I returned to London on Monday afternoon (March 28), and stayed for just a few hours until I was destined for Copenhagen the next morning. I grossly underestimated how much time it would take me to pack, and consequently swore and kicked multiple inanimate objects in the process. I started off at a leisurely pace and three hours later, I was still reorganizing and stuffing the same items that I was convinced I absolutely needed into my suitcase. I stubbornly denied the validity of the conservation of mass principle, but in the end it won and I was forced to surrender by removing items. In all fairness, it is pretty difficult to pack taking Copenhagen’s, Italy’s, and the Swiss Alps’ weather conditions into account, especially when everything has to fit into a tiny carry-on suitcase that complies with the restrictions of a budget-airline. Sleep was not a priority that night and I finally finished packing about a minute before I had to leave my dorm at 2:45 AM. I traveled to the airport with my friend and travel buddy Ali, passed out on the plane, and woke up to a deceivingly sunny Tuesday morning in Copenhagen. As I stepped off the plane and onto the runway, I was graced by frigged cold air and uninviting bursts of wind. We took the train into central Copenhagen and walked a few blocks to get to our hostel. This would be my first time staying in a youth hostel and I was not eager to find out what bed bug infested future was in store for me. We found the hostel on a street corner, the façade grey and decorated with graffiti.
The appearance certainly seemed to ensure that bed bugs awaited me inside. The inside of the building turned out to be much more clean and attractive than we expected. We dropped off our luggage in a locker, and ventured off to explore the city despite our tremendous lack of sleep and energy. A few blocks from our hostel, we came upon the round tower.
We snapped a few pictures at the top where we got an awesome view of the city. We wandered a little more before stopping at a corner grocery to grab a portable lunch that we could eat at a nearby park. After glancing over the prices of just about every edible item in the store and learning that we could not even afford a bag of lettuce or box of crackers (which required dividing the krone value by 5 - a huge endeavor when one is sleep-deprived) we each settled for a pastry and shared a 6-pack of chocolate milk boxes - the type you would find in a 6-year-old’s packed lunch.
We walked to Churchillparken, a large park, where we enjoyed our danishes (the best I’ve had), and saw St. Alban’s church, some cool fountains and statues, and the little mermaid statue.
We continued wandering and were pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Nyhavn Harbor, a picturesque harbor lined with brightly colored buildings and outdoor cafes. Several large and colorful sailboats were anchored along the harbor’s perimeter. Nyhavn harbor captured what I imagined all of Copenhagen to look like since it is featured in every Copenhagen-related guidebook as well as the majority of Google images resulting from the keyword “Copenhagen.”
I was still carrying around the remaining chocolate milk boxes at that point, and since they would be inevitably included in many of my pictures, we decided to embrace its company and purposefully take pictures of them.
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| Portrait of a chocolate milk box. |
I found these stands selling odd-looking hot dogs along the harbor, and several other places around the city.
Throughout the day, I noticed thousands of bikes on bike racks, against buildings...everywhere. Each person in Copenhagen must claim ownership to more than one bike...there is simply no other explanation for the overpopulation of these vehicles.
One person even had this nifty bike with built in hand warmers.
After all of our wandering, we eventually ended up getting lost. It didn’t help that all of the street names appeared to be nearly identical, with either “bord” or “gard” following a long stream of jumbled letters that lacked a desirable number of vowels (by the standards of the English language, at least). Several wrong turns later, we asked for directions and eventually found our way.
Back at the hostel, I grudgingly started to look over some powerpoints in an attempt to “study” for my exams. A guy staying the hostel walked by and jokingly asked me if I would be doing a presentation for everyone. I was enjoying the opportune distraction from my notes, so we ended up talking for a while about cultural differences, life, and other such topics. He was from Holland and was in Copenhagen for a short trip that gave him credit at his university.
The next day, Ali and I made our way over to Tivoli gardens, an amusement park in Copenhagen. To our immense dismay, the park was closed until April 11.
Instead, we walked over to Freetown Christianna, which Ali had heard was a cool, artsy district of Copenhagen. I later learned that Christianna is actually a partially self-governed district that was founded by hippies in the early 70’s. Simply put, it was founded so that the Danish could have a place to freely smoke marijuana.
