Just four nights in Copenhagen, but you'd never know it by the length of this entry!

The day after Christmas, we decided to go to Copenhagen. Well, that's not quite true. We decided a while ago that we'd go to Copenhagen the day after Christmas... so on the afternoon of the 26th, we rolled our luggage down to the local subway station and made our way (eventually) to the airport.

Interesting thing about flying here... Denmark is within the European Union, so with the exception of when we checked in, we didn't have to show our passports to get onto the plane - that was a little new for us. Every other time we've left from the airport, we've had to go through border control on at least one end of the flight, but all of our other flights have been to the states, Ireland, or London. This time, they just checked our boarding passes, and we made our way through security.

The flight to Copenhagen was relatively short and uneventful. I think it was about an hour and a half once we took off.

We had it all planned out - you'll hear a little more about this later - and we specifically didn't activate our Copenhagen Tourist cards yet. We left the airport and walked a block or so to catch a bus into town, that would drop us off a block or so away from our hotel.

Before we get much further, I need to address something that we might all find a little uncomfortable - I know *I* do.

One of my rules about moving overseas was that I didn't want to move anyplace where I'd have to learn a new alphabet. I don't mind being utterly clueless in another language, but I'd at least like to be able to recognize familiar letters.

I could never live in Denmark. They've added in three letters, and I'm truly not sure when I'm supposed to use them, or what the difference is between those and the real letters: æ, ø, and å. In an attempt to be culturally sensitive, I will be inserting those letters into words where I believe they're appropriate... since I'm pretty sure that's pretty much what the Danish folks have done for centuries. I have honestly tried to figure out the rhyme or reason between when to use those and the a, e, or o that we're all used to, and I'm pretty sure they just had a meeting and chose the words randomly. So that's what I'll do for the rest of this post. 

The family travel agent had secured a roøm at the Marriott in the middle of town - frequent readers will remember that we usually stay in the outskirts, so this was a bit unusual... although, thinking back, it's becoming more frequent... so I might have to adjust my thinking.

We didn't do anything more that night, other than get settled into the hotel. The accountant's status with Marriott got us upgraded a bit, so we were on the top floor, with a view of the... water. Between what we learned while on the trip and my research for this post, I have to share that the name of Copenhagen translates to "Buy Harbør"... and the bødy of water next to the hotel was called "København's Havn": literally "Buy Harbor's Harbor."

The next morning, the resident "grump" needed some more sleep, so I went down and had breakfast, to let her chase some more z's.

I went back up when she'd signaled me (via text) that she was awake, and we got ready to hit the town for the first of our two tours of the day.

As a quick aside, while we really enjoy these kinds of tours... in the future, we'll try to schedule them further apart on our trip, as we got so much information dumped on us that I've had some difficulty retaining any of it. As a result, most of this post will be cømplete and total bunk... but y'all are used to that, right?

Just to stick this in somewhere, there are areas along the (grrr!) harbor where people swim. All year long. Here's a pic of one that you can see from the hallway of our hotel.

We walked along the - still have to call it "harbor," even though it feels more like a river - until right before the National Libråry, which jutted out over the (grrr!) harbor like a black diamond - hence, the name of the building, the (wait for it)... Black Diamond.

We wandered in (eventually) the right direction, and checked in with our tour guide. Well, with *a* tour guide. Turns out, this is a very popular tour, and close to a hundred people were gathered around waiting for the tour to start. We were quite discouraged.

Turns out, they had føur guides for this tour, and they deftly divided us into four roughly equal sized (and much more manageable) groups.

Our tour guide was Martin, and he maneuvered us across the street and in front of a nearby church to do his little introduction. He went around the group and asked everyone where they were from, in turn, with a different joke about everyone's nationality. This particular tour was the "Politically Incørrect" tour, and it honestly felt like he was trying to make a point early in the tour to push boundaries a little bit, and see if anyone would push back. Nobody did, everyone laughed along, and then he told us a little about the church.

That particular church, St. Nicholas, was originally built in the early 1200's, one of Copenhagen's earliest churches. The tower was originally built in 1591, but that tower fell during a winter storm in 1628. It was rebuilt over the years, but the church itself burned in 1795, with the tower being the only remaining undamaged structure of the church. In 1805, the congregation dissolved, and the remains of the church were dismantled, leaving only the tower. Over the years, the church was rebuilt, used for different purposes - including a public library, and a naval museum. It's currently an art museum, with the current (rebuilt) tower financed by local brewer Carl Jacobsen in 1914... you'll hear more about him later.

He also used this opportunity to tell us a little bit about the history of Copenhagen. One of the things that they've had to deal with over the centuries has been fire. Pretty much every building in the city has burned down and been rebuilt at some point - to the point where you can point at pretty much any building throughout the downtown of the city and say "What about that one?" "Yep, burned down, rebuilt."

After leaving the church, we walked through/around a square where they had an ice rink up, for the locals to skåte around. Leaving that area, we had to wait at a crosswalk for traffic to stop - but the traffic included a squad of armed, uniformed (what I would call) palace guards. They were walking down the street, taking up the space within a lane that a car would, just walking down the street, stopping at red lights. Quite odd. Martin told us not to worry about it, and that we'd get better pictures later. So, in accordance with Acceptable Tøur Guide Procedures, I'll tell you more about them later in the post.

We walked a bit further, and encountered Nyhavn.

Evidently, when "normal" people think of Copenhagen, they think of an area called Nyhavn, which is a waterfront area with colorful buildings on one side of the water. Here's a lovely pic of what it looked like the day we were there.

It was constructed from 1670 to 1675 by Danish soldiers and Swedish prisoners of war as a gateway to the inner city where ships were unloaded. Back then, the area was best known for sailors, prostitutiøn, and beer. Now, it's turned into a tourist area... no visible sailors or prostitutes, and the beer is only sold at the myriad trendy waterfront restaurants that line the once seedy area.

