Of Mucus and Misery, Transactions and Traffic.

The inevitable has happened: Mr T and I have come down with nasty, nasty colds. Far from being joyful and carefree corks on the tide, we are bunkered down in the lovely Anna and Damien's house clutching boxes of tissues, cups of hot tea and clawing for sympathy.

I, brave soldier that I am, managed to get out into arctic Copenhagen today, quite possibly against my better judgement. At -2 to 2C I'm not sure if this is the coldest day we've seen since venturing out, but it certainly felt it in the deep ravines of Copenhagen's business district today.

I was absolutely pathetic today. I ventured out solo, and within 15 minutes of leaving home became quite disoriented and lost. As I made ever-smaller circles on the streets of Lyngby I began to seriously doubt my ability to survive for long in countries which persist in this irritating custom of driving their cars on the right-hand side of the road. You'd think it a simple thing to adjust to; perhaps I'm a bit of a simpleton (heightened by aforementioned illness) but the instinctive knowledge of which direction danger is coming from when negotiating a thoroughfare is deeply ingrained. At every single road I approached during the course of my day I had to consciously look at the road and work out which way the traffic would be hitting me from. At times I even used hand actions when making this complex physical calculation.

There's really nothing like travel to put you in your place, is there? As well as the frankly humiliating traffic conundrum, there is the issue of dealing with a new and unfamiliar currency every few days. It's hard! The logic of denominations one grows up with simply aren't applied universally. So I am becoming used to holding my hand out and allowing the cashier to take the required coins out, possibly allowing themselves a generous tip for all I know. Or care, for that matter.

Every day I give heartfelt thanks for being born into a culture which speaks English as its first tongue. How much harder must travel be for native speakers of other languages? The Danes, bless them three times around the carpark, mostly speak excellent English, which has made my adventures here not only easier, but -- in a couple of instances -- possible.

I had the infinite pleasure of visiting the Danish National Museum during the course of my day. Unsurprisingly, their collection of Viking artifacts is really something to be seen. The Vikings are one of my special favorites, so having free run of such an astonishing collection of pieces, especially the wealth of metal work there, made dragging myself out of the house absolutely worth it.

Urgh. Don't you just love cold-induced hallucination? Time for another cup of tea and handful of tissues.