June 24, 2023
Copenhagen, Denmark

Technically, I’ve been to Copenhagen before.  I transited through the airport on my way home  from Germany for Christmas in 1981.  About the only thing I recall is the extremely strong coffee on SAS Airlines.  I can now confirm that small bit of Danish culture has not changed at all.  The Danes still like their coffee decidedly on the strong side.  Which is good.

I had the basics of a Scandinavia trip sketched out in 2019, but my deployment to Honduras put it off, then the pandemic just screwed everything all up.  How dare a deadly global pandemic mess with my travel plans!

But I dusted it off this April and began to book it.  About six weeks out. To the most expensive part of Europe. At peak travel season.  This was unwise.  I hesitated about a week before I saw prices start to rise dramatically.  Note to anyone thinking about summer travel to Scandinavia:  Book at least two months early.  Or more.  It’ll save you a bundle.

Copenhagen is truly a lovely city.  The central part where I am staying is all cobblestone streets and nine of ten buildings are at least 100 years old.  Private cars are restricted to local residents, so traffic is not bad and there are many pedestrian-only streets.  It’s summer, and Danes are out in droves.

 

Something I had not realized aout the Danes is their affection for bicycles.  The Dutch have nothing on the Danes when it comes to bicycles.  Everywhere.  A curious aspect of this is that they are only minimally locked.  A simple clamp style lock that prevents the rear wheel from spinning.  Like that would be any protection whatsoever in the U.S.

The Danes are a handsome people.  Perhaps it’s their ruddy complexion, but they seem to look youngish even as they age.  They also speak English.  I mean every last one of them.  And we’re not talking a couple semesters of high school English here, this is complete fluency.  Never any searching for words or difficult to understand accents.  Complete fluency.

I mentioned this a couple of times to locals who just shrugged it off.  They are taught English from first grade on and are exposed to it constantly with tourists, movies, video games, etc.  It makes travel here exceptionally easy, particularly when most signage at places like museums and nearly all menus are in Danish and English.

Because of the somewhat late booking, combined with high-season prices, I ended up staying at the Copenhagen Downtown Hostel.  I mean a private room, of course.  No way would I stay in dorm rooms.

The location is ideal and the room is okay, with en suite toilet and shower.  It is a popular place with a bit of a pub scene in the lobby.  A bit of a young hipster scene, when I am most decidedly neither of those things. The dorm rooms I’ve seen are clean and well-maintained (as is the entire place), but also somewhat appalling in that each bunk bed is enclosed, with a sliding wooden door for privacy – a rather coffin-like appearance.  I suppose that is just to lock up your stuff and that you could sleep with the coffin door open.

It is rather warm and humid during the day, and pleasant at night so long as you have ventilation (few buildings here have air conditioning).  Otherwise it can be quite stuffy, though I suppose coffins would be stuffy in any weather.  I can’t imagine being closed in like that.  My room has a window, but that opens to streetside, which has its own set of issues.

I was somewhat concerned when, at check-in, I saw free earplugs.  I feared that might be for noise from the pub, though I suppose there are always noise issues in dorm rooms.  I had no issues with noise from fellow hostelers or from the pub, but my window opens to a street where there are several restaurants/bars and each night people would sit out and talk until about 3 a.m.  Not loud revelry, but loud enough to keep one awake, and closing the window leads back to humid stuffiness.  Thank God for noise-cancelling headphones.

Tipping really is not expected anywhere in Denmark.  At the hostel, however, they had a means of incentivization.

Longtime readers will recall my frequent complaints about how other cultures handle breakfast.  The Croats just don’t get it at all and what would ever possess the Chinese in Hong Kong to put squid in scrambled eggs???  Simply wrong.  

The Danes will serve a typical smallish continental breakfast, which is not bad, but it’s quite difficult to find any place that opens early than 9 a.m., though I’ll admit you can find coffee and Danish (go figure!) as early as 7:30 if you look around.

