Weekend Activities

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Friday

Today was the date of the announcement of the host city of the 2016 Olympics. I headed over to the Rådhuspladsen (The Town Square), which is outside the town hall where the presentations were taking place.

A massive stage had been built and as part of the Olympic festival some kids were doing a demonstration of wrestling on it. Also in the square was a BMX track, TV studios and a bar which was going to be selling five drinks (inc soft drinks) for 100kr. That’s right for the bargain price of £2.40 each, you too could be the proud owner of 5 coke bottles!

Just as about to leave when the Madrid delegation came on to the big screen. I hung around and watched a bit of it. The whole of Madrid was going to be redeveloped, they did say it would have been a compact games, but then showed a map of Spain with lots of venues that would be used across the country.


Went around the shops trying to find somewhere that would sell a hairdryer. Went into the two department stores, Ilum and Magasin, but no success. All they seem to have are clothes and homeware (crockery, candles etc).

In the evening headed back to the square to watch the result being announced. I wasn’t the only one who decided to do this. On the stage in the square were kids from the different cities. For some reason Jonathan Edwards was hosting with some other woman.


She did do a very bad pun of “with a hop, step and jump we go hand over to the President of the IOC”. I didn’t know that two cities had already been knocked out. So when Edwards announced that Toyko and Chicago had already been knocked out thought it was a bit harsh the way he said it so bluntly.

When it was announced that Rio had it there was a massive cheer in the crowd. At the front were some Brazilians and the cameras went right to them. The host on the stage said he was looking forward to doing some Samba with his new friends. Heard some American say that Chicago wasn’t ready to host the Olympics and he was glad that they hadn’t got it.


Thought that might be it, but then saw some people doing sound checks. Decided to wait around to see what came on. The host said it was a band called D.A.D and the crowd went wild. Some mum behind me was pushing to get to the front with her child. They must appeal to all ages. When I got back home looked them up on the internet and they’ve been around for a while. I listened to a few of their songs which were really good. The guitarist, Jacob Binzer, had an interesting outfit and at one stage was playing a guitar shaped like a missile. Everyone in the crowd seemed to know the words to their songs. According to Wikipedia they were called Disneyland After Dark, but Disney didn’t like that i.e. threatened to sue, so had to change the name.


Saturday

Today travelled around on the metro and s-tog. The metro is all automatic, no train drivers to go on strike! Did a practice run to my place of work, to make sure that I didn’t get lost on my first day. Of course there was engineering works on the s-tog, just like being back in England with the tube. Very nice trains, the train is like one long carriage with sliding doors to separate the sitting section with the entrance. I presume that during the Winter this is very useful in keeping out the cold. Got to the district where the office is, typically I ended up on the wrong side of the main road, so had to walk all the way to the traffic lights. The site which the company occupies is huge, a tad bigger than the UK base.

After the excitement of seeing the office was the equally important task of trying to find a hairdryer. Finally tracked down a couple of stores that sold electrical goods on the internet on Friday night. One was called ‘elgiganten’ and had a branch in Amager. Seems like the places outside of the main part of the city are the practical shops. The ones in the centre are more tourist shops and clothes labels.

Sunday

Took a quick walk around the harbour near me. Ended up at kastellet (The castle), which is an old fortification built on a star shaped island. Will head back there at some point.
There is beautiful architecture in Copenhagen, can’t wait to bring my DSLR over here.

Starting to be make out some words, salg = sale, udgang = exit (very helpful when trying to get out of metro), spar = save (useful in the supermarket). Need to work out how to pronounce the word for excuse me (undskyld mig).

Don’t worry this isn’t going to be a day to day diary. As of tomorrow I’m at work and no one is going to want to hear what fun I’m having with spreadsheets!

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Comments

[Photokaren]

Thanks for the store tips. It's hard to know what the equivalent of UK stores are in another country.