Copenhagen

I’m back from Denmark! We flew on Friday really early in the morning to arrive yesterday night! There were 5 of us in total: me, ‘JJ’, my housemate, her sister and a friend of her sister. 4 Greeks and a South African! Poor ‘JJ’ didn’t stand a chance… I tried of course to take care of him as much as possible and also to separate us from the rest of the group a bit. There were times while wandering around in the shopping area or in the amusement park called ‘Tivoly’ that I tried to steal some ‘us’ time.

Copenhagen is nice and we had a really nice time. We walked a lot around the beautiful centre, the old city and the massive shopping high street, we visited the National Gallery and the Danish Design Centre, we took the boat around the small islands, we saw the mermaid and we had our fun in ‘Tivoly’. Unfortunately, in general I wasn’t very impressed by the city. It reminded me a lot of Goteborg with a touch of Stockholm and Amsterdam without being near as pretty or impressive. Copenhagen has elements of all these other central European cities but I have to admit it doesn’t stand out like them.

Walking around 'the Castellet' area

Don’t get me wrong though. For a much needed weekend escape it was brilliant. The people are very friendly and polite. There are many nice shops and I liked the Scandinavian design and architecture. The ‘Statens Museum for Kunst’ (National Gallery) is an amazing building with lots of interesting pieces of art. ‘The Castellet’ (The Castle) is a really nice area to walk in. The food we had was really nice and in abundance (steaks, hot dogs, pastries, bacon, cheese etc). ‘Tivoly’ was already in full Christmas spirits and we saw all the dwarfs, Santas and Rudolfs we could. The things I brought from there were a wild boar and a deer salami made traditionally by a Danish family…

'The Royal Café'

What I also have to comment was the lack of people and cars in the city centre. Apart from some people walking on the main shopping road, the rest of the city seemed empty! OK, the weather was a bit cold but on Saturday morning I would expect more people to walk around or cycle! What I found amazingly funny was the fact that some places didn't allow prams in them! Imagine our surprise when we saw a buggy with a baby in it, alone on the pavement with seemingly no people around! We then found out that it was ‘parked’ in front of the café where the parents were enjoying nice coffee inside a warm environment with the baby alone outside in 2 degrees Celsius! I know that crime levels are not high in these countries but I was quite surprised! I was even more surprised to find the prices in Copenhagen as well! I expected it to be expensive but not that much! To give you an example, I paid in the hotel café for a single espresso and a cup of tea 52 kroner (= £5.9 = 9.6 US$). In some places they even charged tab water for more than a pound!

'The Danish Design Centre'

Anyway, we had our laughs and we had our fun! These are some more of the pictures I took:

'Barbie riding a condom in a condom shop'

Playing with reflections in Tivoli

The mermaid being placed back in position after spending some months in Shanghai.

Coffee time

National Gallery

National Gallery

Interesting looking restaurants