Officially the happiest place on earth
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2007
1
12
13
Trip End
Jul 23, 2007
Copenhagen, Denmark
Monday, July 16, 2007
The train from Malmo where our night train arrived to Copenhagen highlighted a few things for me. The first was it is very cool to take a train over a huge stretch of sea. The second was it was finally sunny. So we arrived in the city took a bunk in the first hostel we located, and then set off to discover if the cliches are true. Cliche one - It is expensive here... by British standards. Think about that. Cliche two - It is clean, in a lot of ways: little traffic, everyone cycles, no litter, no jaywalking (we were the exception there), pristine water, amazing modernist architecture both modern and not. Cliche 3 - Scandinavian people are incredibly beautiful.
We spent most of the first day wandering round exploring all the sights as usual. Visited lots of fountains, saw the little mermaid statue, walked through an old fort, went to the Nationalmuseet, where they had a really intriguing ethonographic exhibition. We generally soaked up the atmoshere of the place wandering slowly down streets, supposedly following tours we picked up from a guidelet we found, but veering where we wanted. It was a good way to fill a day, but we decided against filling our night due to the high pricetag that would ensue.
Day two of Copenhagen, involved a tour of the island area opposite the main city centre, wandering down warehouse-cum-apartment bordered canals, we stopped at a cafe where we sat for a while just absorbing the place. Then we entered Christiania, an ex military freetown, that's been taken over by hippies. It's very pyschedelic and reminds me a lot of Nimbim in Australia, by which I mean everyone was smoking pot. It had a nice relaxed vibe to it though, unsurprisingly, but we couldn't take any photos to show you guys as they didn't want photos to be taken. We also a Carlsberg here, and everyone will be glad to know that it tastes just as bad as in Britain, but it is more expensive.
We took a semi night train to Hamburg, where we arrived at 1 and went out to a bar until 3, making it quite possibly the strangest timed two hour drinking session I have ever had. And now we are in a military base just outside Monchengladbach.
