July 23, 2016 – Train from Copenhagen to Oslo.
I got a really good vibe from Copenhagen. It’s a big city that has a long and grand history, yet also boasts new cutting edge design and innovation – a mix of the old and the new. Copenhagen is surrounded by water through a canal system. Some parts are narrow and more reminiscent of Amsterdam, while a large canal bisects the city. Immediately you notice the bikes, literally everywhere and so many more than I’ve seen before. Bike lanes are more like bike streets, with turning lanes. Some people wear helmets, most don’t. Some wear those new neck brace things that function like airbags to protect your head if you crash. The streets are generally wider and the buildings are larger than in Stockholm.
After a difficult train ride that left me pretty congested (throat feeling better, though), I resolved to take it easy for the rest of the day. At the hostel’s recommendation, I walked to find some cheap food through the “red light district” behind the train station, which was just a normal area with some strip clubs. It was early and didn’t feel sketchy at all. I got cash at an ATM with no fees, just a small international fee from my bank. This seems like the best bet to find cash; though I also have a credit card with no international fees that I’ve been using.
Later I walked across a bridge right by the hostel to Islands Brygge, an area that was on my list to explore. This was where I fell in love with Copenhagen. About 15 years ago the community reclaimed a post-industrial wasteland on the waterfront and redesigned it into a public park. It was the perfect place to stroll around as the sun set, with hundreds of people picnicking and drinking on the grass (there are open container laws in Denmark), people sitting on the edge of the water and some jumping in, street musicians, a basketball court, skatepark, and playground. Some kids were swimming in the Harbor Bath, one of 3 new free swimming areas in the city that are part of the canal, sectioned off with platforms you can jump off. The area wasn’t overdone or touristy. Everyone seemed just chill and happy. There were all ages but mostly young adults. It looked in parts like a college campus with the pretty old buildings in the background. It was a perfect introduction to the city.
The next morning I got a real introduction to Copenhagen with a Free Walking Tour. This one lasted about 3 hours and was really great. Our guide Simon was British and came to Denmark for a Masters’ degree. All higher education is free for EU residents, so he was pretty bummed about Brexit. We learned some basics of the weird Danish language and its vowels, some history lessons like the multiple fires that destroyed most of the city, and saw lots of old buildings. We learned about Denmark’s wonderful social policies, similar in the other Scandinavian countries, like 1 year of paid parental leave, heavily subsidized childcare, free education and university, and free healthcare. And of course it works and contributes to the Danes being some of the happiest people in the world. Sometimes it feels like Americans have been massively tricking themselves for centuries into the idea that taxes are inherently evil.
The Nyhavn area, translated to new harbor, was a touristy section that was beautiful, with colorful buildings lining a narrow canal and lots of boats docked there.
We saw the Royal Palace and the changing of the guard ceremony. The guards seem to stand still with puffy hats like in England, but if you get too close to them they will shove you and shout. The royal family is pretty bad ass and well-liked in Copenhagen. They open the plaza in front of their home/palace as a public street, and often walk or bike around the city to pick up the kids/grandkids from school or walk the dog. The Queen, Margrethe II, is beloved. She has many skills and hobbies including speaking 5 languages (she is said to have helped translate Lord of the Rings into Danish), painting (which she displays in shows under a pseudonym), and costume design, which she contributes to local performances – I saw her designs in a ballet the next night and they were great! Her husband is French and despite living in Denmark for 40 years does not speak great Danish, so he is not so well-liked. Their son, the prince, married an Australian woman who he met through his job at the IOC when the Olympics were in Sydney. They met at a bar. She very quickly learned the Danish language and made her father-in-law look even worse.
At another palace, one that is used as offices for Parliament and the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court, a plaza in front is open for public demonstrations or protest, including a small display we saw opposing the war in Syria. There was also a very disturbing statue called “Unbearable,” which was a call to action on climate change by showing a polar bear impaled by an oil pipe bent in the shape of a graph of global CO2 emissions over time.
Simon shared a great story about Copenhagen during World War Two. There were about 8,500 Danish Jews living in the city then, and Denmark had somewhat hesitantly been occupied by the Nazis (by not resisting they were permitted to keep their own government in place). One night, a Nazi drunkenly blabbed a plan to round up all the Jews in 3 days and ship them to a camp in another country. The Danes quickly spread the word and when the round up came, less than 500 Jews could be found. Because of a relationship with the Danish king, the Jews were shipped to a less-harsh work camp. Eventually, at the king’s pressure most of these people were released to the Red Cross. The 8,000 others in hiding were smuggled over to Sweden, which was neutral in the war, where they stayed comfortably for a few years until the war ended. When they returned, they easily resumed their normal lives as their friends had taken care of their homes and businesses while they were gone. In the end 43 Danish Jews died in the Holocaust.
Simon taught us a word used in Denmark to describe a feeling of being happy, cozy, and comfortable – which I instantly thought described what I felt at Islands Brygge: Hygge (pronounced Hooga). It’s a great thing for a city to be known for.
At the end of the tour I joined 2 other solo travelers, from Ireland and Hong Kong, and we walked together to see The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen’s most famous and most underwhelming tourist attraction. It was a very pretty statue but small. I walked around a little more and saw a big fountain and part of a former fortress. Along the way I decided I wanted to do another Free Walking Tour that afternoon, so I hustled to make a canal tour that I had pre-booked. This was alright and a little too touristy (think the stereotype of Japanese tourists taking pictures of everything plus a crying baby and people talking over the guide), but it was nice to see the city from the water. I learned that the new opera house building is used to host an international cliff diving competition, where people jump off the roof into the harbor. It was extremely sunny and I was dressed in full tourist, backpack and cap and all.
