When I was a student my class traveled to Aarhus, the largest city outside of Copenhagen, and a small, seaside town called Kolding. Kolding: population 57,000. The top rated attraction in Kolding, according to TripAdvisor? Koldinghus, a royal castle (and don't get your hopes up, it's not huge) within which the most valuable exhibit they had at the time was a roving Beatles-in-Denmark retrospective, which was hopelessly random but endlessly entertaining, and I spent 90% of my time at the castle covering renditions of Beatles songs with my classmates on the lone GuitarHero set-up in the castle basement. We ultimately gathered a small crowd of older Danish fans who watched us, playing our fake instruments with gusto, and politely clapped at the end of our set.

But I digress. Come night, which place did I end up having the most fun in? Kolding by a long shot. Why? For some reason the small town mentality did a number on us Americans, as if its plain little Danish existence was daring us to get something funny and semi-crazy out of it. We had dinner with the group that evening, had a drink with our tour leaders, and then they let us 'loose' on the town, which seemed like a joke in itself. In the beginning we managed to stumble upon a high school pub crawl, which was fun enough, but time ran out on that one and we found ourselves wandering the tiny streets with a hunger for more.

Or was it a literal hunger? After all, there were these Danes that kept wandering by with huge slices of pizza. Some of our merry little band of wanderers wanted pizza. I believe a few may have been interested in finding some other substance. I was freaked out by the mere thought of asking a random Dane where he got a slice of pizza bigger than his face, so I kept quiet while the bravest among us asked about the pizza, and then continued on to try and score some of the above mentioned, and timid me kept wanting to leave, but then somehow we ended up wandering down a street, outside of an apartment, waiting as the Dane ran up a few flights of stairs to check on things with his friends. Moments passed. I really wanted to go back to the hostel. I almost did. But then the door creaked open, a sliver of the Dane's face visible. He invited us in.

What proceeded to happen was an impromptu apartment party between six American students and seven eighteen-year old Danes, who gave us beers and sat us down in their living room while they smoked countless cigarettes and rolled joints in their kitchen. They asked us what the hell we were doing in their tiny town in Denmark. It was interesting--here we were, fresh-off-the-plane Americans, meeting even younger Danes who listened to rap and dreamed about America, or even just getting out of Jutland to Copenhagen, who were in and out of school, who owned their own apartments at eighteen while many of us didn't know life beyond a dorm. And here we were, dreams of a random night utterly fulfilled, talking to, nay, partying with, real locals! Our eager, easy-going cross-cultural conversations carried on for hours in the smoky apartment, beer cans on the table, music videos on the TV, questions and laughter and harmless flirtation and silent looks exchanged between us, moments stolen while backs were turned, this is freaking crazy, so random, can you believe this? At some point a Spice Girls singalong happened. It's on film somewhere. No, I won't show you.

(This is something I'll never understand about Denmark. I have yet to witness American males at a social gathering singing Backstreet Boys, and yet just the other weekend I was walking home from the Metro late at night and came across a street-level apartment, where a party was being thrown on the ground floor. A group of 10 Danish men and women, at least my age or older, had reached a certain drunk point of the evening where they all were huddled in a circle, arms around each other, belting out 'Backstreet's Back, Alright' with a heart-felt passion, heads tossed back, locking eyes, singing every lyric with drunken-love gusto. Denmark, you kill me sometimes. Most times.)

The evening got late. We got tired, we knew we had to find our way back to the hostel. We filtered out, said our goodbyes, knew we'd never see each other again but didn't have to pretend otherwise, went to bed, woke up, and it became a good story. But I remember it did give me the confidence to capitalize on more random moments, to seize more of my missing spontaneity, to experience all of the forms that being abroad comes in, both big and small. This was two weeks after I had arrived in Denmark, and I was able to ask these young Danes real questions about their lives, and learn from them beyond the Copenhagenized version of 'How to Meet Danes!!!' I carried this night with me triumphantly.

Thursday the class section that I'm traveling with goes on tour to Western Denmark, and I've gotten a typical mix of reactions to the fact that we're spending two days in the same fairly small town: have fun, but really, what are you going to do there, oh that's nice, I suppose it's old, cool, enjoy the 'nightlife', ha ha ha. And forgive me for hoping that the students are bright and alert in the morning, but that they are adventurous and spontaneous at night. Because any small town in Denmark is just like everywhere else in the world: it's totally what you make of it. And sometimes you do miss out on a lot by just going to bed.