The bag lady

The bag lady comes and goes, her life is in her bags, all the dirty little secrets and all...
When I was a teenager, I've read a short story about a woman, most likely a Dane, who wandered from bar to bar, trying to pick up men and have them offer her a drink. She's got a bike, like all women around her and ends up in a ditch, after a night of booze and hallucinations and singing and seeing the Prince Charming in each and every male face.
And yesterday, while walking through Aarhus, I came across that woman. Thin, just skin and bones, painted in a very bright lipstick, slightly unsure of her legs, walking in the same trance that I, the teenager, knowing nothing about human nature and failure, have seen for the first time in that short story.