Take a right at the volleyball court, a left at the old gate, walk through the graveyard, the along the residential street, across the big road and through the opening in the old stone wall, you’ll find yourself in Sorgenfri Slotshaven, my new neighborhood’s old castle garden. If you continue on the middle winding path through the trees, walk down the makeshift dirt path between two parallel trails and walk a minute to the left, you’ll find yourself in front of a small lake. I like to sit on the grass at the shores edge and look out over the water, but there’s a bench underneath a willow tree that I’ve taken shelter under more than once when stormy skies catch me unawares, which is an equally pleasant place to be. From either you can see tall grasses growing along the bank, lily pads floating gently on the lakes surface, countless varieties of trees casting their shadow on the rippling water, ducks and even the occasional swan swimming by, and the little yellow house across the way where a little Danish flags waves in the wind from it’s place on the front lawn.

I owe finding this place to my dysfunctional e-sim that left me wandering Copenhagen for the first week without access to any kind of online navigational system. You can imagine how thrilled I was to be internet-less in a new country where I didn’t speak the language or know anyone else living in my part of town. The outcome was that I ended up wandering more locally at the start of my stay, a few blocks out and then back around, always with an attention to my positionality in relation to my new apartment complex. Each new walk slowly expanded my range of discovery, until I finally found this place in the Castle Garden. It was a good exercise in grounding myself to my new home, letting myself wander out into unfamiliar areas and then returning again and again to my little apartment. It also helped me slow down my looking, take a second to pause and ask myself with no particular destination, where is it that I want to go? I would pick the path most intriguing without certainty of where it would lead me, but with growing excitement at the mystery contained in my next move, but never forgetting where I had come from in order to return when I was ready. 

Now my e-sim works, and while I don’t exactly long for the days of desperate searches for Wi-fi and memorizing train schedules, I’m grateful for the lesson in curiosity, in autonomy, and in the ability to be comfortable getting lost and trusting myself to find my way back again.