Several worlds exist for me in this city. I will describe a few of them:
The room
It is some kind of time limbo and a retreat where I can rest from other worlds. Recently, I’ve been doing most of my work (a word I proudly use as an umbrella for studying or writing) in the room. The university’s library, which was my sanctuary for the whole long and gray winter, has become very busy. Actually, I don’t know if it has become very busy, or I just cannot stand people in it. There are no rules about how loud and where you can talk. There are private study rooms to book, but they are as gray and depressing as the winter. Most of the students work on their projects in groups, which means most of them talk relentlessly all the time. All my sacred quiet spaces are gone in the library, so I don’t bother to go there anymore.
During my whole stay in Denmark, I have experienced as much here in this room as I have outside, dividing my inner world from the outer one with a very clear material boundary. However, the outer world permeates the inner through my window, which overlooks the common area between the two buildings of the dormitory, connected with the middle building where all the parties happen. There is a party happening now, with about 20–30 Danish students, out of which I’m sure less than three live in the dorm. Irritated by the rumbling drunk crowd that doesn’t live here but uses our facilities, I pull on my curtains like a grumpy neighbor, although throwing in one last glance, unable to escape my own curiosity. Through this portal, I also see the residents in the other buildings, either in their shared kitchen or some in their rooms. I still have to learn to resist that one-eye look that my mind inevitably pulls towards the other building every time I sense movement. People on the other side seem genuinely uninterested to look into my room, or they’re very good at pretending they’re not looking.
The kitchen
The common kitchen that I share with my dorm colleagues is another time-warped bubble. Sometimes I spend hours there feeling like only minutes passed, and sometimes I spend minutes feeling like hours passed. Sometimes it’s a good feeling, sometimes it’s not. For some unexplainable reason, nothing of significance ever seems to happen there, except the usual. We all seem to be involved in a kind of reality TV show that keeps on going 24/7, blurring the line between life behind and in front of the cameras. My problem is that I sometimes desperately want to be involved, and at other times I desperately want to be left alone and not involved.
Such has been the dynamic for the whole year now, and I keep on arguing with myself about it still. The kitchen lies somewhere between my inner world and the outer world, literally between my room and the exit, and metaphorically, as an intermediary station where the border between private and social is obscured, and at best, blurry. For a chronic overthinker, a space which you can enter both with a social front, as well as a grumpy introvert, is at best confusing, and at worst, dangerous. It is dangerous because it is confusing. Still, I think one day I will be able to see my own growth, and the growth of my kitchen mates that I started to love, that inevitably occurs in such a world.
The park
A beautiful park lies outside the dormitory. It is big and goes up a small hill that is an open, straight plateau, with a falling golf field on one side, and a forest path encircling it on other sides. There is a pond just at the entrance from the side of the dormitory, and quite a lot of life goes on there—ducks, crows, seagulls, pigeons; sometimes all of those birds gather when humans throw them food. Too many people are throwing them food, and I would say they are disturbing the ecosystem, but I guess it is some kind of natural symbiosis. Somehow, all of those birds, although they scare each other here and there, still feast without significant conflicts. The image of them all together, some in the sky, some in the pond, and some on the land, fills me with a sense of harmony like a grand Renaissance painting.
Beyond the pond, there is a long, open field on the border of the park, parallel to a long road that leads to the university. Horses, of some shorter breed that I cannot name because I don’t know anything about horses, feed here. Whenever I’d pass by with my bike on the way to university and I’d see them out there, I’d stop by just to look for an extra minute or two. Though I cannot say I would feel a connection and a deep feeling of rejuvenation that some Instagram healers try to convey through horses that they’re exploiting to heal first-world problems of very rich people, I would simply enjoy looking at them.
Mostly they are of a strong brown color, best described as earthy. Their manes and tails range from golden to black, and in both cases, they shine brightly, indicating, at least from my uneducated perspective, that they’re well taken care of. Sometimes I’d come closer to the supposedly electric fence, grab a piece of long grass growing on my side, and put it across. Usually, although hesitantly, one horse would approach. It would let out a blow of air through its wide nostrils and open its mouth for me to see all of its healthy, straight teeth. Then it would grab and start chewing the long grass, slightly turning away from me. Then I’d grab more and repeat several times. Most of the time, I’d have to be the one to stop this bonding process, as they could keep on eating for hours.
Further along the path that stretches parallel with the busy road, the pathway enters a small park forest. It cannot be called a forest from a territorial size perspective, but I like calling it that because the feeling of the forest within is powerful. The change is sudden, and from being out in the open and hearing the road quite intensely, the park world collapses into a quiet murmur of the leaves and the silence of the tall trees. At one section, the path turns into an alley of trees that reach about 10–15 meters proudly into the sky above, with branches covering the path, creating a natural tunnel. The tunnel creates an atmosphere that is unique to this park and none other in the world. Towards both sides of the path lie broken branches and fallen leaves, and for some reason, the image of this section that I have in my mind is cut out from autumn. But it is spring now, and the leaves on the trees murmur in abundance of green, its sound rich and overwhelming. In autumn, they crumble in dryness.
I could spend, and I have spent, hours in this forest. I would get down to the ground and feel the earth with my hands. Depending on the season, it ranges from heavily soaked in days’ worth of rain to relatively dry, but never really dry. I would turn around to see if there are people passing by who might see me, and then continue to touch the earth.
Just 20 meters up the hill and out of the forest lies a long, open field in the middle of the park that also covers the majority of its surface. It is plain, and in its plainness, it is beautiful. The path separates the grass field into two parts and has intersections that cut it into several smaller pieces again. Throughout the whole year, the grass stays consistently green, with the exception of winter, when it acquires a touch of dry yellow. The forest encircles the field, and its trees, some of them pine trees, some of them other species, are like a painting on the light blue sky above Aalborg. Just like the field, the sky above is long and open, so wide that there is space for thousands of planes on it. Usually, there are just a few of them, flying high above in silence and leaving long, static yet slowly disappearing trails behind them.
On a good day, all the colors come into prominence in Aalborg. Sunrises, middays, sunsets, winters, autumns, and springs, they all acquire a highlighted tone. Maybe the air is thinner, so the molecules cut through it, giving it a sharper definition. Whatever it is, it makes every day (that’s not one of those prolonged gray monotonies) a spectacle.
The days are becoming longer and longer, and the sunlight is persistently prolonging its stay long into what is supposed to be nighttime. This creates a space of an extra few hours in the day, when I’ve crossed off everything from my to-do list, and my perverted mind is extremely satisfied with that crossing, the only thing that can command it to rest. Within these hours, the only appropriate activities are wandering, walking, writing, and watching the sunset, and everything else would be a conflict with reality. These blissful hours of long sunsets continue to extend day by day as we approach summer; the last traces of sunlight will probably reach over midnight, and I can very well predict a lack of sleep incoming. Of course, you can put curtains on, but hiding from such a day and saying, “Okay, now is time to sleep,” when it is obviously not, seems wrong. This is the world of infinite possibilities, where the mind can go beyond its day-to-day business.
