Coffee shops are a big deal in Denmark and one can learn a lot about Danes by observing them in their natural habitat. You rarely find girls alone; most of the time they’re in pairs blabbing endlessly in some strange language I don’t understand. Guys, on the other hand, are mostly alone, working, writing, and surfing Facebook on their fancy iPhones and iPads.
Many other nationalities are outgoing and never miss an opportunity to chat with a stranger; Danes are reserved and mild-mannered people – except when they’re not.
“Excuse me, can I sit here?” asked a cute girl in her late 20s.
Not expecting Danes to ever initiate conversation – especially while sober and during daytime — I was temporarily at loss for words and needed a minute to remember how to use my voice box. I quickly glanced at her and without hesitation placed her in tier two.
Denmark is located sufficiently north that my average height and slightly dark complexion can never mistake me for a local, who are all tall and blonde. At bars at night I’ve received eye-contact which facilitated straightforward approaches, but during daytime approaches from women (or men) are so rare that at this particular moment I felt that I was the first human being to be so openly approached in the history of Denmark. Nevertheless, like a trained soldier, I instantly switched into my game mode.
“Sure,” I replied.
A minute later Tina brought along a chair and placed herself between me and another girl in a section of the coffee shop that’s usually meant for three people. She was the fourth but squeezed herself in expertly, albeit at a cost of my space.
“That guy got really upset when I took a chair he was using to rest his feet,” she tried to act annoyed but I knew she was only making conversation.
Tina placed a thick book on the table but reading it was the furthest from her mind; she was in a very talkative mood. So she didn’t feel awkward initiating all the conversation, I asked her one or two things about the book. She took it as a sign that I was slightly interested and followed up with about a million questions.
And that’s how you know that you’ll soon be fucking a Danish girl.
She began with the typical “what are you doing in Denmark,” and before long she told me her life history including how she ended up in Copenhagen from rural Jutland (a province in the southern Denmark near Germany) and that her parents divorced at a very young age. It was like a diarrhea of non-stop questions, thoughts and comments. I purposely created silences by delaying my answers and follow up questions, but not being best friends with pauses in the conversations, she deliberately made every effort to fill them in by piggybacking my most previous answers.
Danish women can’t flirt and attraction is essentially like a big on/off switch. When she does like you, she’ll want to know everything about you in ten minutes flat. She’ll also tell you about herself including her ambitions, fears, and achievements and will have no qualms peppering the conversation with sexual terms. Where as in Brazil people are more social day to day and the mating ritual follows a predictable trajectory, in Denmark it’s either on or off — a stream of icy cold water or burning hot water and no lukewarm middle ground. And in this particular instance the water was hot, scorching hot.
Most of the time it doesn’t even matter how you answer her “Danish inquisition” – whether directly or evasively (although I’ve discovered direct answers work better) – her mind is usually already made up and you just have to go through the motions. This “diarrhea of questions” is such a crucial component of seduction that it’s usually a bad sign when the girl you want to bang is sitting there like a complete mute.
About an hour into conversation, I got her number by telling her that since I also live in coffee shops that “maybe we can meet in one of those other ones she recommended.” She agreed and as soon as I started typing in those digits on my touchscreen phone, I’d already begun wondering – not if but when – she’ll be ruthlessly impaled by my mighty dagger. I’ve seen people go on dates but I’d never imagined needing to date anyone in a feminist Nordic country in order to violently ravage the sweet peach between her legs.
Few days later we met in one of those “cool” coffee shops in the center. Shortly after we grabbed a drink at one of the hipster bars nearby and few hours later stumbled our way to my place. It wasn’t the best sex I had – she wasn’t Brazilian and didn’t speak to me in sexy Portuguese – but it was nice and pleasant, albeit emotionless. I eventually came and before I knew it she was putting on her clothes.
“I need to go to bed early so I can wake up for my boxing class,” she said right before running out the door.
I didn’t try to stop her.
