The silver lining of apartment hunting was that I coincidentally met a fellow UW alumna who also first came to Copenhagen with support from the ScanDesign Foundation. She has now been here for several years and has helped me understand some of the social aspects of Danish culture, such as the fact that they like to make plans well in advance, even for casual outings. I didn't realize how accustomed I had become to making tentative plans that often fall through for one reason or another. So I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to go mushroom picking over a week in advance and then have it actually happen exactly as suggested!
We boarded the S-train in a hot, underground station and took it north out of Copenhagen for about 30 minutes until the doors opened into a cool, green forest. Within five steps we were on a dirt path; it was truly therapeutic. Soon, we also found some familiar forest friends, including Doug firs and the Leopard slug in it's native range! We were looking for Boletus mushrooms, the only species here with "spongey" pores under the cap. We found some but apparently not a great day and lots of competition from the slugs - although it's hard to be upset about those tiny radula bite marks! It was also amazing that the slugs were clearly better at finding them than we were because not a single one didn't already have a nibble and slime trail.
I'm still working on my Denmark species ID skills, so we'll see what the iNaturalist community has to say about my observations.
