Dansk

On arrival in Lima, I wanted to exchange my book and conveniently, in the Lima hostel, they had a book-exchange shelf. It contained surprisingly few English titles and surprisingly many German and Scandinavian books. There was also the odd French or Spanish book. I found a book in Swedish that I really wanted to read; it was called “Vad gör alla superokända människor hela dagarna” (What are all super-unknown people doing everyday; free translation) by Fredrik Lindström. The book was great and I had finished it well before I left Lima.

I should take advantage of the book-exchange shelf, I thought, so I have something to read on the bus. But strangely enough, I was not allowed to exchange the book for an English title as they had so few quality English books left, not even though I previously swapped it in for an English book in the first place.

I had a second look on the shelf and the remaining Swedish books looked kind of lame, so I finally chose the Danish book; “Døden kommer til middag” (Death Comes at High Noon), a filmed criminal story by the Danish author Peter Sander.

The book was exciting and reading the language was not too difficult after all. And although I didn’t really travel here to learn Danish, it first didn’t really bother me that much.

But in Arequipa, at a new hostel and after about 75% into the book, I woke up one morning, one hour before the alarm clock and couldn’t really sleep. I went to bed fairly early but at the same time as I was too tired to actually get up. At that moment, when you are lying in your bed thinking inner thoughts, I caught myself thinking random words/thoughts in Danish. “Værelse, kone, politi, jeg elsker dig, brandhane, læge, tømmerhandlare” … but hang on a second, what kind of stupid dreams do I have? Why the heck am I thinking about a ”tømmerhandlare” in Peru? Enough of this shit language, I decided, and quickly finished the book the next day in order to be able to exchange it at the hostel before going up in the valley (where they surely didn’t have a book-exchanges, even less traded Danish books).

When scanning this small one-tier bookshelf, I didn’t find much of interest until the very end, where I came across “Eleven minutes” by Paolo Coelho, my favourite author! And I hadn’t even read this one, can it be more perfect?

Well, I can think of one thing: on the front page it said “Elleve minutter” and it was printed in Copenhagen, Denmark…