Date:7/13/2024-7/24/2024
Destination: Sweden, Denmark
Goal: Coasters and Culture in Sweden and Denmark
Distance: 4286 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight, Train, Ferry, Bus
Potential Credits: 34
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| Image Description: A black T-shirt says "DENMARK" several times on it behind a black outline of the country's borders, colored in with the red and white cross-shaped flag of the country. On the t-shirt sits a leather booklet reading "PASSPORT; United States of America" with an eagle-shaped insignia. Attached to the booklet is a green lanyard printed with yellow and black sunflowers. |
CW: Ableism in the form of verbal abuse from United States Government officer.
These trip reports are supposed to be a fun, humorous, and at times inspiring and informative way to show off my travels. Normally it isn’t a heavy thing at all, but today, that is sadly not the case. On my return trip home from Copenhagen, I was on the receiving end of some of the most disgusting treatment I’ve ever seen from US Customs and Border Patrol, and this is coming from the guy that’s had his car searched twice returning from Canada. I wasn’t sure if I should tack this on at the end of the Tivoli entry, not share it at all, make it its own and let something so disgusting sit at the top of my blog or what. But in the end, I am electing to tell this part of the story as I feel it is important to share that these things do sadly happen to us travelers with invisible disabilities. It will not be published until I have another entry to sit at the front page, as this is not what "Jarrett Goes Traveling" should ever look like. For myself or anyone else with an invisible disability.
Is it the last day of the trip already? I’d say it came quickly, but I’d be lying. By now, this was my life. Waking up, getting nuclear coffee and smorgasbord for breakfast, and just walking to the next thing to do with no need for a car was the new normal in Jarrett’s World. And today, that thing to do was get to CPH and fly home where my family and my job are so I can return to the old normal.
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| Image Description: A white plate reading "CABINN.COM; ALL YOU NEED TO SLEEP" holds two square pieces of bread, one topped with butter and spread meat, the other cheese and saucisson. A small pickle its on the plate. |
Last Danish breakfast before heading home!
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| Image Description: A vending machine has several spirals, selling different cans of beer and small wine bottles. |
Didn’t get a beer with it because, ya know, 8 in the morning. But it amused me to see this in the vending machine.
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| Image Description: A Copenhagen city street flanked with blocky brick and white buildings. |
Headed around the corner to catch the bus one last time to the airport when three nuns in full-blown Mother Theresa white and blue habits with the rosaries and everything just hopped aboard the bus, so that was kind of funny. They must not have known who I was or they’d have poured holy water on me on the spot and caused me to melt.
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| Image Description: A yellow construction fence has a red, white, and blue advertisement that says "FLYING SUPERKIDS" on a star-shaped logo, with children performing stunts. Below it says "NYT SHOW! KØBENHAVN 29/6-18/8." |
Flying Superkids is an energetic Danish stunt show that obviously got its start when a screaming child on a train pushed an impatient American just a hair too far. After joking I was going to yeet a screaming child off that train two days ago, this was funny to see.
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| Image Description: A wide glass airport building, with a taxi out front. "Terminal 3" can be seen on the building in white letters. |
Good morning, CPH! New airport credit for me, and it’s a nice one.
This airport has mastered the sunflower. People left and right were going above and beyond to help me, I got pulled through fast track security, someone found me in line and told me directions one on one so I could, ya know, hear what was being said, I loved it. Danmark had these sunflower lanyards at the parks, at Copenhagen Central, and obviously at the airport.
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| Image Description: Behind a glass case sits a few different kinds of open-faced sandwiches, all garnished ornately. |
This smørrebrød looked so good, I regret not getting one last one.
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| Image Description: An American aircraft sits on the tarmac of an airport, connected to a jet bridge. |
After getting my bag checked (got those tubes of Swedish squeeze cheese for mom and dad, that's a liquid and that's a no-go in Danmark), and getting through passport control which is weirdly placed in the middle of the airport shopping mall, I was in the terminal. I got one last baguette hot dog from 7-Eleven (which btw also sold strong ass Danish beer that was totally okay to drink in the terminal), I sit down at the American terminal for my flight to PHL. I found an empty seat near a column where I was able to plug my shit in to charge it.
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| Image Description: A circular cookie tin has a Danish flag and map of the country showing the different cities and icons of the nation. It sits with a boxed can of Norwegian Sea herring. |
I also got this for my family, one set for my parents and one for my grandmother.
