Kopenhagen ist weit weg!

Copenhagen

 What a short and wonderful work week! Thursday was Corpus Christi Day, a regional German holiday so Ryan had off of work and we decided to take a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark and Lund, Sweden.

We left Thursday morning at 7:30 am to drive North 1,138 km (707 miles) to Copenhagen. Although we made great time the first four hours, the autobahn was under major construction the rest of the way. The highway would have an unlimited speed limit for just long enough to cruise up to 170 km/h and then there would be signs for construction and it would drop from 100 km/h to 80 km/h to 60 km/h and the process would repeat. We drove North through Hamburg and across the border to Denmark before heading East across the Great-Belt Bridge (that cost 235 DKK or 31 Euros to cross). It was just after 7:00 pm when he arrived at our hotel South of Copenhagen.

We checked in to our dorm-size room with a bed, desk, and bathroom in a hotel that used to be a commune before heading out for dinner. I found reviews for a price-friendly restaurant with great beers on a main street downtown so we figured out the train system and took the train 2 stops or 10 minutes to the central station and then began the short walk to the restaurant. I noticed the overwhelming amount of youth out on the streets for a Thursday night by the station right away and figured the city had a large young population and maybe they had a public holiday Friday. As we walked down the street with restaurants, we noticed the extent of drunk people, garbage, food and beer, and foul smell of urine. We walked right into a large music festival Distortion! For four days a row per year, there is a free street music festival that moves to a different street daily. There were at least four stages constructed on the street with DJ’s, rappers, and performers, probably ten beer booths in addition to the restaurant booths and thousands of young people. The sound was absolutely deafening and it was very difficult to walk down the street but I thought it was awesome. The free music on the streets went until 10 pm and then the after-party begin around the city.

**Side note - there were these plastic urinals on the streets for 3 men to stand around right there and pee. There were still lines for these things though so men ended up urinating all along buildings, fences, and bushes anyway.

We ended up going in to the restaurant, Cafe Dyrehaven and grabbing a beer to carry out with us while we walked back to a quieter area. We had pale ales that we awesome and we were able to drink them out in public. Our burgers were amazing at The Burger Corner! and were accompanied by potato wedges and local draft beers. My burger had caramelized onions, goat cheese, and a mango chutney. We finished off the night at the bar next store with the popular Somersby Cider from a can.

Friday we spent the day in downtown Copenhagen beginning with a three hour free walking tour with Copenhagen Free Walking Tours. Here is some fun information about Copenhagen that I noticed as we walked or learned from the guide:

-The Danish men and women are tall and good looking! Many are blonde and there seems to be more women than men here.

-The Danish sense of fashion must be stuck in the 80’s and 90’s. Everyone wears cut-off jean shorts, parachute pants, wife-beater tanks, leather jackets, mom pants, shorts with black tights underneath, belly shirts, jumpers, jean jackets…

-There is a popular word in Danish that sounds like “hoo-glie” that is not translatable to English. It means something similar to “comfortable” or “cozy” but is used to describe situations, people, clothing, environments, buildings, etc.

-The Danish language sounds similar to German but they just do not pronounce a lot of letters. For example "Magstraede" would be pronounced “Ma-stl”.

-The city of Copenhagen was been almost completely destroyed by two major fires. There is nothing left of the old Medieval city.

-Legos were invented in Denmark.

-The Danish Royal Palace is actually comprised of four palace buildings connected by underground tunnels. The guards wear large bear hats in the winter and change to small hats for the summer when the temperature has reached over 25 degrees C. The day that we visited Copenhagen was the first day that they wore the summer hats.

-Denmark is gorgeous when the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the temperature is maybe 80 degrees F.

-Most of Denmark is under construction to build the underground Metro…

-Denmark is home to both the first and second oldest amusement parks in the world. The second oldest is the Tivoli Gardens.

-The Danish love Hans Christian Anderson and Carl Jacobson who donated the Little Mermaid statue to the city of Copenhagen. Here is the actual story by Anderson.

-The DKK are inflated and everything is very expensive in Copenhagen. While we were here, the exchange rate was 7 DKK = 1 Euro. A beer cost between 20 and 30 DKK, a hotdog was 25 DKK, a burger was 79 DKK, a 10 minute train ride was 36 DKK and a cheap hotel was 645 DKK/night. 

We tried to eat cost effective and we avoided shopping.

After the tour we made the mistake of thinking that our feet could handle more walking so we went up to the Little Mermaid, down the main shopping street, over to the other side of town to try and find dinner, and then across the bridge to Christianhavn to continue our quest for dinner. We ended up grabbing sandwiches and a baked treat from a bakery there and eating on the canal with the locals. Then we dragged our swollen feet back to the center of town for beers at a bar with craft beer. We enjoyed two Belgium beers each at the first beer bar and brasserie in Copenhagen before taking the train back to our station.

Once back we stopped at the Netto, Danish discount store and found a great selection of local beers and licorice, the candy that seems to be a local favorite. If I were to come back to visit Copenhagen, I would definitely rent a bike for the day to bike around the city, go to the Viking museum, and eat Smorrebrod!