It would not have looked so good in the rain (Edited Travel writing)

It would not have looked so good in the rain. (Revised version)

Travelling back to your childhood territory is like reminding yourself of all that’s lost. You’re on a drip of sentimentality, a replacement fix.
In the airport I keep having to slow down as I weave my way through the masses of morning travellers that pass around the huge building of some sort covered in flapping polystyrene like the membrane of a cell. Little black flies of helmeted workmen are scrawled around on the building. Some real, others printed on the polystyrene holding drills, paintbrushes or climbing ladders, blending in with the real work force transforming the building. It’s a modern Guernica – a hell case of twisted workmen. Changes are everywhere! Even the fire exit signs have changed – I’m an alien from Mars in Lurpak land! In the loo I have to scratch the last paper off the loo roll and jump to avoid the automatic flush whilst a cartoon Kalashnikov is pointed at me with the writing “Hands up! Give piece a chance.” Loos are the cultural armpits of any country and having a gun to your head is not an unusual experience when you travel.
I don’t even have to turn the tap here either, an automatic ‘wash and go’ takes aim at me again – I wish some machine would apply my new Colour Elixir Lipstick by Max Factor too, my arms are dead weights after carrying my bag and the constant pressure from the armrests on the long flight, but not everything is automated just yet. As I exit, I notice a slim young woman with a small black suitcase on rollers holding “We Need to Talk about Kevin”. The woman is leaning against the cold white tiles resting one foot on her suitcase talking down her mobile phone as a slow smile crosses her face: ”4 hours and 45 minutes and I didn’t stop! Hmm! It was nice to see you too.” You instantly recognize a fellow eternal traveller by the limited luggage and how loosely they clutch their few possessions. Travelling somehow becomes both your goal and your destination. As the taxi in the airport pulls up next to me, I quickly throw the bag in – the taxi driver stays in his seat and barely looks up at me, he’s absently humming along to “blackbird sitting in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”
As we later speed past a decrepit facade of a brick building outlined as a pagoda with singed gold and red letters spelling “Bahn Thai” – I’m reminded of my permanent home from home. The contrasts between Denmark and Thailand are staggering in all respects. Further out in the countryside I shout for the driver to slow down as we pass several houses for sale near my old stomping grounds. The soil has turned barren – the climate is changing here too. There’re no people around, only swallows punctuating the telephone wires. They are back! I thought the Danish farmers in their chemical feast for more had got rid of them, but there they are, just like in ‘the good old’ days when the social democrats such as Jens Otto Krag ruled the land and Kellogs the breakfast table, whilst the Danes still tended their vegetable gardens growing their very own spring onions, red onions and Piper potatoes.
”When are we there?” I ask the taxi driver. He doesn’t bother to answer. He just pulls up and steps out to receive his pay before scurrying off again. Danish service levels have also changed! It is a warm summer evening, a proper light blue Danish summer evening, and the air is scented with night-time routines - little high pitched childrens’ voices mixing with darker deeper voices flying out of the open windows of all the red and yellow brick houses: ”But I’m not tired!” ”I don’t care, it’s late and there’ll only be 5 minutes of reading, and I’m reading for you tonight. So go to bed now!” Danes are very much family people - and slaves to routine.
The homogeneity of Danish suburbia hits you instantly but any thoughts of monotony are washed aside by the joy of recognition–but then again, even ones home country would not have looked so good in the rain. Summer evenings washes over you in a cleansing way – relieves you of all your travel dust – and feed you drip by drip a little sentimentality. Good weather is a good forecast for a good memory – especially in Denmark where the sun doesn’t always shine.