Copenhagen Is Just Like One Big Movie Set!

My week-long holiday in Scandinavia started out in Copenhagen. I arrived late in the afternoon and hopped on a bus toward my friend Allan's house. As I rode the bus, I fell in love with all the little brick houses and marveled at all the bikes on the streets. Copenhagen seemed so quaint and cute, and I thought "How fantastic that everyone gets around on bikes and they don't even need to lock them up!"

I arrived at Allan's place and spent a few hours chatting with him as we waited for Matteo's arrival from Italy. I shared my thought with Allan who quickly explained that the bikes were indeed locked up and that bike theft was actually a problem in Copenhagen.

Matteo arrived and we three shared a nice dinner together. Poor Allan had to sit through all our New York stories and memories but he did so graciously. Allan taught us a fun card game, something called Pirate's Poker.

I had trouble sleeping that night as we went to bed late and the rising sun at 3 in the morning woke me up prematurely. It was crazy the amount of daylight that we had in Copenhagen!

The next morning we met up with my Danes, Niklas and Rune, whom I met in Peru the year before, for brunch at a cafe called Laundromat. It's actually a real, working laundromat where you can sit and eat or read the hundreds of books that they had in their cafe. Pretty smart!

Matteo, Allan, Niklas, Rune and I spent the day walking all over Copenhagen, catching all the major sights. All the buildings were so cute and the streets were so clean. The inside of the buildings looked bare to me and the streets were pretty empty so I just kept feeling as if we were walking around a Disneyland type of a place or a huge movie set. I think the Danes got pretty annoyed that I kept saying their beloved city was a farce, but really, I just couldn't shake the feeling of being on a movie set! Everything was just so picturesque and things seemed so perfectly placed.

I was in search for a Danish but it turns out the Danish in Denmark is not in fact the Danish that I know of. Denmark's' version of the Danish was pretty good but still, how come the Danes can't make a proper Danish? =) That evening, Allan renewed my faith in Danish culinary skills by cooking us a traditional Danish meal of potatoes, meatballs and a delicious sauce. We then went out for drinks, where the Danes "forced" Matteo and I to take shots of something that I likened to "shit water" but they called it "Fisherman's Friend."

The next day Matteo and I climbed up a spiraling tower. It was so high that I actually felt vertigo at the top! We then ventured into Christiana, a free-town within Copenhagen. We tried to find this awesome bike that I wanted to rent but they were hard to find so we ended up with normal bikes. It was still fun but how funny would it have been to see me and Matteo riding around Copenhagen in a bike like this?

We rode to the Carlsberg Brewery, took a tour, enjoyed our complimentary beers and then rode back a bit tipsy to meet Rune at King's Garden. The weather at this point had chilled and Allan was nice enough to bring Matteo and I jackets and sweaters. We then went with Rune to the beautiful Tivoli garden. It was a very nice way to end our stay in Disneyland, er, I mean, Copenhagen. =)


© Connie Hum 2009