I joined the “alternative” walking tour of an area called Christianshavn, a nice area with a Canadian guide named Ben. We saw some pretty churches and streets, but the highlight of this tour was walking through Christiania. I’d read a little about this but it was hard to conceive without being there, and I still have a lot of questions. Basically, it’s a section of the city that a bunch of hippies and anarchists occupied several decades ago and seceded from the city and the country. They formed their own collectivist society and called it a “free town.” Today about 850 people live there and they have some businesses and cafes; they make special bikes where you can store your supplies or children, sell vegan food and cheap beer, and have organized big-name concerts. They don’t adhere to building codes or planning so there are things like a house made out of window frames and a rocket ship house. But really what they are known for is the drugs. People openly sell and smoke pot here, which draws lots of visitors. Despite the free town concept, and despite the fact that the citizens now own the land, they are still technically part of the city. So the police could come in at any time and raid them. But they don’t. It was originally looked at as an experiment to see what would happen. At first there were some problems with hard drugs like heroin in the community. The community asked the police to come in and take the hard drugs, but instead they raided the town and took only the soft drugs. So, no longer trusting the police, the town gave the heroin users an ultimatum to leave and never return or go to rehab and be welcomed back. And that worked.
You aren’t allowed to take pictures inside because pot is illegal in Copenhagen, and some of the dealers were wearing scarves covering their faces just in case. They take this really seriously: once they caught a journalist trying to sneak cell phone pictures and they took his clothes and deleted the pictures and kicked him out onto the public street. Or so the legend goes. For similar reasons our tour officially didn’t go through there – we had to kind of sneak through and hide that we were a tour group. I asked a lot of questions at the end about city services versus self-maintenance. They have some sort of collective money pooling for residents but can also call the fire department if they need it.
I joined another solo traveler named Stephanie from Switzerland after the tour and went to find some food together. We were both too chicken to go back into Christiania (though it definitely would have been fine) so we walked to this old warehouse called Paper Island that had food booths from all over the world. We also got Margaritas and took a long walk back toward our hostels with them. We sat with our feet in the harbor at one point and it really felt like a nice vacation then. It was good to have people to talk to substantively this day. While I like traveling solo, sometimes long stretches without talking can be hard.
The next day was slightly less jam-packed and adventurous, I promise! My outlet adaptor broke when I got to Copenhagen so I walked to a mall to buy a new one. It was a nice big mall with a fancy directory that gives you a map of walking directions to the store you want to go to. I enjoyed some Starbucks here and walked back. I took another long walk to see some areas I saw the day before and buy some souvenirs and gifts. I went down Strøget, the “walking street,” which was similar to areas in Stockholm but since it was midday they seemed more fun and more crowded. I took a recommendation to go in a store called Tiger to get small Danish items for cheap, and saw the Lego store – one of 3 major corporations based in Copenhagen (also Carlsberg beer, which revolutionized the concept of mass producing beer that was the same and not just ‘throw it in a barrel and see what comes out’, and a shipping company that is no longer active).
After a nap I went to Tivoli – the world’s second oldest amusement park and “pleasure garden” located near my hostel. I got there at 3:30 and as an adult there by myself it was way too much time, but it was still nice. I walked around a lot and saw some beautiful gardens, got ice cream and later a beer, and went on a ride of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales sort of like It’s A Small World in Disney World. At night the younger kids mostly leave and they have performances. I saw 2 ballets from sitting on a grassy field – one more modern and artsy, and the second a version of Cinderella (with costumes designed by the queen) that I just loved – it was mostly classical ballet but with funky music and lots of color and expression. I realized I hadn’t seen live dance in a really long time and resolved to reconnect with that part of my life a little bit. Later that night at 10pm there was a legit concert from a Danish artist called Oh Land that had a #5 album on the Danish charts. Another night they were having Haim, but otherwise I didn’t know the bands. Even later they do a light show and fireworks and are open til midnight. There are also lots of bars and food. I left around 9:30.
I easily made it to the train station the next morning for my 12+ hour journey to Oslo, Norway, via 2 stops in Goteborg and Karlstad in Sweden, the latter where I will be for nearly 3 hours. The first train was a high-speed train (no compartments this time, though I was sitting backwards). I didn’t feel like we were moving that abnormally fast but I did get a little dizzy whenever I stared out the window. The second train is more normal, and I’ll be switching to another high-speed train later.
I didn’t take care of myself well during the train ride to Copenhagen, so I’m resolved to do better today, especially because my cold seems to be subsiding but there’s still a bit of a cough and congestion that I don’t want to get worse. I had a great make-your-own-salad in Goteborg (the main veggie option in this region seems to be falafel, not tofu, which is just wonderful), and I’m loaded up on water and cough drops. I’m trying to get past my resistance to paying to use the bathroom. Even though I know this is done in Europe, I’m still angry about it and will often refuse and hold it, on principle. Back in Malmö I just held it rather than pay $1. That has to be way more than the cost of maintenance, with that many people! Anyway, on to Norway! Wow-this is the halfway point!!
travels.of.tara 