We entered the gates and found what seemed to be a massive and well-put-together junkyard. The walls of buildings were covered with grafitti and random junk such as couches, a bathtub, and even a toilet were situated in the yards. Yet, nothing looked out of place - everything just worked. The coolest section of the place unfortunately had giant “no picture” signs painted on its buildings. We realized this could be due to the widespread marijuana usage on the premises. As we were observing the art everywhere around us (it was really like a museum) I noticed a dog slowly walk by me with squinted, bloodshot eyes and another dog sprawled out on the ground in a very lazy and relaxed state. Even canines were enjoying the free-spirited nature of the place.
The entrance.
We entered a café within Christianna that had signs hung everywhere requesting that customers not smoke marijuana within the building - but to keep such business outside. Ali got a hot chocolate at the cafe, which she reported was surprisingly delicious. We sat outside the café for a while as the people around us were rolling joints and gathered in groups surrounded by clouds of smoke. I questioned the placement of an elementary school literally one block down the street, finding the presence of 10-year-old children around Freetown to be a little disconcerting.
Later that day we searched for a cheap place to eat for dinner, and settled for the cheapest we could find - an American buffet that was priced at the equivalent of 16 dollars. Ali and I each went up for seconds, thirds, and fourths, living up to the obese American stereotype for all the locals to observe. The woman working at the restaurant gave us dirty looks each time we got more food and even took my plate away at one point to subtly suggest that I stop eating everything. But I was determined to get my money’s worth and simply found a new plate.
We then went to the Viking pub on Stroget street (a popular shopping street in Copenhagen), where we saw a pretty talented musician playing lots of good classics including “Maggie May” “Wild World,” “Ring of Fire,” “Here Comes the Sun”…and even “Galway Girl” which I heard playing in every pub in Ireland.
When we returned to our hostel, we experienced what may be considered one of several potential worst-case scenarios when staying in a hostel. Ali attempted to open the door to our room when an old, white-haired man with a ponytail peered through the partial opening, grabbed the door, and closed it in our faces. Startled by this, Ali and I stepped back and started discussing why the man was so old and what reason he had to think we were intruding. We waited another moment before we tried again. We successfully entered the room and saw the man sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. He was probably in his late 60’s, and was definitely an unusual and unwarranted sight in a youth hostel. I left the room to brush my teeth, and ran into the guy from Holland in the bathroom. We ended up talking for perhaps 15 minutes before I entered my hostel dorm room again. By that point, the lights in the room had been shut off and everybody in the room was sleeping. As my eyes adjusted to the low light conditions, I began to notice a dark figure in my periphery. I looked over and saw the old man standing at the foot of the bunk bed where Ali and I had slept during previous nights. I walked closer to my bed, and as my pupils continued to dilate, I realized that the old man was not wearing a shirt or pants - and was likely completely naked. I did not want to look down at the critical area to confirm this (Ali thought he may have had a speedo on) as the absence of a shirt or pants on such an old man was reason enough for me to avert my eyes immediately. Ali, who had been in her top bunk pretending to sleep, turned towards me before I got into my bed. We tried to introduce a topic to avoid confronting the reality of a naked old man standing at the food of our bunk bed, and the best we could think of was a discussion of our wake-up time for the next morning. Pretending that everything was normal, we set our alarms and tried to fall asleep. The old man, who had been stationary in the same location that entire time, crawled up to the top bunk of the bunk bed parallel to our bunk bed. I turned around in my bed to face the wall, and did not turn back around for the remainder of the night. The man was gone by the morning. That day, Ali and I continued to question why the old man was staying in a youth hostel. We recalled that the man did not have any luggage - and apparently no pajamas. We hypothesized that he was homeless and sneakily entered the hostel at night for a place to sleep. Alas, he remains a mystery and he will forever stay in our minds as the random naked old man that stayed in our hostel room.
The next day, we took a train into Helsingor to visit Kronborg Castle, which Shakespeare based Hamlet’s castle on. We were given a tour of the Casemates and the royal apartments.
The castle is at the very tip of Denmark so we could see Sweden from the shore.
It was our final day in Denmark, and by that point we had spent more money than we would have liked (and on very little) so we stopped by a 7-eleven and had cinnamon rolls for dinner that night. I could hardly complain.
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