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Published: October 5th 2006
Copenhagen is the prom queen, the captain of every sports team, the valedictorian, and everyone's best friend. You want to hate her so badly because she's just so freaking perfect. But how do you hate something so great? Copenhagen really has EVERYTHING going for it: awesome people who are nice and who smile (unlike the Czechs, who are pretty bitter and sour-faced), great food, cleanliness and efficiency in every aspect of life, beautiful buildings. It is impossible to not love this city.
Coming off the plane from Prague, the first thing you notice are the people. Every Dane is tall, blond, and stunningly beautiful. Every woman looks like Kate Hudson or Gwyneth Paltrow, every man like Robert Redford or Brad Pitt. It is almost insane. Like a genetic experiment gone... horribly well? In addition to the people, the city of Copenhagen itself seems to sparkle. Every part of the town, from the metro stations to the McDonald's shines with cleanliness, efficiency, and an Ikea-like simplicity. The metros are cleaner (much actually) than Disney monorails, which is saying quite a lot. They are driverless and always seem to be waiting for you when you need them.
I don't mean to suggest that Denmark is some kind of paradise, but it is just that the bad parts of any Scandinavian country are light years better than the bad parts of any depressed post-Communist nation. In the Czech Republic, there are times when you could definitely fear bodily harm (the druggies at the train station or the neo-Nazis at the local bar), but the worst that can be said about Copenhagen is that the people in the bike lane will not hesitate to run you over. Everyone seems to ride bicycles in the city (very Amsterdam), and if you accidentally step in their lane, watch out!
Another bad part of Copenhagen is the prices of every little thing in the city. Being in Prague definitely warps the monetary senses. Dollar beers, four dollar dinners. I was more than a little shocked when I got to Denmark and an average dinner cost twenty dollars, a mixed drink was about twelve, and a sandwich (an open-faced one at that... only one piece of bread!) cost ten. The prices made me die a little inside.
The first day, Janice (my friend from Boston College) and I walked all around the city. It is so different from Prague! Central European architecture can be characterized by its decorative gaudiness. All the buildings are covered in Baroque decorations, like gold leaves and vines, giant statues, paintings, stucco sculptures. Copenhagen is much starker (think the Norway pavillion in EPCOT). This is not to say that Denmark is in any way disappointing. On the contrary, the architecture is really charming. It just lacks the grandeur and bombast (which sometimes feels a little overdone to be honest) of cities like Prague and Budapest.
During our walk, we got to see a really cool church called the Marble Cathedral. Having just said how stark the architecture is, I have to backtrack a little. This church was truly beautiful - maybe one of the best places I have seen in Europe. It is a round cathedral with a giant green dome that has some influence of classical architecture. The marble which seemed to cover every surface brought a very different feel to the church than the ones I have been seeing in Prague. After that, we went to Amalienborg Palace, where the queen lives and I think some parts of the government are housed. We saw the changing of the guards, which is not as cool as it sounds. My favorite part of Copenhagen is Nyhavn, a quaint harbor-side cafe district comparable perhaps to New England in the eighteenth century. All the houses are wooden and painted different colors that scream "SCANDINAVIA!" - bright yellows, powder blues, muted rusts. The street stretches down both sides of the harbor, so boats pull in and out as you stroll by.
For lunch, we ate a Danish specialty called smorrebord, an open-faced sandwich filled with all different types of things (caviar, smoked salmon, pickled herring, and other tamer options which sounded better to us Americans). We picked this supposedly world-famous restaurant called Ida Davidsen's where this crazy old lady (Ida maybe?) took us to a glass case and described every ingredient in every sandwich. "And this is smoked salmon with chives and sour cream and a little bit of caviar. And this is roast beef with horseradish and tomatoes. And this is herring with caviar and cucumbers. And this is..." It was definitely an experience. I had the roast beef with potato salad, which they lay out very decoratively on a piece of dense rye bread. It sounds really plain, but it was actually pretty filling and delicious.
After the walk through town, we went on a canal boat tour. It took us past some of the historical sights of Denmark, including Parliament, the Old Stock Exchange, the National Library (a giant behemoth of modern architecture in the shape of a black glass diamond), and some fishing districts. One of the main attractions in Denmark is a statue of the Little Mermaid perched on a rock along the sea-side. The Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark's favorite person who ever lived, and she is therefore omnipresent in every souvenir shop. On the boat, we got to drive past the statue, an underwhelming sight which made me glad we didn't take the forty minute hike it would require to go see the statue by foot. After the tour, we climbed up this weird observation tower (I think I read somewhere it was the first in Europe). I am always finding myself climbing to the top of something tall in every city (Budapest, Prague, Karlovy Vary, Brno) to get good views... it's getting a little old.
