Dónal Donohoe

Winter was approaching fast, I was in a foreign country, couldn’t speak the language and needed somewhere to live. I had already met Richard by that time, originally from London we had played together a few times and it was he who brought me along, having lived there himself for about two years, to that place on Vesterbrogade close to Copenhagen city center to see if he could get me a room there too. He showed me his own room which was furnished exactly like the other hundred or so rooms for rent there, a bed, wardrobe, table and chair. I was introduced to the landlord, paid a deposit and moved in right away. Five stories high I lived on the top floor and Richard reckoned it was one of the more luxurious rooms there, seeing as how it had an ashtray. With a fifteen minute walk to the city center, ten minutes to my favourite Pakistani restaurant on Viktoriagade, two minutes to the nearest of four local bakeries and five minutes to one of my regular gigs, the location if nothing else seemed right.

As you came in the door the rooms were to the right off an L-shaped corridor, on the left side was a bathroom, kitchen and a broom closet. A Norwegian couple had just moved into the first room and the man spoke a little English. They were always smiling and seemed very pleased with their new accommodation, he spoke in such glowing terms about the place that you would have thought it was the Ritz hotel he was talking about. He told me one day that they had just discovered a great place to eat with good food at reasonable prices located on Vesterbrogade on the way into town. I checked the place out but the menu was very traditional with a lot of red meat and I decided to stick to the samosas, allou tikkis and dal turka in the Pakistani restaurant.

My room was in the middle and the two rooms at the far end of the corridor were occupied by single men who just came and went and didn’t say much. A couple lived in the room to the right of mine which was the biggest on the floor, he was fifty years old, bald with greying sideburns, she was twenty one and considerably over weight. Unlike the other people who lived there, they had set up home there, cooking regularly in the kitchen where they kept their pots and pans and other utensils in a cupboard secured by a large padlock. Their room had three windows, two budgerigars, an aquarium with various types of fish and at least two dozen exotic looking plants along with a sofa, bed, table and chairs etc. Everyday a friend of theirs would call by and they would sit there drinking beer for the afternoon.

One day when summer had come around again I came home and their door was open along with their windows because of the heat and they were sitting there as usual with their friend drinking beer, I said hello as I passed by on my way to my room. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door, it was the woman and she asked me if I would like to join them for a beer. I joined them and although we spoke very little of each others language we soon struck up a conversation of sorts. They asked where I was from, I told them I was from Ireland, they had already guessed that I was a musician having seen me come and go with my guitar. They told me that they could sometimes hear me playing and I asked if it was too loud or if it disturbed them, they replied it was not a problem and that the music sounded ‘very nice’. I also learned that the highlight of their week was a trip to a large nearby park called Søndermarken located at the end of Vesterbrogade on the way out of town, where they would bet at the pigeon racing that took place there every Saturday. They said it was great fun and really exciting and that I should try it too. I told them I might check it out sometime.

An elderly man somewhere in his sixties with a head of short cropped grey hair, finely chiselled features on his weather worn face and friendly eyes that still sparkled lived in the room to the left of mine. Slender of build he was usually dressed in a worn crumpled suit that had seen better days and an open neck shirt, he never wore a tie. He spoke no English but would always greet me with his toothy smile whenever we would meet in the hall, his surname might have been Hansen. Occasionally I heard him listening to the radio in his room, twice I noticed him making tea in the kitchen and once I saw him take a mop from the broom closet and wash the floor in the hall, but mostly he just came and went like the rest of us. Although I lived there for about a year I never really got to know Mr. Hansen, if that was his name, where he was from, what he had worked at or if he had any family and I don’t know what ever happened to him. But I remember lying there in my bed and hearing him through the wall coughing all night long.