13 Little Blue Envelopes(53)

They sat there for quite a while, looking at the sun that refused to go down. Finally, Knud suggested that Ginny go back into the boat and rest. She thought the light and the strangeness of the place would keep her awake, but soon the boat’s gentle rocking had gotten to her. The next thing she knew, a huge hand was shaking her shoulder.

“Virginia,” Knud was saying. “I am sorry. But I must go

soon.”

Ginny sat bolt upright. It was morning, and they were

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docked back in Copenhagen, right where they had started. A few minutes after that, she was watching Knud get onto his motorcycle.

“You’ll get there, Virginia,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “And now, I must go. Good luck.”

With that, she was on the streets of Copenhagen, once

again on her own.

240





Hippo’s

At least she was prepared this time.

In case she was faced with another Amsterdam, Ginny had

looked up some places online. The number-one recommended

hostel on all the websites was a place called Hippo’s Beach. It got five backpacks, five bathtubs, five party hats, and two thumbs up from the most thorough of the sites, which pretty much qualified it as the Ritz of youth accommodations.

Hippo’s didn’t look that large—just a pale gray, unassuming building with a few umbrella-shaded tables out front. The only thing unusual about it was the large model pink hippo head rearing out from above the doorway, mouth wide open. People had filled the mouth with all kinds of objects—empty beer bottles, a mostly deflated beach ball, a Canadian flag, a baseball cap, a small plastic shark.

The lobby was decorated in paper palm trees and silk garlands of flowers. There was a fake tiki bar covering wrapped 241

around the front desk. All of the furniture was very eighties, brightly colored with geometrical patterns. There were strings of Chinese paper lanterns strung around the room.

The man behind the desk had a thick white beard and wore

a bright orange Hawaiian shirt.

“Do you have any beds available?” she asked.

“Ah!” he said. “Pretty girl with pretzel hair. Welcome to the best hostel in all of Denmark. Everyone loves it here. You will love it here. Isn’t that right?”

He addressed his last words to a group of four people who had just walked in with grocery bags. There were two blond guys, a girl with short brown hair, and an Indian guy. They nodded and smiled as they threw bags of hard rolls and packages of sliced meats and cheeses onto one of the tables.

“This one is a firecracker,” he said. “I can see that. Look at the braids. I’ll put her with you. You can keep watch for me.

But here. One bunk for one week is nine hundred and twenty-four kroner.”

Ginny froze. She had no idea what a kroner was or how she was going to get nine hundred and twenty-four of them.

“I only have euros,” she said.

“This is Denmark!” he bellowed. “We use kroner here. But I will take euros if I must. One hundred sixty, please.”

Ginny guiltily handed over the wrong currency. While she

did this, Hippo reached under the bar and opened up a small refrigerator. He produced a bottle of Budweiser, which he presented to Ginny in exchange for the money.

“At Hippo’s, everyone gets a cold beer. Here is yours. Sit down and drink it.”

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It was friendly enough, but Hippo didn’t seem to expect anything but total compliance with his hospitality. Ginny took the beer uncertainly (even though she was beginning to understand that sharing alcohol was the universal way of saying “hello” in Europe). The bottle was very wet, and the label disin-tegrated at her touch and stuck to her palm. The people at the table, her new roommates, waved her over and offered to share their purchases.

“I just came from Amsterdam,” she said, digging into her

bag to try to make some kind of offering. “I have all these cookies, if you want some.”

The girl’s eyes lit up.

“Stroopwaffle?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Ginny said. “Stroopwaffle. Eat them all. I’ve had too many.”

She set the package on the table. Four pairs of eyes gazed at it reverently.

“She is a messenger,” one of the blond guys said. “She is one of the chosen ones.”

In the introductions, she learned that the two blond guys were named Emmett and Bennett. Bennett and Emmett were brothers and looked almost exactly alike—sun-bleached hair and equally faded blue eyes. Emmett dressed like a surfer, but Bennett wore an un-ironed button-down shirt. Carrie was about Ginny’s height, with short brown hair. Nigel was Indian-English-Australian. They were all students from Melbourne, Australia, and they had been touring through Europe with rail passes for five weeks.

After eating, they took Ginny up to their dorm room, which was equally brightly colored—yellow walls with electric pink 243

and purple circles along the top, blue carpet, and bunk beds made of sleek, tubular red metal.

“1983 style,” Bennett said.

It was cheerful, though, and obviously well kept. They

explained that everyone was supposed to help clean as part of the hostel agreement, so for fifteen minutes every day, everyone had a task. There was a clipboard out in the hallway listing jobs, so whoever got up first got the easiest, but none of them were very hard. Hippo had no curfews or kick-out times. Plus, there was a man-made beach in the back that butted up to the water.