While I was trying to avoid using the most cliché of quotes for the title, nothing else quite fit... And if you're going to Denmark, how can you not quote Hamlet? But this here is the furtherest extent of any Hamlet reference, as once in Kobenhavn (Copenhagen) there really wasn't any acknowledgment of the story... nor was there any real reference to Vikings except in souvenir shops and a handful of restaurants. And now without further ado, let us begin with our opening scene…
On the train to Denmark
It is official, one of the few points in time where I irrationally lose my temper, and not in the traditional passive aggressive manners is when I am on a train and have to change seats… Now this isn’t necessarily b/c I’m irrational, its more that no one ever approaches these things in a calm manner… no one is ever like, oh, I’m sorry I have this seat reserved. No people, will stand there and stare at you, and you’ll ask if the seat is reserved b/c of course everything is written in Danish… not even German, so you don’t really know, and the one other person you’ve met is another girl traveling alone, and she’s looking to you for the German translation of things… and the closest you can guess is that anything that has the word that resembles “reservation” must be reserved. Needless to say, it was a Danish couple who didn’t speak English and then when finally pulling out their ticket only for me to see they had every seat reserved, except the one I was in, so there was no reason for them to be yelling at me in the first place, makes me disgruntled. The little old German lady behind them however, did have my seat, but was fairly sweet about it. Meanwhile, the gentleman beside us who understood everything going only, finally chimed in after us amusing everyone and did some translating.
The girl I met’s name was Macarina from Chile, and we became fast friends for our 5 hour trip to Denmark (or a single serving friend if you will). About half way through the trip, the train… the whole train… drove onto a boat and we ferried across the Baltic… which is black… a giant black ocean… and the top of Germany and all of Denmark just looks flat and green against the black ocean with giant white pinwheels lining the coasts of both countries (apparently they are big into wind energy)
Friday Night
Fresh off the train in Kobenhavn, the first thing you run into is the Tivoli Amusement Park in the center of town. After wandering around aimlessly on the streets you quickly find an ATM, then eventually head back to the train station to find a city map (the only reason you left the train station to begin with was that you were following signs to the tourist information only to find it was now an empty office)
Immediately upon getting to the hostel, I befriended Jane, the Aussie, who had just finished up teaching in London and was now backpacking and we opted to do dinner together on Stroget… the longest pedestrian thoroughfare in the world… holy shoppers heaven… 3, yes I said 3, women’s H&Ms all with different clothes and sales
Jane was pretty awesome and caught me up on some basic danish history and monarch gossip. The danish monarchy is the oldest in europe, and it has its ties to more or less every royal family (as they all tend to). However, in recent years, they have been extending outside of royalty to continue on with the line. The crown prince is married to an Aussie that he met in a bar during the Australian Olympics. His brother is married to a French woman, and previously a woman from Hong Kong... all more or less common people.
The mystery of great crack solved!
This section is really just for Dana, Amanda and Nikki... so, apparently "Great Crack" means something along the lines of "awesome" or "really cool"... a film maker from Ireland made a movie kind of about it... called "The Crack"... ok, so the mystery isn't quite solved, just kind of explained... great crack... heehee
Saturday Day
Rather than write everything let me just say go to the pictures to see everything I saw, and I’ll just go through some key points…
Denmark is the home of Hans Christian Anderson who wrote such memorable fables such as the little mermaid… the real one where she not only lost her voice when she became human it also felt as though she walked on swords, and the only way to stay human was to kill the prince, which she opted not to do, and instead died and turned into sea foam. At the far end of town there is a statue dedicated to the little mermaid, which is the first thing I went and saw. I also saw a well preserved fort (Kastellet) (with a windmill), a marble church with the 3rd largest dome in Europe (which I was thrown out of for a wedding), One of 3 palaces, the botanical gardens, Stroget again, and back to the hostel for some regrouping.
Street Performers
Now there were all sorts of street performers out… which I love… I love everything from watching artists paint, to listening to live music, to watching magicians… and Stroget has them all. Of particular note were the Native American performers and well… the Danish monks… blonde Danish monks. But the most memorable of all was a comedic magician, who wasn’t particularly good… talked too much, drew things out a lot… kind of like odd family guy sketches… but well, he decided to single me out to be his “sexy lady assistant”… Being me, I was half mortified to have to stand in front of a less than smiling audience, and probably change a few hundred shades of red. And he kept telling me I’d have to do a “sexy” walk around, which he proceeded to demonstrate… there really aren’t the right words to describe this, but I don’t think he realized that when challenged and told to do something, despite mortification, I’ll follow through, and strut and prance… in fact, those of you that know me best probably realize that I’m very good at this kind of “acting”… and then he gave me fire… which I had to hold, in the air for about 10 minutes, and every time I brought my arm down, he’d have me bring it up again, and told me stand sexy by sticking my chest out (I’m just gonna point out, “sexy” is hard to do when you’re in an oversized sweatshirt—the sweatshirt is another story all together that isn’t nearly as entertaining)… So at the end he asked for a kiss on the cheek… and like all cheeky Europeans, he turned his head and got me on the lips… *note—how many shades of red do you really think I can change??--- and then proceeded to profess his love for me… Jane happened to be walking by at the time, she’s going to send pictures once she gets back home.
Saturday Night
Saturday night was spent at Tivoli… not riding rides… Let me tell you… Kopenhavn is super ridiculously expensive… meals… anywhere, including the hostel cost about $20, even breakfast, wanting to see things cost, even w/ student discounts… and for Tivoli, they charge for a ticket AND you have to then pay for ride tickets too! Now Tivoli has all the best rides of say Bush Gardens strategically organized to take up a minimal amount of space… with room for multiple stages shows and beer gardens… The lack of rides wasn’t all that bad however, as I got to spend 2 hours listening to big band jazz music… which was pretty awesome… most songs were Sinatra songs, or others I know all the words to, and apparently it’s a big deal for jazz/big band dancers, as the entire dance floor was full of professional level dancers, just there having fun… (all this has done is reemphasized my desire to learn jazz/swing dancing next year if anyone else is interested in joining me)… the jazz show was followed up but a pretty awesome light show…
Sunday
Sunday was a marathon day of palace touring... if there was a palace, I toured it... the only problem being that there's a lot of waiting in this process. First, nothing opens until 10... and then you find out that you can only take an actual tour... so you have to wait around for an english tour to even go in the main palace (Christ....), while at the same time trying to time things right to catch the changing of the guard (which i did catch), and making sure you make it to your train on time (which i did, w/ time to spare b/c the train schedule changed)... Oh, and it was raining... a lot, and so I learned my umbrella is rusting and in fact has a couple of holes in it... which in turn kind of defeat the purpose of having an umbrella... But it was all pretty cool... I love wandering palaces and getting dosed with history... I even got to see piles of rocks (i'm not being sarcastic here, a side effect of wanting to be an archaeologist for most of my life is that I tend to find nothing better than life than the opportunity to check out a giant pile of old rocks). It seems that the main castle had been rebuilt several times due to wars, fires, and the general need to spruce things up over the last 900 years.
The ride home was more ore less uneventful, though after lots of seat changing, I ended up sitting w/ a danish family who had two very young very loud but cute kids, who kept trying to talk to me... seeing as i'm pretty good with non verbal entertainment of children, and in order to get them to well... we'll just say quiet down a bit, i taught them how to play penny soccer... I think we played for about an hour... I was thanked later by other people on the train.
Now as for pictures... there's a video of clips of video I took during the trip, along with the regular slide show of pics...
