My agora companion had a birthday last week and, in a fit of madness, I thought it would be a good idea to give her a trip. I say I suffered a kind of temporary abnormality, something that surely derives from the chemical contingencies of love, because as I pointed out in my last Punyalada, it has been many years since I not only spend the entire summer in Barcelona, but also live absolutely oblivious to any type of movement or route that goes beyond the Eixample or the Gothic Quarter.
In fact, I only tolerate the repulsive effort of traveling if it involves visiting the only international derivation of the Grid woven by Cerdà, an American neighborhood called Manhattan (or its closest version, the capital of the British Empire). But it's good to betray oneself from time to time and I thought that in Copenhagen there would be few people, the thermometer would drop a few degrees and that perhaps it would be interesting to check if civilized Nordic life is indeed real (unveiled and mathematical it certainly is, although it's terribly hot).
I will spare you the clichés of a Barcelonian provincial like myself when arriving at a capital where, it is true, one can leave their bike everywhere without a thief stealing it, where people can buy pastries for twenty euros because they earn a lot of money and where even the smallest detail, from opening a door to traveling by metro, works according to parameters of disgusting perfection.
So far, we have visited the surroundings of our apartment in Vesterbro (the city's new falsely progressive neighborhood, formerly an industrial area now gentrified by students and app creators who in the afternoon drink white wine feigning joy sitting on their windowsills) and yesterday we acted like tourists in what the pretentious call "the Venice of the North," the multicolored houses of Nyhavn and the independent kingdom of Christiania (a place where the children of the rich have created an alternative space of apparent pseudo-legality to smoke joints that, deep down, is better organized than the ICUs of the Clínic). Alba takes photos compulsively and seems happy. I hope the time comes to go home.
I am of Mediterranean descent and I would not trade the chaos and constant imperfection of my city for the neatness and order of this disgustingly exact machine where the feeling of insecurity does not exist, where even the garbage collectors answer you in Shakespearean English, beggars do not ask for charity but collect waste in exchange for a municipal allowance, and there is no Covid because people have the delicacy not to touch each other. But I must admit that Copenhagen has made me fall in love for a detail for which I would even be willing to give up the Xampanyet cocktail and Mauri's horrible convergent breakfasts. This is a city where there is always silence or, in other words, no fucking soul screams. Yesterday we traveled by metro to one of these museums where even the urinals are of a design that one is ashamed to stain with urine, and inside the car, there was a calm superior to any musical evening in the stalls of the Palau or the Liceu. Two days here and I haven't heard a single scream.
I am of Mediterranean descent and I would not trade the chaos and constant imperfection of my city for the neatness and order of this disgustingly exact machine where the feeling of insecurity does not existThe transversality of silence in this place is something practically magical. A few meters from home, dozens of workers are building a new residential area and do not utter a single shout while performing their work. When you walk past a terrace full of people eating those absurd menus made up of mussels or bread with salmon (which are priced similarly to our best tasting menus, for which we should daily thank our chefs on our knees), you barely hear a faint murmur of voices. When you glance at a terrace where the neighborhood residents are already a bit tipsy from these ominous beer barrels they consume before sleeping, not even the drunkards shout. Yours truly, who in Barcelona longed for the Covid times when you could smoke in your doorway like in a convent courtyard and who now suffers the return of car horns and the unbearable accordionists that populate La Rambla de Catalunya, lives happily strolling through streets where no one makes noise, no matter how much stress or friends they carry.
Right now, when I finish this Nordic Punyalada, I will ask any pedestrian we encounter if their passion for silence, which I admire and share, is explained and rooted in their phonological apparatus, because the matter cannot be explained solely in terms of education. Now I understand that, when one of these northern inhabitants enters a commuter train car, a place where people suffer the existential need to share their conversation with everyone, they have little desire to give part of their income tax (or whatever the hell it's called) to people as primitive as us.
In fact, I wonder if it would be so difficult to maintain the basis of our Mediterranean living without giving up the enjoyment of being somewhat comfortable, while importing this meritorious grace to ward off noise from our lives. Believe me, these people show that you can exist without so many decibels, that the economy can function without having to shout like a madman to say "give me another beer, mate," or strain your voice in work meetings, on the subway, or chatting on the phone. You can live without shouting, believe me.
I have seen a city in silence. It is possible. Sunday we return home, fortunately. Much to my regret, I will celebrate it with a shout or two. And someone dared to say that one day we would be the Denmark of the south. You have to be a cretin, really…
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