Dear Jennica,

hello dear. this has been a hard month, technology-wise. that last frustrated blog post was just a fraction of the pain. it all started when i accidentally dropped rasmus' external hard drive, destroying its inner mechanisms and all my pictures for the last 4 years. then rasmus' wireless card failed. then the fan in my laptop failed, and all it's USB ports. so, murderous rage at blog deletion? murderous rage at our techno dependant lives, really.

but i still think what i was typing back there was important. so, on my boss' time and without further ado: the story you have all been waiting for:
(all... 3 of our readers? haha)

me and hans took a walk across the street from our apartment building. we entered this huge government run complex thats mostly empty, but signs told us that there were artists studios, play centres, rehab centres, re-training programs and then... suddenly. we were walking past Juvie. a prison for underage people! complete with 3 storey high barbed wire fences and cameras.

we stared and then suddenly, there were prisoners staring back at us. we quickly looked away.
they shouted out 'Hej!' (hi in Danish). I looked back and made eye contact with them, acknowledging their greeting, but not saying anything. So they started to heckle us! 'Hey! We said HEJ! When someone says Hej you say it back! Dont you know?'

Me and Hans turned a corner and looked at each other incredulously. Were we really just heckled by prisoners 2 blocks from our house??? Then Hans stopped and said 'Did you get that? What they just said??' I stopped and said no, i hadnt. 'They just said what? you wont talk to us because we're foreigners?!'

WHat! I was floored. They decided, because of my white skin, that i was danish and racist. and therefore unwilling to talk to them. When i, too, am a stranger here. So their prejudice based on my skin colour made then presume i would hate them based on their skin colour! it was just weird.

then poor Hans felt like maybe he hadn't talked to them because they were 'foreigners' and started worrying about his own prejudices, which is just nuts because we didnt talk to them because they were prisoners shouting to us from behind a big scary fence! not because of their skin colour, or our skin colour.

now, if i was a more gutsy lady, i would have marched right back there and said 'Lookee here, boys. I ain't no dane. Now don't go shouting at passersby, and dont go presuming things about me because of my skin colour, just as i will not presume things about you because of yours. Got it?'

but i didnt. because... they were prisonsers shouting to us from behind a big scary fence...

anyhow, it was shocking and revealing and all just right across the street.

in the meantime, i started my new job here. its at a hostel in 'the ghetto', just down the street from my old apartment. its a 30 min bike ride away from where i am living, which is, by danish standards, quite a hike to work. and today- it snowed on the way. but besides that, its ok. i am meeting a very strange group of people, really young naive travellers, doing the backpacking thing i never did. europe. 2 weeks. endless cash.

but there are some interesting people besides them, who have real things to say.

but now the boss is here, so ... bye!
xxx