Copenhagen

At last, the final chapter of our Scandinavia trip in June, following Helsinki, Tallinn, and Stockholm...

We arrived in Copenhagen tired from the six hour train ride, hot in the muggy weather, and confused about why we even left Sweden. Since this was the 6th day of a hectic pace, we decided to skip the museums and just absorb the city. If we go back, we still have a lot to see.

Our hotel was bare-bones but wonderfully located, right on the colorful Nyhavn (New Harbor), a sailors' quarter dating from the 1670's.
Surprisingly, sitting sounded good (probably the heat), so we took a one-hour canal and harbor cruise departing from Nyhavn. Easy peasy.

Our serene tour guide gave every spiel in Danish, English, and German. She told us that we should have come the next day when she was doing kids' cruises while dressed as a pirate, and apparently speaking Pirate as her 4th language? Or, maybe her Danish, English, and German all carry pirate inflections? We'll never know. From the boat, we saw:

The 2005 opera house, much of which is built under water. I blame the angle on a wave.

Amalienborg Palace, home to Queen Margrethe II and her husband.

...and no Little Mermaid statue. She is at the Beijing Expo. Wah.

After, we wandered through the university district- 30,000 students, free tuition - and feasted on Riz-Raz's vegetarian buffet. We also found the bust of Niels Bohr, who won the 1922 Nobel Prize for theoretical physics as professor here in Copenhagen before moving to the US in 1943, where he helped develop the atomic bomb.

After dinner, I managed to talk Chris into visiting Christiania, the alternative squatters' colony. I was too embarrassed to take out my guide book (not like I fit in anyway!), so we learned the details back at our hotel. There are huge, graffiti "no photography" murals, so this is the only one we have, taken at the entrance. On the flip side of this sign, it reads, "You are now entering the EU."
Just a few of the fascinating things I learned about Christiania: It was established in 1971 with 700 squatters, of which 180 remain (of the present total of 600 adults and 200 kids). It's built on a former military base still owned by the ministry of defense. There's no buying or selling of property - when someone moves, the residents decide who will be invited in. Rick Steves reports that a third of the residents work outside the community, a third work inside, and a third don't work much at all. The community pays $1 million per year to the city for utilities and another $1 million to run its local affairs. Apparently, they don't use the standard police force much and settle things internally. That was one thing that made me not want to stay long. Or take pictures. Sadly, the soil is poisoned from its military days so nothing is grown here. Maybe they should move.

It's nice to room in a central location - we returned to our little Nyhavn for the last of the evening's glow, with a Carlsberg, of course. Our hotel is the brick building on the far left, and the red building two houses over is where Hans Christian Anderson lived and wrote his first stories.

The next day was rainy the whole day long. We stepped into the city hall, which was modeled on Siena's in Italy.

I posed with H.C.'s statue outside the city hall. Then, we ran to a bookstore to find a collection of his stories. Along with that, we bought "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils," by Selma Lagerlöf. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, and we were excited to read her masterful weaving of Swedish folklore and nature. We both devoured the book and are poised to buy "The Further Adventures of Nils" online. Anyway, sorry, this post is about Denmark.

More rain: We decided to brave Tivoli Gardens, the 2nd oldest amusement park in the world (the oldest is also in Denmark). Walt Disney came here and was obviously inspired. Daisy fell asleep in the buggy once inside the park, so we were able to have some tea and crack open our new books.

The park is very pretty and filled with rides and outdoor performance venues. I read that there is ice skating and a Christmas market here in the winter. Because it was a Monday, a quiet day in the city, there were no pantomimes or concerts for us, which was fine. It was fun to teach Daisy what a ride was. The first one involved sitting in a flying treasure chest and soaring through scenes from Anderson fairy tales. The next one was a carousel.

The third and final ride was an airplane. She eventually got the hang of it! I love how her hood makes her look like a serious pilot.

And that was it! Soaking wet and facing our flight home that night, we decided on a coffee and "danish" finale. It's typical that "danishes" are actually called "Vienna bread" here. They were delicious, yum!