Come on baby light the fire!

When you go to a foreign country, there are certain stereotypes that you typically have in mind with regards to what you're going to do there. In France, it might be croissants, a jambon beurre, baguettes and the Eiffel Tower. In England it might be Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and a few pints in an english pub. In San Francisco, it might be the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and riding the cable cars. But of all the things that I expected to do in Denmark, I can honestly say that Firewalking was not one of them.

Yes, that's right, Firewalking. Walking on hot coals in barefeet. I still don't even know exactly how or why this happened, but it certaintly did, I even have a burn mark to prove it!

One of the cool things about Denmark is that there are quite a lot of freebies - people giving away free stuff to advertise their business - especially good for us poor broke student types! This can be anything from warm croissants in a bag advertising a bank outside your door in the morning, to hot chicks wearing rather tight clothes walking up and down Strøget (the main pedestrian mall in town) handing out free Kit-kats! And this firewalking, it seems, was one of these free promotional sort of things. The guy running it has a business that he describes as "being in the business of making people happy for no good reason": basically, its team building and the use of humour etc in the corporate workplace. To advertise this, he basically gave a free session as a way to advertise the company to random people, who might then tell their boss about it as a good idea. Dorthe's mother got an email about it and asked us if we wanted to come along, so it was the three of us that ventured out to a warehouse on Christiansholm on Monday night to try not to burn ourselves to a crisp.

There were probably about about four hundred or so people there, the place was absolutely packed. The whole thing was in Danish, so Dorthe had to take on the role of translator. But the basic idea was just to get everyone into the mindset for doing something which is completely irrational. First they built up your expectations of what was to come, by taking you out and showing you the fire, and telling you exactly how hot it was etc etc. Then they did a bit of visualisation of actually doing it, and dealing with the nerves etc, before we went back inside and did a whole lot of silly exercises (eg laughing like Mr Bean) basically just to release the tension, which worked really well and made everyone forget about it. There were also a lot of exercises and things to make people come together as a group, and support each other for doing the actual walk, which was certaintly an important aspect of it. Then after doing this sort of thing for two hours or so, he just said "We firewalk in five minutes. Please take off your shoes and socks". There was a whole sequence of stuff that you then go through with music to put you in a positive mindset, and then you go out, line up and do it. The two hours of team building beforehand then really came through, because everyone there was really excited and positive about it, and so when you walked there were lots of people yelling and shouting and encouraging you, which certaintly helps.

Dorthe's mother went first, and just rocked on down it, no problems at all - I think she was the most nervous of us three, but she just rocked on up and did it. Then Dorthe went next and it was the same again - no wurries. But after that, they decided that they needed to add more coals, so I had to stop and wait for them to put more on. Fortunately, the guy who was telling you when to start walking stood right in front of me while they did it, blocking my view of the fresh, hot coals, which probably would have psyched me out otherwise! And then he stepped back and just said "go!" and you're off, without really even thinking that you're about to step onto something that is 450 degrees C! And once you're on it, the only way out is to get to the end, there's no stopping, no jumping off, otherwise that's how you burn yourself. You take about four steps before you realise what's going on and start to feel the heat - initially it just feels soft and crunchy as the charcoal compresses under your feet, but then the heat starts to come through. Initially you can't feel the heat, then one step it feels nice and cosy warm, and then the next step you start to feel a bit of pain and things start to feel like they are burning - that was about three steps or so from the end for me - it was ridiculous, I certaintly didn't feel like I was going to burst into flame spontaneously, but it was certaintly uncomfortable by the end of it: I wouldn't have wanted to walk much further! I was so focused on storming down the patch of grass that I tripped over the bucket of water at the end of it, which perhaps wasn't so graceful, but oh well. Graceful doesn't count at the end of the day: not spending two months in hospital with burnt feet is what counts!! As for the damange, well, I think I had one or two coals stick to the arch of my foot, as I have a little burn mark there (say 5mm wide by 15mm long), but apart from that nothing too major. Afterwards I was pretty stoked, as was everyone there - lots of spontaneous hugs from random strangers - it was pretty exhilarating to get to the end and realise that you've done something so utterly stupid and got away with it!!

I remember having seen a few documentaries on telly when I was a kid about people firewalking, and how exactly it works. But the strange thing about those documentaries were that they were always in some small pacific island. And the documentaries about Denmark were all weinerbrød (danishes) and Hans Christian Andersen. Even now, I'm still wondering if I've got my wires twisted somehow and I've ended up back in the south pacific....