Three Helpings of Danish Blue, a True Love Story

The sweet cream of youthfulness divided by culture, and an aging process that overcame the salty sting of blue.

We met on an island of cream-white sand and swam in the warm swells of the Indian Ocean. Our connection belonged to some long-ago time and arrived in a moment too fast for words.

After a ricochet of love and sex; in a seedy, green Nairobi hotel room, on a camping safari across the wild Masai Mara, and on a hotel rooftop lost in ancient Islamic alleyways, we separated.

We were young, mid-twenties, and our lives hadn’t yet gelled. He was from Denmark, a student on a summer adventure. I was traveling rootless and searching for a different love story, the one that birthed me. So he returned to Copenhagen, and I returned to England promising to stay in touch.

In December, I took the train to the coast, then a ferry that reeked, and another train across flat, winter-bleak stretches of Danish farmland. The thousand-year-old city of Copenhagen sparkled with Christmas markets and strings of white lights reflected on icy cobblestones.

We spent some weeks holed up in his cozy apartment in the old working-class area of the city, red brick blocks with gardens hidden inside. We ate Juleaften favorites; roasted pork with crackling skin, red cabbage — and we laughed when I found the lucky almond in a sweet creamy bowl of risalamande.

We were innocent and spoiled as milk. It was all too hard — the language, the travel, paying for phone calls and waiting for letters. It was 1987, no internet or cut-price flights across the cold blue ribbon of the North Sea. We called it off thinking we’d move on and shape our lives, still not knowing that it’s life that does the shaping.

Almost 30 years later, when we met again through the novelty of Facebook, I still had the Danish for ‘I would like a beer’. And a taste for karry sild, sweet pickled herring in creamy curry sauce eaten with nubbly slices of rye bread. We fit together again as easily as a handshake.

We have aged. Our lives are richly veined with parenthood, careers, and loves that turned sour or remain as sweet fuel for social lives and other adventures. Music and movies, galleries and food, a love of travel and the hidden places tourists don’t care to go. We’ve read many of the same books over the years, found the same wisdom — foolishness too.

This century makes it easier to cut across the latest salty bulwark to divide us, though the scale of the Atlantic Ocean buckles time and brings fresh challenges.

I love Denmark and its culture but we‘ve decided to remain long-distance lovers and real-time friends. My roots are riddled too deep in my own life for a transplant now — his too.

Our relationship feels to me like a grand dinner party arcing towards the quiet, intimate hours of the night. Now in our 60s, with bellies full from the main meal, we sit back a little and digest. We float in the warm swells of invited company. We listen to the characters from each other’s lives and have conversations that we’ll ruminate over later.

The table is spread and, unhurried, we admire the fancies, choose new flavors to try, or savor old favorites that melt on the tongue like layers of memory.

The evening is still young enough and who can tell what it has in store? What I do know is that however it unfolds, I will always have space for some Danish Blue.

This story was first published on Medium on Feb. 16, 2024. ©Beth Riungu