I was on the bus one Copenhagen winter day.
Another time, summer then, I tried to take out cash from an ATM and it gave me the most peculiar error message, and no money. That doesn’t…
I was on the bus one Copenhagen winter day. We get a lot of those here, winter days. The snow was so heavy that the bus got stuck at one point. The bus wasn’t full but we were a good 10 people or so on it. We all got out and helped push the bus. It cleared the snow, we got back in and we drove on.
Another time, summer then, I tried to take out cash from an ATM and it gave me the most peculiar error message, and no money. That doesn’t normally happen so I got a bit uncomfortable as one often does when being rejected, by humans or machines. I stepped aside and let the guy behind me go and to my relief, he was rejected as well. It had to be the bank. But then, a woman came and said that the ATM around the corner didn’t work so she would try here. Of course, she had no luck with our ATM either. In fact, it turned out that machines and retailers accepting cards all over town were unable to process transactions. Scary stuff!
Now, both of these stories are about times where the system didn’t work quite as intended. And both times, I witnessed something remarkable, that you don’t normally see in this otherwise highly efficient city: people were like woken up from a zombie sleep. On the bus, it was like a small party after we all got back in. Everybody was cheerful and talking to each other, people that would have never exchanged eye contact a half hour ago. I made a bunch of new friends that day! And with the ATM situation, I saw someone hand a perfect stranger cash out of the blue because they needed money urgently. Again, people were talking, clearly exited about having a proper reason to talk to strangers!
Now, you can argue that this says something about Danes or about city-people or about modern society. I am not sure what conclusion to draw — I am blessed and happy to live in a highly functioning society but in some ways, I wonder if it comes at a price that can be hard to notice.