low in his chair, huge booted feet propped up on the table, a young man with long, greasy hair slouched with his eyes shut and his mouth open. The serving staff stood tensely behind the counter, watching him with open hostility, outraged at the bad manners, worse attitude, and unforgivable hair.

This could not be William.

I don’t know why I even bothered thinking that, because I instantly knew that it was. This heavy-metal dating disaster was “shy,” “normal” William. And from the look and smell of his T-shirt, he hadn’t been home since the Metallica concert the night before.

Rather than feeling worried or intimidated, I felt like someone’s mum arriving home unexpectedly to find her son blowing off school and reading Dad’s hidden stash of porn.

Walking over to where William sat oblivious to my stern judgment, I gave the staff an I’ll deal with this look. Putting my bag and coat on the table next to William’s feet, I sharply rapped on the sole of one of his boots. His eyelids flickered, his brow creased, but he continued to sleep, the studs on his jacket rising and falling gently with each deep breath.

“William,” I said crisply. This time his eyes snapped open and he looked around in alarm, completely disoriented, clearly not recognizing where he was. “William,” I repeated, this time a little more gently but still with a wait till I get you home, young man tone to my voice. He blinked twice and blankly focused his gaze in my direction. Like being behind a student driver waiting and waiting to pull out on a busy roundabout, sometimes you have to give them a nudge or you’ll be there forever. “William!” I shouted, knocking him hard on the shoulder.

Pausing as if manually connecting brain with body, William shambled into life. Crashing his legs off the table onto the floor, he stumbled to his feet. As the chair toppled over noisily behind him, the counter staff flinched collectively. The smell of cigarettes and alcohol was overwhelming. William looked at me uncertainly: He knew he was expected to speak but was obviously having difficulty knowing exactly where he was and what he was meant to say.

I revved my engine and shunted him into the oncoming traffic.

“William, I am Jennifer,” I said briskly, Mary Poppins suddenly my default personality.

“Yes?” he asked dully. Something about this sounded familiar; he just needed more time to work out what.

“I am a friend of your sister Lorna’s. She arranged for us to meet.”

William was suddenly completely in the moment, totally lucid, and very much awake. “Hey,” he said slowly, looking at me attentively as if seeing me for the first time. “You’re that chick going round the world banging all those guys,” he reported matter-of-factly. I sensed all movement behind the counter come to an abrupt halt; the kitchen staff stopped watching William and—like spectators at Wimbledon—collectively turned their attention to me, their faces alight with frank incredulity and wonder.

Although the café was designed to foster the lively exchange of ideas, I doubted very much that this was what they had in mind.

“William,” I said witheringly, summoning all the dignity I could manage, “I am not—as you say—‘banging guys around the world.’ I am on a quest, traveling the world in search of my Soul Mate.” I snorted at the ridiculousness of his statement, as much to convince the staff in the kitchen as William.

“But you bang some of the guys, right?” he asked hopefully.

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have the time or energy to explain the niceties of my Odyssey to some teenage boy optimistically and inappropriately awash with hormones. With a dignified sniff, I picked up my bag and coat. Casting a disdainful eye in the direction of the counter staff, who by now had given up all pretense of rearranging the chocolate cookies and were openly following our conversation, I thanked William for meeting me.

“I’ll tell Lorna you looked, ummm…” I struggled for a suitable description. “…well.”

William just stared at me, his unwashed face puckering into folds of exasperation as he realized I was going, and he was not coming with me. “Maaan,” he groaned in frustration, “I only came here because I thought I was going to get laid. I’m telling you, there is no way I am ever doing my sister a favor again.”

Doing my sister a favor?

Whatever did he mean? I was the one on the mission of mercy here. Had Lorna given him the impression I was the one who needed help? Her desperate friend destined to end up Internationally Single, but if he could help make up the numbers, at least there’d be a shag in it for him? Could she really have said that?

I never got the chance to ask, because William, like a child who’s been told “No more Robot Wars until your room’s tidy,” had already stomped out of the café and up the street, without so much as a backward glance.

I raised my eyebrows and let out a long, steadying breath. That, I said to myself, was what happened when you dated a Viking. Giving the kitchen staff an at least wait until I am out of earshot look, I left the museum for my hotel, where I packed and left for Denmark.

 

The man sitting in front of me on the plane to Copenhagen was easily the most nervous flyer I’ve ever seen in my life. He puffed and panted through gritted teeth like he was flying Air Lamaze. At one point I was woken by him shrieking, “Oh, my God!” involuntarily, before returning to his steady panting.

No one watched the film; we all watched him.

I shouldn’t have taken this as a bad omen, but I did. I was in an ugly mood. I still felt irritated, less by how William had been and more by what Lorna might have said. Although I only had two dates in Copenhagen, I’m afraid to say I didn’t feel in the mood for either of them.

Date #9: Lars—The Free State of Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark

My mood was not improved by getting soaked on the way to Christiania. It was dead in the water by the time I’d finished dating Lars.

Christiania was on the site of an abandoned military barracks on the edge of Copenhagen city center. Taken over by squatters in 1971 and declared a “free state,” it was now home to around eight hundred people, with another seven hundred–odd who worked within the community.

Christiania was a self-governing, car-free society that functioned as a collective. It ran its own school, recycling programs, and small businesses that catered to both residents and the tourists who flocked here (mainly to buy the pot openly sold on “Pusher Street”).

Its very existence was a challenging expression of civil liberties. I had loved the sense of community I got from living in a housing co-op in Leeds when I was a student. Could my Soul Mate be found in this community?

My date Lars had just split up with his girlfriend. His friend Vessie, who was a friend of my friend Kirk, thought it would cheer Lars up to meet me. I have no idea if it cheered Lars up, but it depressed the hell out of me. “I’m only here so I don’t have to be on my own at home,” he told me bluntly the second we met.

Our date consisted of three hours walking along Christiania’s muddy paths in the pouring rain, as Lars poured his heart out. His girlfriend had left him for someone else; he was a good guy who couldn’t catch a break; she’d never appreciated him, he was too good for her; what was so great about macho guys anyway…?

Regardless of the fact that Lars had just been dumped, to me he seemed one of those people who had a horrible, negative attitude anyway. When we parted company, I felt like asking for his ex-girlfriend’s phone number just so we could go out for a drink together and bad mouth him.

Date #10: Paul—Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark

I slept badly after my date with Lars. His negativity weighed on me and made me feel despondent about my own chances of success—not because he had been unlucky in love but because I feared I might be unlucky enough to have another seventy-one dates just like him.

But my next date was with Paul, a chef who worked in one of the “It” restaurants in Copenhagen. We’d both been too busy to talk or email, but my friend Georgia had arranged for us to meet on the Kissing Bench at Tivoli Gardens, the Victorian amusement park full of old-fashioned rides, street orchestras, and beautiful flower gardens. It was one of my favorite places and I knew it would cheer me up.

But four hours later, as I sat solo on the Kissing Bench in the pouring rain, I realized that rather than being cheered up, I was being stood up. Paul was a no-show. I shouldn’t have been as upset about it as I was, but I took it really badly and very personally: Not only did he not want to see me, he couldn’t even be bothered to let me know he wasn’t coming. Too embarrassed to get in contact with Georgia and too wretched to do anything else, I went back to the hotel, ran a hot bath, and cried.