Me and my friend, Hans Christian Andersen–He cared more about children than those teachers (see below).

As I landed in Copenhagen this morning the sky was bright sunshine.  Then I noticed something strange: the bright sunshine was only over the airport, which was surrounded by massive dark clouds that looked like big gray mountains.

I went down to the train station under the airport and took a train to the city center.  When the train came out I noticed that it was again bright sunshine directly overhead with massive clouds all around.

It was the same story in the city center: sunshine with surrounding clouds.  I arrived too early to check in, so I put my suitcase in the hotel’s luggage room and went for a coffee.

That was when I ran into those big dark clouds, not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual.  Just one door away from the hotel was a huge erotica shop (what we in America call “adult,” though it has nothing to do with maturity).  What they had displayed in the window was so shocking and embarrassing that I wanted to cover my eyes.  Not that I haven’t seen this stuff before.  But it’s very uncomfortable to see it right there on the street where you are among strangers who are seeing the very same thing.  And being a huge shop, there were six windows filled with dildos and thongs and crotchless panties and so forth.

Suddenly I was surrounded and overtaken by a large herd of about 50 school children (ages 8 to 10).  The children’s eyes were drawn to the shop windows, too.  Even though I don’t understand a word of Danish, I could tell by the hoots of the boys and the giggling of the girls that they were reacting to the window display.  At the corner I tried to get through the group so that I could cross the street to where the hotel reception person had told me that I could enjoy a nice coffee.  But I couldn’t get through them, so I stood there as they filed past me and the horrible shop.  Across the street where they went, I saw another erotica shop.

I crossed the other direction wondering what in the world their teachers were thinking to bring those children down this street.  I found the coffee shop, settled in to enjoy a cappuccino, and looked across the street to see a big sign over an old factory gate.  The sign said Einstein of Sex.  That’s when I began to wonder what kind of town Copenhagen is.  But then I remembered that my hotel is very close to the train station, and the neighborhood around the Central train station in Milan is also like this.

View of the Copenhagen Train Station

As I explored the city after lunch, I noticed that I had only seen the erotica shops in the neighborhood of my hotel near the train station.  So I decided on two courses of action.  1) Prayer walk in the neighborhood around my hotel; and 2) always from now on check Google street view when choosing a hotel.  God is good!