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| Image Description: A bathroom stall has graffitied onto it. "Why you gay? WHY NOT? U know u like it! WE DON'T CALL YOU GREAT DANES FOR NOTHIN." |
This made for a good laugh on the last piss break I would take in Danmark.
At the seat was a very drunk American father with his sober wife and badly behaved kids, giving me a front row seat to a shitshow. After calming his daughter down, the man looked at me and asked, "you gotta deal with this shit at home?" His wife told him to chill, the kids calmed down, and I was very uncomfortable.
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| Image Description: On a screen, a documentary poster shows an abandoned amusement park and the words "CLOSED FOR STORM" against a cloudy sky. |
I sit down on the plane, plug my phone up to charge it continuously for the eight hour journey to Philadelphia, and it doesn't start charging? The flight attendant tells us "By the way, there's an issue with the video, we are trying to fix it." I had picked something to watch and everything! Give me a break!
"Raw Dogging" is an idiotic travel trend on TikTok and shit where you sit there for the entire flight without doing anything. It kind of took off this summer, I'd seen it, I rolled my eyes at the prospect of intentionally sitting there bored. Well, American Airlines basically forced us to do this! Our flight had no working live entertainment, no wifi, nothing. My laptop can run for 2-3 hours without a battery change, and my phone could charge, but I was still very limited as to what I could do. A man on the plane said United comped him $200 for this same issue, and I paid for internet and live entertainment on a Transatlantic flight, so yeah. I was fucking pissed. I had one experience with American prior, and it was them servicing the 2020 region trip to Florida, and I remember nothing distinct about American from that. They got me where I was going. This flight was unacceptable. I couldn't check in because their app didn't work, no internet, no movies, nothing. When your airline was doing better during COVID, you've really fucked up.
Got out of my seat to get the bulle I had gotten at 7-Eleven, and told the guy next to me, "I'm eating a cinnamon roll, what else am I gonna do?"
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| Image Description: A traytable on an airplane contains a microwaved TV dinner lasagna, a bottle of water, a ciabatta bread, a Babybel cheese, a scone, and a salad. |
At least the veggie lasagna I got was pretty good, I guess. Airline food sucks, but for what this was (and for how nasty the chicken alternative looked), I was okay with this.
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| Image Description: A text screenshot describes what happened in multiple messages. |
I was not okay with what happened next.
After landing at PHL, we entered into the airport's passport control back to the US, and I could hear people from my flight talk about how weird it felt to be back in air conditioning. The line was about an hour and a half, that's normal, and I get to the front, and that's when everything happened.
At the front of the line, line split into multiple counters. Let's say I'm in line to speak to the officer at Counter 2. Meanwhile, Counter 1 next to it opens up. I see this, I acknowledge it, but I am in line for Counter 2 so I watch Counter 2. It's loud, I'm tired, and this makes it harder for me to focus with my ADHD, but I put in the effort to ensure I could go through 2 when I am called, despite the couple in front of me taking a while. Then, I'm told by the person behind me that Counter 1 can take me, so I head to Counter 1.
"Come on man, I called your name four times! Pay attention!" shouted Officer Wise at Counter 1. I explained that I couldn't hear in a loud, crowded space, and that it was why I was wearing a sunflower lanyard. He took my passport, scanned it, didn't ask me anything, and said "you're good buddy" despite me certainly not being this man's buddy. I was not daydreaming, I was not playing on my phone, I was focusing on the counter I was in line for and couldn't hear that I was being asked to go to a different one.
By the time I got out of there, I was blinking back tears I felt so bad about myself. ADHD does, sadly, come with feeling like a burden that's in the way a lot, and I'd not felt that amount of venom directed towards it since I was an undiagnosed child being screamed at to focus in school. I was not doing anything wrong, if anything I was expending more energy than the neurotypical people around me so I could not be a burden, and at the end of the day I'm an idiot holding up the line deserving of no respect.
That is NEVER acceptable to speak to anybody in the manner in which Officer Wise spoke to me, but when the person has a disability that is clearly and properly indicated per the airport's Hidden Disabilities training, that brings it to a whole new level of awful. Airport staff of all kinds, be it TSA, gate agents, flight attendants, etc are trained to recognize sunflower lanyards, it was clearly displayed around my neck, no way he didn't see it or know what it was. Had I been hard of hearing and been spoken to that way, this would have been all over the news. Why should this be viewed as any less disgusting? I was shouted at for something I literally could not help because of a disability. One that was, at the moment, visible.
