A Nordic Weekend in København

We decided to fly to Copenhagen for the weekend based on a couple of important factors: a) Brian had never been there b) I went there once before and really liked it c) the plane tickets were relatively reasonable d) this would likely be our only chance to go to Scandinavia on this trip e) a nice South African woman from my German class volunteered to take Baxter for the weekend for company while her husband was out of town, so we definitely wanted to go somewhere!

After a quick flight (under two hours), we arrived in Copenhagen and took the train to the main train station. From there, we walked to a nearby recommended Indian Restaurant. The food was good, although the vegetarian options were a little slim. Denmark is apparently the buffett capital of the world, with every other restaurant advertising "All You Can Eat!!"

That night in our hotel room, Brian flipped on the TV and we were shocked that almost every channel was in English. We watched a few minutes of mindless, horrible American TV before bed.

The next morning, we hit the Strøget, the main pedestrian street before it got too saturated with the flow of Saturday shoppers.

One of the things I love about Scandinavia is the simple, elegant sense of aesthetics and design. Walking past a sidewalk cafe, I noticed these blue bottles (empty wine bottles I think), each with a single white tulip. It was so simple, but it looked fantastic.

The end of the Strøget opens onto Rådhuspladsen, or city hall square. A large billboard (behind Brian in the photo below) humbly proclaims that Carlsberg is "Probably the Best Beer in Town." I distinctly remember this exact sign from my last visit to Copenhagen because my dad thought it was very amusing.

The first stop of the day was the Glyptotek, an art museum funded mostly through donations of the Carlsberg (beer) family and dedicated largely to sculpture. I really liked this museum. I think it is a cut above your average art museum for several important reasons:

1. It has a large conservatory in the middle with fountains and huge tropical plants that have obviously been flourishing there for the over a century since the museum was built.

   

   

2. It has a new wing that is incredibly modern and the building itself is like artwork.



3. There are several Van Goghs, including a particular nice one called Mountainous Landscape Behind Saint-Paul Hospital.
4. There is a good mix of modern art and old stuff, including mummies.





5. The collection isn't so huge that the good stuff gets diluted.
6. They let you go on the roof, which has a nice view.
   

Stop two for the day was the Rådhus, or City Hall. We first spent about twenty minutes arguing over how this special astronomic clock worked, then climbed up to the tower when we had given up on our attempts to grasp the workings of the gears and pendulum. It was very windy at the top. Actually the whole city is pretty windy...you can see wind-power-generator thingies at the edges of the city in all directions.

The building itself was pretty cool too, with painting on all the walls, a large inner courtyard, and weirdo Danish gargoyles all over the place.

Also in the square was one of the more famous statues of Hans Christian Andersen, the fairtale auteur. There are statues of him all over the city, as he is a virtual demigod in Denmark.

Third stop for the morning was the Dansk Design Center. It was a small, but nifty museum. Their main exhibit was about designs for chairs. In one room you could sit in the chairs, which was fun. Our favorites were a chair made out of a plastic bubble, colored foam rubber, and stuffed alligators.

For lunch, which we were quite hungry for after all the museums, we headed back down the Strøget and then down a side street to Riz Raz, a widely regarded as the best of the city's multitudinous all-you-can-eat restaurants. The food is Mediterranean, here interpreted as everything from Spanish to Greek to Lebanese to Italian and all vegetarian. The quality of the food is amazing. The Middle Eastern specialties, including the tzaziki, hummus, falafel, and tabbouli could have been the best I've ever tasted, which is saying a lot since these are some of my favorite foods. We were in heaven!! This was the best meal we've had in awhile. The quality of the food was on par with that of a well known veggie restaurant in Zurich called Hiltl, which charges $4.00 per 100g for its salad bar....Riz Raz on the other hand, was onlt 59 DKK for the buffet, which is only $10 US! What a deal!

After lunch, we did some window shopping. Well, actually we went into the shops. And, to be totally truthful, I guess I should admit that we bought a few things, so I guess it wasn't really window shopping at all! The best of the shops by far was Illums Bolighus, a store dedicated to Danish, and more generally Scandinavian design. Brian just kept shaking his head saying, "I can't believe they have so much totally cooler stuff over here than we do." The fun was over at 5:00 when the shops closed.

With the shops closed, we decided to go see an IMAX movie on the Vikings at the Tycho Brahe planetarium. After trekking all the way across town, we learned that the Viking movie wasn't playing next for another two and half hours in the middle of dinnertime and that you needed to bring your own earphones to listen to the show. How stupid. Furthermore, the exhibits in the museum part of the planetarium were in Danish only. So, we mentally shook our fists at them and left. We tried to ride the bus back to the main part of town, but despite our general competence at figuring out public transportation, the Danish system baffled us for a number of reasons not interesting enough to recount. So we walked.

We walked all the way to the Museum of Erotica. The museum was somewhat predictable, with historical and cultural displays amd artwork describing sexual practices and attitudes through the ages in different areas of the world. The museum was quite large, with rooms dedicated to specific subjects, like Playboy, prostitution, Marilyn Monroe, S&M, with only the loosest semblance of organization. The most interesting room, I thought, had displays on the sexual histories and habits of famous people, including politicians, movie stars, and writers. There was one room with a warning sign outside saying that no one under 18 could go in and that people might be disturbed by what they say inside. I took that as my cue to skip the room and Brian checked it out for both of us.

For dinner, we went to Los Archos, a Mexican restaurant near the royal botanical gardens. It wasn't exactly authentic, but the chips seemed homemade, and apparently the ablondigas were quite good. Afterward, we took the metro to Christianshaven, a popular hang out for teenagers and counter-culture types. On Pusher Street, it's possible to buy, sell, and use drugs without fear of police intervention because of a tacit agreement that the area is a "free zone". It was sort of weird being there at night, like we were the only ones who didn't know where the big part was or something. We ventured into one place that looked like a bar and saw a menu that said "Heroin, Ecstasy, Cocaine..." and turned around and walked out. We walked into another where we heard drumming and realized that everyone that came in was given some kind of percussion instrument and expected to join in. We decided to just call it a night!