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Published: August 11th 2007
The Little Mermaid
And all the tourists (as usual). She is actually quite small and blink and you'll miss her.After a 12 hour train trip, on which we met a lovely Swedish couple, the female half who talked non-stop but was a fantastic source of information on Scandinavia and Copenhagen. Everybody speaks such good English it is embarassing!!
We arrived at our B&B (without breakfast....????) almost 2 hours after we expected to. The Danish public transport system was a bit hard to navigate and they have ridiculously long words it isn't funny. Because all the words are so long they can't fit a lot of then on the signs so abbreviate which makes sense except if we have the full word and see a shortened version (that looks like a normal long word instead of a sentence with no spaces!) we get mighty confused! Lucky everyone speaks English. Anyhow our B&B is nice and cosy and our hosts are lovely. It was really nice to stay in the residential area of a city for once.
So the plan was to stay in Copenhagen for 3 nights and then move on to Stockholm for 2. That plan fell to bits when we realised it was going to cost an exorbitant amount to catch the train to Stockholm and back.
Nordhavn
The old shipping area of Copenhagen that you see in all the pictures. It is very pretty floating down the canal with all these lovely coloured buildings. Just for a couple of days. So, we decided to stay in Copenhagen and do some day trips to Sweden (it is only about 30 minutes away). After frantically searching for new accommodation we found some and began exploring the capital of Denmark.
Copenhagen, like Amsterdam, is interwoven with canals. While not as many as Amsterdam the city is still largely centred around the water. We went on a cruise of the canal. We got there early, all was lovely until we just left the dock and then the heavens opened up and it rained so hard you couldn't see anything and there was no way out. Not only did it rain but it was so windy and cold it was hilarious. So the first half of our cruise we didn't see much but the inside of our umbrellas and our wet feet. The second half was kind and sunny (although still freezing). The canal took us to most of the sights in Copenhagen. We got to have a look at Amielborg Palace where Queen Margrethe lives and the wing that Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary will live in (it is covered in scaffolding and is being
The entrance to the freetown of Christiania
The other side of this sign reads..."you are now entering the EU" renovated - I wonder if it will be decked out in Tasmanian Oak???). The flag wasn't up though so no one was home and the space in the canal where the Royal Yacht is usually kept was empty so my guess is they'd escaped the awful Copenhagen weather and were enjoying summer in the south of France on the yacht.
The whole time we were in Copenhagen it was like winter at home only perhaps a degree or two warmer. So much for heading north before the weather turned bad!! Even the Danes were complaining.
The main feature for us in Copenhagen was the freetown of Christiania. You all need to google it. We couldn't take pics in there but it started in the early 70's when a group of Copenhagen locals decided they would move into abandoned army barracks and establish a town separate from the government. The Danish government let them as a social experiment and for a long time you could score free drugs and all sorts here. It is still a hippy hang out but the government is cracking down on it. It's absolute democracy still exists today. Only 1500 or so people live
there and if a decision needs to be made all residents need to agree before it goes ahead. It was really interesting to visit a small part of the radical 70's and a freetown that is so so rare today and will not be around for much longer.
We crossed the border into Sweden twice during our stay. The first was to Malmo to the south of Sweden. It is joined to Denmark by a long bridge and took about 45 minutes to get to. Malmo was very pretty although it was a disgustingly cold day so our grand plans once again turned sour because we'd been told to visit Malmo in summer for the beautiful warm beaches. Oops! There was a few pretty cool things there though. Firstly they have this hill that plays music from underground speakers, secondly they had a very cool design store with heaps of "handy" and innovatice stuff in there. It was all quite pricey but we could've come home with a swag full of stuff given half the chance (and double the money). Lastly, they had a shop that sold saffron, liquorice and other weird and wonderful flavoured icecream. We tried the
saffron. It was actually quite nice considering it isn't a "proper" icecream flavour. We also sampled traditional Swedish food in the form of fast food. We had swedish meatballs and mashed potato. It was actually quite tasty. They are a lot more civilised over here than back in Australia. Even fast food tastes good. We scratch our heads and wonder all the time how we get it so wrong in Australia. Also all the fast food comes with some type of utensil. You don't have to eat your chips with your hands - NO WAY! You get a cute little fork to eat it with. Don't want to look stupid licking your icecream cone - no worries they give a little spoon. Also in cafeterias, i.e. on the ferry where in Australia you would be given greasy roadhouse fare with no serviette. They serve fries on a real plate with real cutlery!!
Our second trip across the border was our last day in Copenhagen, we went to Helsingborg, Sweden via Hillerod and Helsingor. Helsingborg is just a 4km ferry ride (about 20 minutes) away from Helsingor in Denmark. It is the shortest crossing between the two countries and the
Danes and Swedes have been having words for centuries about the two towns. We didn't get much time to explore Helsingborg but it is a very pretty little place.
Helsingor is very similar although seems a little bigger. It also has the drawcard of Elsinore, otherwise known as Hamlet's castle. Hamlet is of course a fictional character created by Shakespeare and his play was set here. The castle itself is real and has a massive moat and massive defence walls with a super view across to Sweden. We sadly got there about 10 minutes after closing time so couldn't see inside but the courtyard and surrounds were lovely (as was the grossly overpriced souvenir shop).
On our way to Helsingborg that morning we stopped off at Hillerod. A town about halfway between Copenhagen and Helsingor in Denmark. We got there early (another thing about Europe is nothing really gets started till 9:30 - 10:00), and it was lovely to wander around without all the tourists (or locals for that matter the place was dead). The main reason for stopping was the Frederiksborg Castle (of which we took heaps of pics as you can see 😊). This castle was
The Danish are very organised...
You have to plan your farts here. home to the Royal Family for a long time and has some great rooms. The best bit was being able to wander around virtually alone (unlike Versailles near Paris - eewwwwww). It helped that we both missed the first floor and started at the second so we got to see the Grand Hall all by ourselves. It was awesome (just wish we could've had the same experience with the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles!). We got lost a few times and the doors weren't always open so you had to open them yourselves. It was quite fun and exciting exploring a huge castle all on your own. The castle also houses the Danish National Gallery. There are lots of old and modern art works, one is a fantastic portrait of "Our Mary". It is really beautiful. Judging from all the souvenirs and postcards etc over here - the Danes love Mary and Fred! In the church at Frederiksborg they have included Mary's Family Coat of Arms on the wall with the other royals but not Freddie's brother's wife. I think Mary's the people's pet over here!
We did a lot of planning in Copenhagen (sick of stressing about not
More of the castle
Daniel getting artistic with the camera being able to find accommodation) so happily go forth to Berlin.
We are starting to miss home a lot even though we've only been away for about a month. The first inkling you get is when you start to find excuses to sing typically Australian songs out loud in public. The next stage we discovered is when you do away with the likes of Khe Sahn and The Voice and start singing dorky Aussie songs like Road to Gundegai and Give Me A Home Among the Gum Trees. You also start to miss stupid stuff that you didn't really like when you were home anyway, like Trish missing cold beer (go figure) and Daniel also missing cold beer. We also miss the beach even though we lived in Northam. But we don't miss you all enough to come back just yet...have a cold beer for us (we'll forgive you for not going to the beach but maybe just look at it and think of us with our stupid pebble beaches!).
There's a track winding back to an old fashioned shack.....
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