Oct. 'Kulture Natten' and visitor #18

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Geo: 55.6763, 12.5681

The last time I was in Dublin I noticed on the radio they were advertising a culture night where all the museums & theatres would be open til midníght which sounded great but I didn't have time to go. And then I discover they have been doing it in Cph annually for 13 years, how cool is that? So on 13th Oct they had their 14th one. "On The Night of Culture the aim is to temporarily change the ambience and cultural landscape of Copenhagen. The whole city is an integral part of The Night of Culture, involving major and minor cultural institutions from the main boroughs: Nørrebro, Vesterbro, Christianshavn, Østerbro, City and Frederiksberg." Tickets were like 10eur(70dkk) for access all areas plus all public transport.

So our best man was coming over that weekend and he was all into it too, he was due arrive at midday, I got the tickets in advance (you should have seen the queues on the night - what were these people thinking of!) but we forgot to factor in it was Friday the 13th and he didn't get to our house until 7PM! So the resident vege chef (aka Mr. COD) was all ready with lovely dinner on his arrival and not be done out of a night of culture we headed up to the local & beautiful 'Assistens Kirkegård' or Assistens Graveyard which we had been to loads of times in summer because it's not just a graveyard it's a beautiful public park (any Irish or English people cannot really picture this til they've seen it but it is lovely). And H.C. Andersen, Niels Bohr, Søren Kierkegaard and tonnes of jazz musicians are buried there so if it's good enough for them...

Anyway there's a cultural centre there which had a display of costumes from 1920's (not 100% sure why) and then low and behold we spot a beer stall, so we could legally walk the graveyard in the dark 'bush drinking'. If some told me 20 years ago I'd be 'bush drinking' in a graveyard with my husband and our best man in 20 years I'd have said they had a very active imagination. But there we were & it was partly lit up by candles & it was a clear enough night & the next thing we see are ghosts! Which were theatrically done up, so quite effective. We stumbled across a choral group singing away also & then I realised the guy stood next me was Hans Christian Andersen - I got the hop of my life but the costume was very good. He looked like this (attached). Mind you later I think the ghost on stilts had a bit of hard time when I took her photo (with a flash d'oh!). Anyway we finished off on a local bar called Bodega which was good followed by a few G&T's at home (have finally acquired a taste from them).

So we still had the old culture buzz on Sat. so we headed into town and went up the 'Round Tower' for great views of the city & they have an art display area where they were showing some very interesting jewelry. Then we had a spot of lunch and headed off on the canal boat tour Nyhavn to The Little Mermaid. Not such a good idea in Oct. as the boat is covered in perspex & it's scratched so the view is not great. Then we did window shopping as they close the shops here early - as in 'who in their right minds would want to shop on a Saturday' - and then we had a pick me up in an english ale house only someone (not me) had a 9.8% beer so this set the tone for the evening & sure we had no choice but to head to place called 'Plan B', where we hooked up with an Irish-Aussie, 2 Danes & a Norwegian & the some then were involved in monitoring melting icebergs as university researchers so they had plenty to say for themselves & of course we had plenty to say (our best man is a phyicist) & more beer was consumed & then more wine in a Persian resturant. Needless to say we were not well people on the Sunday but after we left our bestman to the station we ended up going on a 2 hour walking tour of record shops - which bizarrely are open when no other shops are - and a mighty fine collection of record shops they have here too. So an interesting weekend one way or the other..... And the next weekend we had our friends who are Irish but been living here for 20 years over for dinner which was a good evening.

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