a siren on the way back from silence ... we're shooting startled me. i think it's the first i've heard in this city. funny how quickly you become accustomed to surroundings: the quiet seems natural and a siren strange. people outnumber police easily 20 to 1 here. no one seems to feel unsafe. illogically i still do but i recognize that it's illogical. not that that ever stops me.

silence was the second movie of my altogether-lovely day. a less-than-empowering but better-than-cairo station egyptian screwball comedy (logically, as it follows cairo station by 50 years) it was sentimental and retro for 2001, espousing such sentiments as "a man can't succeed without a woman beside him". but we enjoyed it. part of the reason i've seen two arab films in a row is i need to clear my head of the negativity i get from the news. i can taste prejudice sloshing around in me; it's horrible and i'm fighting against it, but it's hard. i've never had arab friends. i've never even known anyone arab on a personal level. when i hear that palestinians are burning flags and throwing stones outside the israeli embassy even here, i start walking more quickly past the people i live with. ugh.

but today, an unequivocably pleasant day: i spent six hours in roskilde, a pleasant town 42 kroner outside of copenhagen where katie's host-family lives. kris, who looked remarkably animated for her several hours sleep, and i met at the station and trained in together. katie met us and we three strutted through as though we owned the place, finding tucked-away sandwich shops and alleys that led to squares of squabbling roosters. naturally we didn't stop laughing until we settled down, in katie's freezing cold basement, to watch romeo and juliet. also sentimental, also retro. we got to relive being 13, only with a little more of a knowing edge (i kept wanting to rearrange romeo's hair. 6 years ago, i was spellbound.) we ventured out again afterwards, to the very tip of the pier in the harbor, steadying each other against the wind and watching fishing boats and birds play with the water.