Copenhagen: a Danish tryst
Spring has sprung and May is soon to be over. We are heading into the summer months at lightning speed, and I can’t wait!
Lija and I went to Copenhagen for this long weekend, not for the whole time because Lija had a wedding to go to, so we left Friday night and came back Sunday midday. Usually we go out on the Friday night but it started pouring down with rain so we had to have a quiet night in. A trip to the Danish 7-11 for some Baskin and Robins ice-cream and we were set for the night.
The damn ice cream turned on me though, evil stuff, and I felt kind of blah the next morning. Our hostel was called the Sleep In Hostel, funnily enough, you have to get to sleep for that and Lija had a bit of trouble. She said our roommates came in at 5am and were really noisy and she couldn’t get back to sleep after that. I didn’t hear a thing. Comes from sharing a room with three other relatively noisy people. (I can’t wait for Berlin – my own room for 6 weeks!!!)
When we were sitting eating our ice creams we were planning what to do the following day. We had a map and there was a big one on the wall that told a whole heap of places to go and things to do. We got excited because we were both pretty skint this weekend and we saw an ad for free city bikes. You put the equivalent of £2 into the bike to unhook it from the rack and get your money back when you take the bike back to any of the racks located around town. The map we had had all the location points marked, so our plan was to follow the walking map until we could find bikes and then ride the rest of the way.
It was such a good plan too. But of course these things never work the way you want them too. When we got up it was still raining a bit so we got our hoods on and started walking to the bus stop, but then we were nearly in the town so we just decided to walk into town. Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark and home to our very own Princess Mary, is actually located on an island that is closer to Sweden than Denmark’s mainland. All of the islands around the area are joined by expensive toll bridges – we were told not to go to Sweden for the fun of it because it’s quite expensive.
Our tour of the city took a little longer than it should. It was a walking tour that turned into a hunting game and got so comic we never actually gave up looking until about 5pm. We began at the City Hall, a big concrete space in the centre of town, and walked through Nytorv Square, where the gallows used to be in the old times; and once you walk down a nice old street called Kompagnistræde you get to the canal enforced area that includes Christiansborg Palace, the Parliament and Royal Reception Rooms.
We walked past the Royal Theatre and out to the river Sydhavnen where we walked past the Royal Danish Playhouse and on the other side the foreboding Opera House. As curved as the Sydney Opera House is, the Danish one is square, boxed, maybe diamond looking from the side. It’s big, black and dark glassed. Opposite, and on our side of the river, is a prettier site of Amalienborg Palace, the main residence of the King and Queen of Denmark. However, they weren’t there because no flag was flying – and we’d seen a sign saying that Frederiksberg Palace just out of town is closed because the family stays there for the summer.
It’s a pretty site actually made up of four separate palaces with a central water feature in the middle. We missed the changing of the guard, which takes place from Rosenborg Castle just up the street to Amalienborg, because we were more interested in walking up to see the Little Mermaid. She is on the other side of the Kastellet, a fortress with a canal/moat in a five pointed star shape. The Citadel fortress is well-preserved and still in use. When we walked through there were army men on the shooting range with all these tourists watching.
Many people I spoke to before going to Copenhagen told me they were disappointed with the Little Mermaid. I wasn’t. I think it’s because I have a vivid imagination and this small bronze statue, a human height of 172cm tall if she was stretched out, could be easily mistaken for the real thing by fisherman coming into town and watching the shoreline. All of a sudden they’d look up at this beautiful creature that has a female body but fins for legs. How amazing.
We also touched bases with Christiana, a free community since 1971, with what they call an alternative lifestyle. Basically it’s a bunch of hippies that don’t pay taxes and hang out smoking pot all day with their dogs. There are houses and small apartment blocks, and cafes that sell everything from hot dogs to different types of smoke. No really, I walked past one ‘café’ and the signs on the three cups, which I thought would read ‘latte, cappuccino and espresso’ read ‘Hash, Pot and Skunk’. Tourists are allowed to walk through, but there are huge painted boards with ‘No Photos’ written and drawn on them.
