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Published: September 2nd 2009
Having taken the night train from Stockholm, I arrived in Copenhagen just after 7 a.m., slightly less than rested and refreshed. After waiting for the currency exchange bureau to open, I took a bus over to my hostel, the Rest-in-Green hostel, where I would have a bed in a 32 person dorm room. (This ended up being better than expected, as the beds were set up in 4-person 3-sided cubicles, so while noisy, it didn't feel as crowded as I had expected.) For anyone planning a visit to the city, the location of the hostel was good, about a 20 minute walk to the main train station and old part of the City, but it lacked a kitchen. Of course, arriving at a hostel at 8 in the morning does not mean that you can check-in then. I was, however, able to use the lounge area, where I read lots of guidebooks about the city and planned out my visit, until noon, when the hostel closes for four hours for "cleaning" (I use the quotes because there often wasn't much evidence of such activities).
Being my mother's daughter, the first place I visited in the City was the graveyard where Hans Christian Anderson is buried. The cemetery was actually more like a public garden then graveyard, many of the plots were set up as small gardens with the headstone a small piece of the arrangement, and in fact many people were sun-bathing and relaxing on open grassy areas and benches. After wandering the graveyard for an hour or so, and seeing my first red squirrel, which taunted me by refusing to stay still long enough for a picture, I joined the locals and spent several hours reading in the cemetery while eating a late lunch. The area I walked through to reach the graveyard was interesting, what appeared to be the arab section of the city, based on the names of stores (such as Aladdin's hair salon), the amount of arabic script and clothing (several stores displayed large arrays of head scarves). After a few more hours walking around the city and orienting myself a bit, I shared a grocery store dinner at the hostel with a young woman from Germany who is in Copenhagen to study for a semester, and called it an early night.
During my remaining four days in Copenhagen, I spent one visiting "Hamlet's Castle," which is about an hour from the City by train, and three wandering the City and touring a handful of museums. The following are some of the highlights.
HAMLET'S CASTLE: The guided tour of the Royal Apartments was worth taking, particularly as the castle has very little original furnishing left (the Swedish took it after conquering the area at one point - they even disassembled and took the fountain from the courtyard), so the verbal descriptions are quite helpful. I learned a fair bit about the long history of contention/rivalry between Sweden and Denmark. For example, at one point, the King of Denmark, the one who first built the castle in the late 1600s, ordered 100 tapestries of all of the former Danish kings - despite the fact that the country had only had about 30 kings at that point. However, the Swedish claimed to trace their royal family back to the grandson of Noah, so the Danes wanted to keep up. Later, when the Swedes conquered and ransacked the castle, they took with them most of another set of tapestries, but left behind those that showed the Swedes surrendering to Denmark.
MUSEUMS THAT I LIKED: (i) the National Gallery, a wide collection, including several rooms of art so modern that I didn't really "get" it, with an interesting/strange arrangement, for example, the classical painting rooms would sometimes have a modern display in the middle; (ii) Hans Christian Anderson Museum, this had some information about his life and several readings, with small animated scenes of his stories, plus additional stories that you could read throughout - I was the only person who sat down and read them all, and got out my chocolate to munch on while doing so. I had forgotten how good his writing is, albeit the stories are often depressing, (iii) the Jewish Museum, not particularly large, but interesting, talking about both the country's saving of its Jews during WWII, which the museum argued would not have been possible without the complicity of some Germans, and the integration of different waves of Jewish immigrants, both with each other and into Denmark; (iv) the Resistance Museum, which is accessed by a pretty walk that leads a little further up to the statute of the Little Mermaid (fyi, called "little" for a reason); and (v) the Canal Tour, not a museum, but a good way to see a lot of the city and filled with good information.
TIVOLI GARDEN: One of the world's first amusement parks, if not the first, it includes several buildings based on international designs, including a mini-Taj like building and a pagoda. Of course, the Asian garden food stall still sells hotdogs, but the veneer is there. I skipped the roller coaster rides but found the casinos! (First I lost some money on the outdoor roulette-type games, but how could I resist when the prizes were all large chocolate bars?) I actually did quite well at the first casino, and made back the $30 that I had lost earlier, so left even. The problem, of course, was the second casino. While it was good to see the park, there are also many nice free parks in the City, including the grounds around several castles that are all near the downtown area (one of which has a changing of the guard every day at noon). Overall, the City seemed to have a lot of green space that get a lot of use. Also common are bikes - there are dedicated bike lanes everywhere and even some bikes that have a cart in front and act as taxis.
THE PEDESTRIAN AVENUE: There is a kilometer long pedestrian only street lined with shops and restaurants. Its a quite touristy area but features in the middle an open square that was occupied, at least for the week I was there, by international food booths, including German pretzels and a British candy-stall with over 20 types of fudge! The adults circling the candy stalls, filling paper bags, all had huge grins on their faces, it was like being a little kid let loose in the candy store. I bought just over 200 grams of fudge, I may not be very good at the metric system, but I can tell you, that is enough fudge to make a person feel very sick! (yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I didn't have to eat it all in an afternoon, but seriously, how many of you could actually carry a bag of fudge around all day and not eat it?)
MOVIES: I saw 2 movies in Copenhagen - my first time in a movie theater since seeing Slum Dog Millionaire with Janni, Jeff and Doug. I saw The Taking of Pelham 123, with a bunch of teenage boys, and the Proposal, with a lot of young women and a few guys obviously dragged to the film by said women. I have to say, despite my general preference for action movies, I liked the latter more, even though it had an overused plotline, it had a lot of laugh out loud moments.
ANIMAL TRAFFIC: As I was walking across one of the bridges one morning (there are several canals and rivers going through the City), I noticed a fire in a a garbage can on the other side of the street. The fire was small and contained, so much so that people were walking by without moving out of the way. A fire truck rushed onto the bridge with full lights and sirens and several firefighters jumped off in full gear and started rushing to the hoses. They started slowing down as they saw the actual fire. As I know from Jaimee's stories, they'd probably gotten a call that there was a "fire on the bridge," and were expecting something much bigger. Their timing was fortuitous, however, as a large swan decided to start walking down the road at that point and the firefighters had to corral it back to the sidewalk. (From cows on the streets in Kathmandu to swans in Copenhagen.)
NIGHT BUSES: One downside to taking a night bus, mine for Berlin left Copenhagen at 11:45 at night, is having to find the bus station late at night. I asked several people for directions and, sadly, they all pointed down the dark alleyway that I was sure was lined by muggers, hoodlums, etc. (my imagination may have been slightly in hyper mode after the Hans Christian Anderson museum). I figured there was no way I could outrun anyone with my big bag on (given that I couldn't outrun anyone without a bag and a 5 minute start), but I had faith that if I turned fast enough I could knock someone out with the bag. Turned out, its just junkies and prostitutes on the street and you only have to walk about 20 yards on it anyway, so no need to test this new method of self-defense.
On my last day, I realized that I needed about another $10 for Copenhagen but was reluctant to use the ATM as you couldn't withdraw less than $20 at a time. It occurred to me that, if I went back to the casino with the approximately $10 that I already had, I could, with a little luck, double it and skip visiting the ATM. Now, I'm sure you couldn't see this coming but, strangely enough, this great plan didn't exactly work out for me. At least now I needed the minimum from the ATM machine.
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EMILY JAMES
non-member comment
Copenhagen
"the Swedish claimed to trace their royal family back to the grandson of Noah, so the Danes wanted to keep up." Charles the Second of England ordered portraits of all his ancestors dating back to Moses..some obliging artist gave him what he requested...all ancestors having same nose as Charles...these portraits hang in Holyrood Castle in Edinburgh..