My first morning I made the trek to Union Kitchen where I scored a huge mug of typically dense Danish coffee and…a breakfast burrito.  See now, that’s what I’m talking about!  I never did figure a way to get coffee before 7:30, though.  That’s a bit tough for a jet-lagged old geezer who wakes up at 3 a.m.  I finally settled for the not terribly robust (but adequate, convenient and relatively cheap) breakfast at the hostel.  It was humorous to watch some younger hostelers stuffing themselves on huge portions of breakfast, likely intending to save money by skipping lunch.

Breakfast entertainment the second morning at the hostel include a young guy walking in from the street (entryway to the rooms is two doors down from the lobby/lounge/bar/breakfast area) wearing nothing but his chones.  The dorm rooms have shared toilets and showers down the hall and he had apparently gotten locked out of his room.  Not much choice, I guess.  He seemed rather unembarrased and, after receiving a replacement key, he exited to the street I presume to return to his room but, who knows, maybe he headed out sightseeing.  It’s summer after all.

The Kastellet Fortress was kinda cool and is part park, part army barracks, and part memorial to Danish military who have died overseas.  It looked intimidating, so I sent in shock troups to scout the path ahead.  They look so innocent, holding hands and all, but they’re tough as nails!

The fortress is surrounding by a lovely park.

Near the fortress is St Alban’s (Anglican) Church, which I though has curious masonry.

Near St. Albans was a somehwat impressive fountain depicting the Norse godess Gefjon driving oxen.

Each ox has mist coming out his nostrils as well as a stream of water running down his, well, business. Each ox.  Impressive detail.

L. Ron Hubbard, alive and well in Denmark.

Also near the fortress was a very cool museum dedicated to the Danish resistance during WWII. The Nazis sent troups north into Denmark with an ultimatum not to fight or be crushed.  They would allow the government to continue to rule, but it was a fairly clear a lie.  The Danish king capitulated, so the Danes try hard to emphasize the resistance.  Many Danish Jews were smuggled by boat to neutral Sweden.  A well done museum worthy of an hour or so.

The National Museum was massive and interesting, but they seemed to have displayed every one of each type of object in their collection, instead of a small representative sample.  Lots of artifacts going back to prehistoric times.  While worth a visit, not the best presentation one could imagine.

The Copenhagen City Museum was excellent and did a very nice job of presenting the history of the city.  Well worth a couple of hours.

Tivoli Gardens is an amusement park smack in the middle of Copenhagen.  Started in 1848, it is the third oldest amusement park in the world.  I wouldn’t have paid to get in, but it was included in the somewhat pricey Copenhagen Card.  I had heard it was nicer than expected, which was true, though everything inside costs extra.  Except walking around on a pleasant evening, which is what I did.  Very green and park-like.

A 40-minute train ride from Copenhagen was Roskilde, a nice smaller town that was pleasantly low-key.  It is also home to a museum housing the remains of five viking ships, one of which was from Ireland.  It would seem that Dublin was originally a viking settlement.

I should say that Roskilde was quieter than Copenhagen, but for the partying new graduates of gymnasium, which is what they call high school.  And this brings us to the silly hats.

This was graduation week and a long-standing Danish tradition is a personalized graduation hat that looks something like a boat steward might wear circa 1910.  I kept seeing them all over and it took me a while to figure them out.  Later in the week it manifested itself with military style trucks driving around blaring an air horn and filled with exceedingly drunken teens screaming at the top of their lungs.  It honestly got to be a bit obnoxious after a while, but I suppose that’s an old fart’s take.

In Roskilde, I spotted this Carlsberg truck stocking up a pub on the classic Danish beer.  With a hose.  I’ve never seen anything like that.

Last up was the Rosenborg Castle, originally dating from 1606.  Impressive though, but for a few more square feet, not much different than my home.

Okay, I don’t have Renaisance murals on my ceiling.

Now this is my kind of mirror.  Faded enough to show little detail.  Need to get me one of these.

Lastly, a warning to future houseguests in Spokane:  I’m definitely gonna get me a trouser-wetting chair!