We were sitting out the front looking at where to go to next on the map and this dodgy old man walks past jeering ‘Take a picture for your mummy girlies’. On the way out there is a sign that says ‘You are now entering the EU’. What a joke of a place.
By the afternoon we had made our way across around and through town, and decided to get some things from the supermarket for supper and sit in the gardens to eat. What we didn’t realize is that Tivoli Gardens are not like London’s Hyde Park gardens, they are a big amusement park, so we had to pay to get in but we spent the whole evening there. A park bench sufficed for our meal of salami, pickles and potato salad, which we had to eat with corn chips because we had no cutlery!
There was heaps of free stuff within the gardens; you just have to read the entertainment guide. We watched an original pantomime, listened to a jazz band in one pavilion and a classical orchestra in another. I even managed to get Lija on the rollercoaster. She refused to get on the one that went upside down and all around, but in saying that she said she’d rather go on the normal rollercoaster. I was fine with that. So we went and bought tickets and stood in the line, watching it go up and down and all around, with people screaming their lungs out. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have said yes, Lija says to me. I grin back. This is going to be fuuuuuuun! Little did I realize at the first downhill slide into darkness I squeal, Lija squeals…we start ascending slowly just to take off straight down – I had began squealing for fun and then we got jerked and flew down the tracks…both of us screaming for real at the top of our lungs! Hahahaha
Going back to the hostel should have been easy enough, get on the bus and go. Only as we stood at the lights arguing about which way to go, some creepy older man comes up and asks us if we need help. So he points us in the direction of the main station which has a big bus terminal, and begins walking with us to there with his friend. There is a bus sitting there about to leave with our number on it. So I go to Lija, yeah, we gotta go get that bus, we better run. The two of us take off across the main road and reach the bus just before he closes the doors. We get on and realize, although we got away from creepy old man, we got on a bus that’s going in the wrong direction where there are no well-lit stops to get off and catch a bus back the other way.
We know this because we’re heading back over to Christianshavn, where Christiana is. Not a place we want to get stuck in around at night time. It was past 11pm at this stage. And the bus just kept going. We were sitting there giggling our heads off at our evening escapade, in the safe hands of our driver, when he realized as we reached the bridge to the opera house that we may not know where we’re going. “Um, girls, where are you going?” He calls down the bus, as we’re the only two sitting on there still. So we told him we needed the bus in the opposite direction. There’s one coming towards us so he flashes it to stop and lets us change buses. This is the bus we need, but this driver decides to call it quits at the main station, and tells us to get off and wait for the next bus, which would have been the one we just hopped off.
Plus, we only had ten minutes on our ticket before the hour long use expired. So we decided to run to one of the other stops which had more choice of buses. Across the main street, past the gardens, across the eight lane road, through a tangle of smaller streets, running the whole time we were, and then around the corner (not without stopping for a photo opportunity of a myriad of bikes parked all together – hundreds of them!) and there sat our bus. We were back and tucked up in bed by midnight.
The next morning we were back off to the airport, and by the afternoon Lija was at the wedding and I was working.
This was however a long weekend, and we decided to take the train up to Southend-on-Sea on Monday for the free air show that takes place along the beach. Southend is at the mouth of the Thames estuary, so they say it’s still the equivalent of shit river, which meant no swimming. It was a blimmin hot day too. One of Lija’s workmates said they get about 1 million people over the two day event.
We got fish and chips for lunch and sat on a hill with every other man and dog enjoying the cool grass and hot sun. When the planes came we couldn’t see a lot through the trees, so we hopped up and walked along the front. The army, navy and airforce had attractions for recruitment, and Southend has its own regular small fun fair for the kids. We would walk a bit, and then stop to look up at the sky. The Red Arrows were there, a jumbo army plane, and my favourite were the old planes with acrobats on top, doing loop-de-loops.
Just a sentimental little note to add, Lija and I had dinner at Jumbucks the other day, a shop that makes Australian pies and dummies. Oh it was heaven and felt like home. We sat on Shepherds Bush Green eating them and lazing on the grass before I had to work.
Tags: Travel
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