Immediately after, I found an info desk (usually where the lanyards are distributed at participating airports) and asked how to report the conduct of a United States Customs and Border Patrol officer. The guy there was absolutely appalled by what happened, gave me an email address to contact myself, and personally took down his own report and said it was helpful information that I was on the Copenhagen flight. I told him I didn't want the next lone traveler with a disability to have to deal with this. He said that someone sadly will, most likely, but to consider what kind of person even wants a job like border patrol in the first place.
So I got through TSA, they were actually cool and helpful, and to my annoyance, stepped out to a string of texts that my flight was badly delayed until 10, putting me home at roughly midnight. I was supposed to get home at 7, this day just goes from bad to worse!
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| Image Description: On a rectangular white plate sits a turkey burger topped with guacamole and red onions, served with fries and ketchup. A tall orangey-amber beer sits to the right. |
In Terminal A, I called my mother just to tell her what happened, and needless to say she was disgusted and said nobody should be speaking to anybody like that. She told me to just move on and not worry about it and not give that asshole the power to ruin my day, I told her it's harder when your brain's ability to block out distracting emotions is impaired, and I was so touched just to hear her say, "I know." But then she suggested I go check out this bar she liked in Terminal A because they had a good turkey burger, so into Local Tavern I went. I plugged my computer in and wrote while waiting on a very expensive meal (this was $50 in the picture!) but damn was it good and much needed. I ordered the tallest, strongest beer they had. I needed it!
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| Image Description: Legs wearing blue pajamas with fishing flies on them and white sneakers at an airport gate. |
With the flight now leaving at 10:30, I switched into my RMC hoodie and pajama bottoms to wait it out. Everyone in the gate on the Dayton flight was getting pretty agitated, knowing this was mechanical problems out of the flight's origin in Milwaukee that is therefore American's fault. Spoke to this woman who was on my Copenhagen flight and recognized me and learned she was headed to Columbus, wish we could have swapped contact info because she was cool. After telling a few people a funny family story involving a cancelled flight home, clean panties, and peach cobbler, the plane finally arrived. They instantly deplaned and boarded us, no cleaning the aircraft when you're this delayed and I found someone's nasty half-eaten trail mix in the seatback pocket in front of me.
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| Image Description: Jarrett wears a neck pillow and an RMC hoodie while leaning against the side of an airplane, looking tired. |
Fortunately, they threw me in the very back corner of the plane to put my earbuds in, blast some white noise, and do what I have historically never been able to do: sleep on an airplane.
We landed at DAY, they were amazing about getting our luggage out quickly, and my mother was awesome and drove me home at 12:30 am. Mom had been cool and packed up some of the leftover Cajun chicken pasta her and Dad had for dinner, which I was excited to have the next day, but after she ran me around the block to my home I dropped everything at the door and went straight to bed. This included the cream-sauced pasta I had, causing it to go bad. I was so mad at myself the next day when I realized that's what I had done with it! It took a while to fall asleep, but ultimately, my brain turned off and I got to enjoy the comfort of sleeping in the air conditioning on a thick mattress for the first time in almost two weeks.
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| Image Description: On an urban hillside several blocky yellow houses with black roofs are perched. A black church tower can be seen to the right. At the top of the hill is a brick building ornamented with pretty brickwork and round towers with domed roofs. |
This was, as of 2024, my magnum opus as an adventurer. I had been wanting to do this for the longest time, and it finally happened. Growing up French-American, France was supposed to be the European country to visit, and I did that, so I felt free to pick my next country myself, so it was liberating to not only travel to Europe but to pick a country completely on my own free will without any obligation. Between liking IKEA, having seen Helix announced in 2014 and Wildfire in 2016, enjoying the winter "cabin" aesthetic, Dad's work trip here in 2019, and having rocked out to Avicii since college, it was amazing to finally see Sverige with my own eyes. And getting to not only visit this country that always intrigued me for what I knew about it, but also getting to discover one I hadn't considered visiting in Danmark, I made memories I didn't even expect to. This meant so much to me, I haven't shut up about it since I got home, and I'm already obsessively pouring over Kayak and Rome2Rio for next year.
I refuse to let this be the last time this happens. Just as with the mindset that made me start the whole region trip tradition: let's do it again next summer.
Gonna end on this song as I wanted to wrap up an otherwise very ugly blog entry with something nice. This song made its way onto the playlist and ended up as the trip went on meaning a ton to me, kind of becoming the SweDen 2024 anthem if you will. Both in regards to being out there and coming home.