That night, we went to a dance club which serves all you can drink beer for ten dollars. Considering that a normal beer in Denmark usually costs about ten dollars, it is not necessary to say that the Danes were going a little wild. Like telling kids they could eat all the candy in a candy store. People were lining up at the bar with outstretched mugs like the kids in "Oliver Twist"... "Can I please have some more?" It was really fun, even though Europeans love crazy German pop and trippy Euro-trash techno just a little too much.
The next morning, we decided to go to Helsingor, a city forty minutes north of Copenhagen which is the home of Hamlet's castle. Before we got on the train, we ate Danish hot dogs at a stand on the street. So good! They are really crispy and served with some weird spiced mayo, mustard, sweet ketchup, fried onions (like Blooming Onions chopped up), crispy fresh pickles, and some kind of green herby garnish. Something like a Chicago-style dog, but much better. The train out of the city, like the metro, was a model of cleanliness. The town of Helsingor was a really charming sea-side village. A great change of pace from the big cities I have been frequenting. It was made up of small colorful houses and shops squeezed side-by-side along a rocky Scandinavian coast. Beautiful.
In Helsingor, we went to Frederiksborg Palace (also called Elsinore), the castle where Hamlet lived in the play. It is funny and weird that a whole tourism industry has been built up around this castle considering a few things: 1) there was no real Hamlet, 2) the castle didn't even exist in the time period when the play was supposed to take place, 3) the only thing that the castle has in common with the play is the name Elsinore, which isn't even the official name. Having said that, I shouldn't be talking about the absurdity of making the trek to a pretty unimportant castle, since I was one of the fools who did it. I'm really glad I did though! The castle was really enormous and had a truly ominous feeling as it was perched on a rocky hill along the misty sound. It even rained as we walked up the hill to the castle. Somehow, the cold, damp, misty conditions made the trek to the home of a Shakespearean tragedy a little cooler.
After "Hamlet's" castle, we took a ferry to Helsingborg, Sweden, a somewhat random town that we visited just because it was close to Denmark. We didn't really get a "Swedish" feel from the city. Not to say that the town wasn't attractive or nice or clean or friendly (because it was all of those things), but it just did not feel like a different cultural experience. This probably had something to do with the fact that the city was chosen just because of its location and not because of its tourist attractions or history. I guess it could be the Sandusky, Ohio of Sweden for all we know.
Getting off the boat, the first thing we did was search everywhere for Swedish food. I wanted Swedish meatballs! In the end, we couldn't find any, and we searched for almost an hour. We ended up at some weird pub place, and I just picked what seemed like the most Swedish thing on the menu - a salmon burger on a salad with sliced roasted potatoes, red onions, and lemon juice. Delicious!
Following dinner, we climbed a hill (again with the climbing!) to see this castle/fortress. All the other "castles" I have seen in Europe don't look like castles. They are either Baroque palaces or big chateaus, but not something you would design a sand castle after. This random Swedish one was actually the most "castle-y" of all the ones I have seen so far. So I guess Sweden was worth the extra trip.
On my last day in Copenhagen, we wandered around the city a little more. A really cool (but very sketchy) part of town is Freetown Christiania, a self-governing hippy commune established in the 1970s. It is essentially a fenced-off area where pot was legally sold by street vendors until a few years ago that is based on art and free love. Houses in this neighborhood include tents, teepees, treehouses, and even pyramids, and old warehouses have been transformed into concert halls and cafes. All the buildings are painted with trippy murals that were obvioulsy drug-induced. The whole town smells like incense... and other smokes. We didn't stay long, but I'm glad I saw it.
Next, we went to Our Savior's Church, an old church outside of this hippy commune. We climbed to the top of the bell tower (again, I don't know why we keep climbing... it's an addiction). Once you get to the top, there is a staircase which spirals around the cone-shaped spire on top of the tower. Of course, we climbed it. For those who don't know, I'm deathly afraid of heights. As said, I have been climbing A LOT, but the fear hasn't really gotten to me until this point. If I didn't paint a good enough picture, I will try again. By going up this staircase, we essentially ended up at the point of a cone on the the top of a tower (like the top of Cinderella's Castle in Disney World) hundreds of feet above the city. Needless to say, I have never been so shaky and sweaty in my life... but I guess it was worth it. I don't know if I can keep up with all this climbing though! I'm going to have the best calf muscles in all of Tampa by the time I get home.
After the church, we went to Assistens Kierkegaard, a really cool graveyard where famous Danes are buried. It is kind of a weird place in that it is not really all that somber. People walk around it like a park, and considering the beautiful, garden-like landscape, I can understand why. We got to see the graves of Hans Christian Andersen and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. I don't know why, but I love looking at graves of famous people!
All things considered, Copenhagen was a great city! Of course, it is brutally expensive. I may have spent more money in that weekend than I have in Prague in a whole month! I am starting to think that the reason why the Danes are so happy all the time is because they are thinking, "Oh my God! I just got a stupid American to pay fifteen dollars for a roast beef sandwich!"
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steve & gisel
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next destination??
I hear Germany is next on your travel list. Unfortunately, I think you've missed Oktoberfest.