I will never forget Billund

by Alonso Ruiz de Azua Ramos (Mexico)

Making a local connection Mexico

Back in the summer of 2012 I was living at Montpellier, France with 2 other roommates from my hometown Cancun, Mexico. We were studying french and traveling the most as we could. I just think about the way we used to live and I smile. Most of the days we just had pasta with butter for lunch or cereal for dinner since it was really cheap. I remember being at school and hearing my stomach making weird noises. On the other side the apartment where we used to live was empty so we got some furniture from the streets and bought mattresses from students that were leaving the city. We bought a refrigerator from a webpage called leboncoin.fr. My roommate Pancho and myself carried the fridge from around 6 blocks away from where we lived and on top of that we were living at the last floor of a building without an elevator, so you can imagine. The main reason why we used to save a lot of money living like this was because our priority was to travel as most as we could and we did. We have so many stories to tell but there is one in particular that I will never forget. Just before heading back to Mexico I planned a trip with Nathalia, only one of my roommates since Pancho came back to Mexico so he could take his exam for college. We started at France then Denmark, Malta, Greece, Stockholm and back home. We went to Billund because it was cheap to get there plus we saw Legoland was there. The only issue was that we didn't have a hotel booked or a place to stay. It was just one night so the plan was to leave our backpacks in some lockers, then go to a nightclub during the night and sleep in a park, then head to Legoland the second day and at night go to the airport and head to the next destination. Usually there is a way you think of how is going to be something and then we have the way of how it really was. Luckily we found some lockers quick at Lalandia which is an amusement park with several attractions. The main issue was when we noticed Billund didn't have a nightlife. There was just a bar super calm with a couple of board games, old people, and not so big. We were having some beers and the time went super slow. Suddenly, a couple of young guys came into the bar and started to ask for shots and drinks sitting right next to the bar. They were celebrating the job promotion of one of them and were super happy with a good energy. I stood up for going to the bathroom and in an instant I was talking with this cool kids. They stopped me on the way and told me, "hey you are not from here, why are you here?". So I started to chat with them and unexpectedly they asked for shots of alcohol with coffee for me and Nathalia and we were all sharing stories and experiences about ourselves. All of a sudden the bar closed and they told us the next phrase before leaving us: Please accept this 1000 danish kroner so you won't forget Billund ever in your life and spend an incredible time here. We refused but they insisted. So we came out of the bar both drunk with a 1000 danish kroner and we had the brilliant idea of sneaking into the Legoland hotel. We slept in a hotel corridor next to the door of a room where we were not seen. Unfortunately, only because Nathalia woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom was were they saw her. In the next morning when we were about to go out from the hotel a manager came directly to us and started "the talk". Of course, she told us that what we did was not appropriate, but after a while she let us go. We went directly to legoland and used the money from our friends and we will never forget about this wonderful place called Billund.