Johanna Cosgrove is a writer, actor, comedian, podcaster and sometimes advice giver for the Ensemble Love Line.

It’s 11pm at London’s Gatwick Airport and after five hours of delays and no less than six 40 -year-old women in crease-less suits ‘speaking forcefully’ in Danish at the beleaguered EasyJet staff, I’m finally about to board my flight to Copenhagen.

We are sharing our boarding area with a flight to Ibiza, with girls in full heads of rollers and track pants going live on Instagram and boys with crew cuts sculling straight vodka from Evian bottles. It feels like I’m at a Comic-Con meet-and-greet mixer with the cast of Borgen and The Magaluf Weekender. 

The events that led me here – fleeing to a northern European kingdom to reinvent myself like an old-timey con-artist – are a tale as old as time (read: the plot of the first Sex and the City movie). Woman falls in love. Woman plans future with new partner. Woman is dumped. Woman goes on non-refundable international holiday anyway. 

I arrived in London and was sobbing into a variety of mates' couches mourning scuppered plans for a dream Italian trip-for-two when I received a text from an old friend who lives in Denmark. I was faced with a choice. Do I continue to ugly cry into my x3 daily Sainsbury’s meal deals or do I Get My Shit Together. I felt utterly alone in this personal experience of romantic grief (derogatory) and needed a miracle. 

The friends that show up for you following a break up are the most priceless gift you will ever experience. Just when you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve been physically stabbed, and your therapist is so concerned that she grimly gives you a discounted session, angels come along with spare rooms, arms wide open (Creed alert!) and a link to $50 NZD flights. 

Thus, I found myself with a Best Foods Mayonnaise merch tote, ready to – as my targeted Instagram ads love to say – Reclaim My Joy. During the eight hours I’d been contained at Gatwick Airport (a truly unholy cross section of British life), I’d befriended a cool girl with red tipped hair, eight silver hoops and an Aries ‘travel tracksuit’, also travelling to Copenhagen. Over a bag of crisps, she told me tales of her previous life in Denmark: cycling around the bars and dating hot restaurant dudes like a scandi Emily in Paris. Yes chef! 

A plan formed in my mind. Over the next seven days, I was going to reinvent myself. I was going to replace my tattered confidence and broken heart with a full Ganni outfit. I was going to click-clack around in boots and diabolical lace bloomers with a football jersey like the Copenhagen street style girls on TikTok. I was going to be happy and more importantly, chic. 

My friend Sarah met me at the airport waving a Danish flag in a shocking show of patriotism. I was informed that this was very normal and that any of life's ‘joys’ (birthdays, graduations, after work drinks) can be celebrated with a 20 pack of mini Dannebrogs (for the history girls: Denmark has the oldest flag in the world, Dannebrog is its actual name and it fell from the sky and onto the battlefield before the king in the 13th century). 

We immediately embarked on an ambitious sightseeing regime. Sarah had arranged to borrow a cargo bike – an e-bike with a carrier box on the front. 

I was carted around like a spoiled little viscount. I jostled other tourists to get a photo with the actual Little Mermaid statue. I leapt into the Øresund sea, tits out. We walked through The King's Garden, lush canopies of newly yellowed leaves threatening to drop. 

We went to corner bars with jukeboxes playing Rihanna, where you can smoke cigarettes inside until your hair stinks, saw the preserved corpse of a thousand year old bog-woman (a personal highlight) and traversed rows of red, yellow and blue human-sized doll houses. The birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen was laying the fairy tale on thick. 

Everyone in Copenhagen seemed to me to be otherworldly hot. My jaw was flying off its axis at the most beautiful people I’d ever laid eyes on cycling, laughing and transporting their tiny perfect spawn in tiny ergonomically flawless front packs. 

Although I hadn’t succumbed to CPH TikTok’s insistence that I wear a snakeskin overcoat with bike shorts, I hadn’t given up on my Hygge fantasy. I could still emerge like an Ikea wielding phoenix from the ashes of Antipodean despair. I could fake-enjoy having the rules of snooker explained to me in a bar in the hopes of locking down a quick visa marriage. I could wear a periwinkle shacket, shrouding myself in this beautiful progressive metropolis and get used to paying almost 50 percent tax! 

But with my time at Sarah’s running out, I couldn’t help but wonder: was I treating this city like a sensory deprivation tank for my own life? No amount of red studded sling back kitten heels could fast-track the healing of a broken heart. A seven day turnaround was maybe a touch delusional. In Norse Mythology, Odin cut out his own eye and then hung himself from Yggdrasil (World Tree) for nine days in order to gain all-seeing wisdom and knowledge of other worlds. Thankfully in 2024, we have budget airlines and mobile data. 

As much as I wish to end this with *cue jazz hands* “and that’s how I moved to Copenhagen”, in truth, I caught the metro to the airport (fucking imagine that, New Zealand!) brimming with clarity that I hadn’t wanted but obviously needed. It was time to begin the long journey back to myself. 

I was boarding the plane when I saw something out of the corner of my eye: a big sign that said “Expect a Miracle”. 

I stood for a moment, feeling profound, then quietly drew out my phone to take a photo, tears in my eyes. Looking over, I realised the girl next to me was doing the exact same thing.