The devil is in the details

The Lonely Planet Copenhagen City Guide...

...saved a life today.

This post should be pretty interesting, when I get around to writing it. It's probably better that I don't do it right away anyway, as I ought to think about exactly how much I ought to share. Anyway, this post will recount the adventures and misadventures that happened from the time we arrived in the Copenhagen airport until pretty much right now (11am-5pm in this timezone) which were quite plentiful. But now it's time to finish getting ready for dinner...

UPDATED:
I've got a lot to say about this afternoon and I fear that it won't be as good as it could be, particularly since I am writing with the motivation that I can go to bed when I am finished. But damnit, I WILL write about all of today's events while it is still today.

As you may have figured out, I went to work on Monday and then took a cab to the airport with my boss. This was followed by sitting in the lounge in Logan with my boss, and then sitting on a plane next to my boss, and then sitting in the lounge in Amsterdam with my boss, and then sitting on a plane to Copenhagen with my boss. The original plan after that was for him to take a taxi to his hotel and for me to take a taxi to my (closer) hotel, for us to both nap and shower and then to meet up to tour for a while in the afternoon before dinner. The idea is to take a walking tour, particularly one that the boss saw and liked in the tour book that I brought, The Lonely Planet Copenhagen City Guide. In the end, he picked out a tour that was my first priority walking tour, so I was pretty happy. Remember that I only got 3 hours sleep on the plane.

Before I go on, a few things you should know:
My boss is, among other things, a very high stress and extreme type-A kind of guy. He doesn't know the meaning of the word relaxed.

I'm not going to lie and say that I am particularly low-maintenance or laid back, but I do feel like I have a good ability to go with the flow. If I'm with other people and they want to do crazy plans, I can usually roll with it pretty well. One issue that I have is that I need personal space and "me" time every so often. I can deal with a lot in the way of crazy commotion, but I like a little space to collect myself before getting into all that.

So....we are walking through the Copenhagen airport (where they strangely don't even LOOK at your passport but give you lots of city guides) and figure out it is easy to take the subway to our hotels. But his hotel is further away and more of a pain. After having this discussion we go to buy subway tickets. I get a little annoyed when the boss is breathing down my neck while I am trying to pay for my subway ticket...I haven't even figured out how much the coins are worth yet, how can I pay quickly?

After we leave the train station, the boss proposes a new plan. His new plan is that he accompany me to my hotel room and that we both shower there and that he leaves his luggage there until after we take our walking tour, when he will leave and go to his hotel to finish getting ready. He keeps telling me that this will save 45 minutes (and I know that it's really more like an hour) so I finally cave in, even though I'm already a little annoyed at him for starting to treat me in a rather inappropriate father-daughter kind of way. I already HAVE a dad to take care of me, thank you very much. As we are riding the subway, I realize that agreeing to let him use my room was perhaps the worst plan ever devised by man, as he won't stop talking about how no one took our tickets for the subway and as I am realizing that I am really in need of a little "me" time. But no, there he is, and I don't know how to say no when I've already said yes, even though I guess I didn't fully consider it.

It starts to get worse when we actually get to the hotel room. I am currently staying in what is supposed to be the swankiest hotel in Copenhagen (it's really not that impressive) and it takes us a little while to find it and check in, and then all of a sudden I am in a hotel room with my boss who has been annoying me and acting inappropriately. I realize this was a REALLY BAD IDEA, because it at some point involves me digging through my suitcase to find clean underwear in front of him. I feel like I am slightly under contol when I go into the bathroom and can't figure out how to turn the lights on. So now I have to get you know who to show me how to turn the lights on (apparently in major hotels in some foreign countries you have to put your room key into a special slot to make the electricity work. That way you can't leave stuff on while you leave.) And then I have to tackle the shower, which is a mess. It is a hand-held shower, and there is no shower curtain. Instead, there is a small plate of plastic (less wide than a door) that covers half the shower. And is clear. I pretty much freaked out, as I now had to take a shower in this shower and not make too big of a mess and also not take forever while being in this crazy shower. I decided not to wash my hair (even though it was tragically greasy) because I couldn't handle it. Then the boss took a shower and I did a little unpacking and tried to calm down. And then it was time to go. I was so annoyed that I didn't fuss with bringing a camera.

Somehow, I suppose because I figured out where the street signs were first, the boss decided I was in charge of leading the walking tour. The problem with this whole scheme is that I have NO sense of direction. I ended up leading us in entirely the wrong direction while we made a perfect square around Tivoli to the point where he was openly mocking me. I was pretty upset by this point...I've worked with him long enough to know that he just thinks aloud, but it was still disconcerting to have him keep repeating "Where are we?" and "Where is our street." and "What is that building to the left?" and such things over and over. I ended up wearing sunglasses for the whole tour so that he couldn't see it when I rolled my eyes at him. Of course he asked why I was wearing sunglasses about 30 seconds after I put them on.

But then....we got onto the walking tour from the book. And it was the most perfect walking tour that I ever could have hoped for. It was somehow as if I grew a sense of direction, because I all of a sudden turned into a tour guide. The weather was PERFECT--80 and no humidity and the tour was perfect...it went through all of the major shopping areas as well as to all of the palaces and a couple of other major areas. In fact, everyone at our dinner tonight was trying to suggest places to go and we always replied "we already saw that today." I LOVED the tour and I am planning on re-doing it another day while I am here, both so that I can take a lot of pics (because there are lots of things to take pics of) and so that I can hit the shopping area hard. I think I will take the tour, which took us about 3 hours, and stretch it out into a day. Anyway, the guidebook and the utter perfection of the tour saved the day. We even ran into a random episode of the changing of the guard at the queen's palace, which is supposedly a rare sight. But like I said, no worries for all of you, because I really want to take pics of all the stuff I saw today, so I'll go back. The boss was still doing inappropriate stuff and being annoying, but it was hard to be annoyed as much in a cool place with perfect weather. Thank goodness for that book, or honestly, I would have killed him.

After touring, the boss finally left and I had a couple glorious hours to myself. I read and responded to a couple emails and put up the place holder blog posts as well as taking yet another shower to finally wash my hair (which is looking insanely blonde today.) It was just a fantastic two hours.

And you know what's even more fantastic? The fact that now, after three hours of sleep last night, a ton of walking (and sunburning my face) today and a lot of wine tonight, it is finally bed time. :) Sorry if this post doesn't make sense, I'll clean it up later, but at least now you know the bare bones of the story.

posted by Immunegirl @ 11:05 AM