Day 12 - My Birthday

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After a half decent night sleep, I awoke to the realisation that it was in fact my birthday! Dan had gotten up early and taken a load of washing round to a nearby laundrette so I got up, showered and dressed. I then headed round to meet him and pick up a coffee and cinnamon knot (I.e swirl) in order to get us some extra coinage to dry our socks!

After a few 'Happy Birthday' calls, we checked out of the hostel and headed back towards the central train station on the bus to drop our bags in the (impressively automated and efficient) left luggage and find somewhere for breakfast. Our original plans to head to an Irish pub for a fry up and the Lions game were interrupted by the extra pants and socks drying time, so we headed back to an American diner style place I had spotted the day before and we both enjoyed eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, toast, fruit, yoghurt with granola, OJ and a coffee.

Then it was onwards to hop on a river boat tour of the city where I learnt about the 'little mermaid' (a statue gifted to the city by Jacobson, the Carlsberg corp. owner), the royal residences, new opera house, navy barracks and Paper island. We then walked across to Christianshavn or more accurately, Christiana, an area of Christianshavn filled with military barracks which, once shutdown, became filled with squatters who eventually set up their own, anti-establishment, free state. It reminded me of a larger Stokes Croft in Bristol or Camden in London. A number of things go un-policed here, most notably the sale and consumption of Marajuana which was out on show and sale on the famous 'Pusher St.'. It had started chucking it down again by this point so we found shelter in a bar, sunk a few pints of Tuborg and planned some of our Barcelona stay with Jon A a Katie who will be joint us there.

Then the rain dried up, as did our beers, and hunger started to kick in so, with a little detour to finish seeing Christiana, we made our way across to a massive international streeet food hall on Paper island. After some deliberation, I decided on some baked and shallow fried potatoes with carrots (from a Polish vendor) and a chicken 'egg wrap' think egg based pancake), which was pretty decent but with the benefit of hindsight I should have gone with the ostrich burger!

Next we plodded back across Copenhagen via the picturesque Newhavn and made our way across to Tivoli theme park which is situated just next to the central train station (our departure point that evening). My last theme park experience was not so good (it involved throwing up at Thorpe Park and spending a large part of the afternoon hating life after taking on 3 of their biggest rides one after the other) but I was pleasantly surprised by our visit and didn't feel unwell at all. I enjoyed the orientally themed rollercoaster and the vertical drop rides the most, though or multiple successive goes on the wooden mountain rollercoaster in order to achieve a funny ride photo (which we did) were also good fun. There were a few birds left to roam free around the park, the most impressive being the peacock (photographed below). I was also mugged off by the fixed basketball game which had a continently placed low roof which made proper shot technique impossible!

We ended the trip to the park by watching a weird 'funny' circus pantomime and then headed back to the station to collect our bags, grab some tea from 7 Eleven and board our train to Berlin via Hamburg, which I am sat on now writing this blog. It's 23:00 - 09:00 with a 05:30 change in Hamburg and, worst of all, is standard seating only, no cots or room to lie down! It is also rammed with people returning home from a nearby music festival so it is crammed, noisy and smelly. This I expect (and somewhat hope) will be one of the worst nights sleep of the entire trip. Let's hope it doesn't impact our exploration of Berlin too much tomorrow (well, today now, it's 03:00) and Monday!

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