Coping In The Hagen

Copenhagen Was the First Step & the One I Almost Missed.

When I first started planning my first solo trip, I had my heart set on Copenhagen. A clean, careful first step. But a cheaper flight and an even cheaper hostel rerouted me to Gothenburg instead. This March, I finally made it.

It wasn’t the wrong choice, necessarily. I learned things. About travel, about myself, about how quickly loneliness can creep in when you’re a little out of sync with a place.

I told myself I’d do it “properly” next time. I’d start where I was meant to.

Denmark greeted me with sun and pastry. I’d just crawled out from under a landslide of assignments, my birthday had come and gone quietly, and I needed to feel like myself again—somewhere else.

I decided this trip would be my delayed birthday celebration. Which meant no guilt. No counting calories. All the pastry, cake, and wine I could reasonably justify in 72 hours. (And, at points, more than I could reasonably justify.)

I arrived at a not-stupid hour. I’d pre-booked the train to the airport. Already miles ahead of my first attempt at solo travel.

I didn’t come with a list of must-sees. But when I found out The Importance of Being Earnest—or rather, Bunbury—was on at the National Theatre, I went. Bought a last-minute ticket.

“It’s in Danish” the box officer clerk repeated over and over again.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I know the play. I’ll keep up.”

She didn’t look convinced.

At the theatre, I sat beside an older couple who asked gently if I’d been stood up. I said no, and they poured me a glass of wine from their own bottle. They whispered translations now and then, and somehow, thanks to them and the power of pinot noir, I began to follow along.

When the actors suddenly switched to English for the final scene, my first thought wasn’t that of “Oh, they’re speaking English now” but rather, “Oh my god, I know Danish now”…I hadn’t (obviously).

Back at my hostel, the vibe was harder to romanticise.

The Shawshank Redemption was playing above the fridge, subtitled. Club remixes of 2010s hits rattled the bar. I sipped my wine, tearing up at Brooks’ final scene while “Like a G6” thundered through the speakers. It was, without question, one of the most disorienting emotional pairings of my life.

I went to bed at 1 a.m., certain I was one of the oldest people staying there—and painfully aware that I wasn’t supposed to care.

The next night, I sought refuge in a cocktail bar nearby—small, dark, promising an excellent Negroni and no TikTokers. I brought a law textbook with me and started to attempt some sort of revision (this was meant to be a productive trip, in theory), but five minutes in, a man tapped my shoulder.

“Is this seat taken?”

It wasn’t. “Take it” I said and returned back into the pages of my book, thinking nothing of it.

Within minutes, however, an entire stag party had arrived.

They were loud, drunk, and weirdly endearing. They offered me snus from a metal tin. I declined. After countless rounds of negroni and endless tournaments of a game called “dices”, I was invited to go dancing at a club half a mile away. I’d passed the probation; I was ‘fun’.

Then one of them, grinning, revealed a false bottom of the tin filled with powders, pills, and what looked like an entire life’s worth of poor decisions. A narcotic smorgasbord, if you will.

I finished my drink, faked a headache, and left before I could become a cautionary tale. I could already hear the tense string quartet tuning up and Netflix true-crime voiceover: “She was just looking for adventure...”

I had other plans anyway. Sweden was calling - you can’t die before Sweden.

Copenhagen to Malmö costs less than a tenner, no passport required. Just hop on the train, and in under an hour, you’re in another country. It’s absurd, really, how easy it is.

Malmö was quiet. Pretty. Lonely, if I’m honest. I wandered through parks and charity shops, trying to shake the same solitude that followed me through Gothenburg. Posted a photo to Instagram, hoping—maybe unreasonably—that someone, anyone, would reply.

No one did.

Around hour five, I got back on the train. Just as we were pulling away from the station, my phone buzzed.

“You are NOT in Sweden?!”

It was him. The painter. The man who once convinced me—half-seriously—that he might be plotting to kill me over a round of Old Fashioneds in a jazz bar.

“I was,” I replied. “I’m already heading back.”

“I’m staying in Malmö! It’s fate!”

“It’s not,” I said. “We didn’t run into each other. And let’s be honest—you wouldn’t have known unless you’d been watching my story.”

“True,” he wrote. And that was the end of that.

I sat back and watched as the train crossed the sea, Denmark rising back into view. I felt the quiet shame of someone who had very nearly repeated an old mistake. Not in the exact same way—but close enough.

Somewhere between those cities, between the bar and the bad ideas I walked away from, something shifted.

When I boarded the flight home, there was no panic. No sense of failure or dread. Just a quiet thrill. Like a muscle being flexed for the first time in a while.

I watched the ground disappear beneath me, houses shrinking into toy blocks, and I smiled.

Growing up, travel wasn’t a luxury—it was routine.

My parents believed in its power. By the time I could tie my shoes, I could navigate airport security better than most adults; the sky was quite literally the limit. The world was something we stepped into regularly, like a warm coat on a cold day - both arms in and out the door to face it.

But somewhere along the way—buried in relationships, routines, academic calendars—I lost that sense of ease.

I forgot that I was good at this.

At navigating new cities.

At being in my own thoughts and company.

At getting lost and then getting …un-lost.

I remembered this time, that’s enough reason to keep going, right?