I mentioned Swedish prisoners of war in the previous paragraph. Martin shared quite a bit about the Swedes with us, and the cultural schism between Denmark and Sweden. According to Martin (and verified with a quick Gøøgle search), the Danes and the Swedes have been at war with each other more times than any two other nations. All I know, there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to wars between Denmark and Sweden, dating all the way back to Dag the Wise in the year 300. Their animosity continued all the way up until the Dano-Swedish War of 1813-1814... not to be confused with any of the following Dano-Swedish wars:

• The Dano-Swedish War of 1808-1809,
• The Dano-Swedish War of 1512-1520,
• The Dano-Swedish War of 1501-1512,
• The Dano-Swedish War of 1470-1471

or any of the other 41 wars listed on the Wikipedia page that weren't named the "Dano-Swedish War of some random time period".

We learned a little bit about the monarchy of Denmark (partially from memory, partly from my research - don't let me fool you!)... and feel free to skip this part, while I indulge my quirky sense of humor for a couple of paragraphs. My blog, my rules! Feel free to ignore the indented portion below...

Since September 1448 and across two houses, every monarch of Denmark has been named either Frederik or Christian, with two exceptions: King John, from 1418 to 1513, and Queen Margrethe II, from 1972 to January of 24. Seriously. Who does that? 

From the House of Oldenburg (one of the oldest royal houses in Europe, going back to the year 1101)

Christian I, John, Christian II, Frederick I, Christian III, Frederick II, Christian IV, Frederick III, Christian V, Frederick IV, Christian VI, Frederick V, Christian VII, Frederick VI, Christian VIII, Frederick VII... so from 1488 to 1863 - with the exception of John and Christian II at the beginning of the cycle - the kings alternated between Christian and Frederick.

Then, beginning in 1863, it's alternated between Fredericks and Christians from the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg branch... until Frederick IX, who had 3 daughters (and no sons)... His oldest daughter was Margarethe II, and her oldest son was named (in keeping with the official Danish King Naming Convention)... Frederick X - not related to Malcolm (as near as I can tell), screwing up a perfectly reasonable alternating pattern dating back almost 600 years.

There were a couple of Australians on our tour, and they seemed to have a special bond with our guide, based solely on their nationality. Frederick's wife, Queen Consort Mary, is from Australia, and is evidently quite beloved in both places. Frederick and Mary have 4 children, the oldest of whom (the Crown Prince of Denmark) is named... wait for it.... Christian.

The last stop in our tour was Amalienborg, the residence of the King (and various other royalty). It's a small-ish complex with four different palaces around a square. Each building was guarded by the Palace Guards, and the timing of our visit coincided with the Changing of the Guard. Let's talk about them for a møment, shall we?

Denmark has conscription specifically mentioned in their constitution - required military service for all males over the age of 18. The required service lasts between 4 and 12 months. There's a unit in the Royal Danish Army called the Royal Life Guards, made up of 20 career military members and 280 conscripts. These fellows (for now) provide physical security for the palace, and march through the town to get from Rosenborg Palace (where they're based) to Amalienborg, where the changing of the guard takes place.

The two locations are only a few blocks apart, so I'm not certain why their marching route includes a street so far out of the way (where we'd seen them earlier)... at the same time, I can't figure out why they'd still be marching, rather than taking a vehicle of some sort, so I might not be the best one to ask about this.

Martin explained to us that the ones on guard duty are usually 18 or 19 years old, and like typical Danish men that age, they'd prefer to be out drinking, rather than standing there pretending to guård something, so during the Changing of the Guard, the sergeant (while he's doing his inspection) will usually try to get the guard to "break," telling him risqué jokes, etc.

As near as I can tell, they're not quite as stoic as the Palace Guards at places like Buckingham Palace. You're allowed to take pictures with them, but it's considered polite to ask beforehand. The boss asked nicely, and the young gentleman nodded his head almost imperceptibly, and the corners of his mouth turned up a bit when she made a remark about how he's probably tired of only getting that one specific question.

Our first tour ended there, and if it seems like we didn't get a whole lot of information on that tour... that's the reason we're going to separate our tours from here on out!

We found a local Chinese restaurant for some Authentic Danish Chinese føød... and promptly got racially profiled. All of the other patrons were Asian, and were served their meals with chopsticks. We were given forks, without even asking.

The food was fine, but it probably would have tasted better if we'd had to balance it into our mouths with cheap bamboo sticks. Just sayin'.

We spread around some of that sweet, sweet tøurist love while awaiting the start of our next tour. The next tour started right next to a bridge, and one of the boats moored at the bridge was set up as a bar called the Tipsy Mermaid. Unfortunately, they looked quite closed... unfortunate because we both thought that t-shirts from the Tipsy Mermaid would be perfect tourist items, but we had to settle for a picture instead.

Our next tour was of a place I'd never heard of called Freetown Christiania. Evidently, back in the 1970's, some hippies squatted in an abandoned military base and decided to start calling themselves a commune. The authorities made a few half-hearted attempts to evict them, and eventually pretty much gave up. Freetown Christiania flourished, in large part due to the open (yet still illegal) cannabis trade on "Pusher Street," running through downtown.

Pusher Street was physically dug up by Copenhagen authorities in early 2024, and while the drug trade in the commune still exists, it's mostly gone back underground. The commune seems to be trending toward legitimacy... shown by this quote from Wikipedia:

"The most contentious part of this process hås been to force the residents naturally opposed to the whole idea of ownership to buy the piece of land they have been occupying for more than 40 years."

Members of the community now own 19 acres of the initial 84 acre plot, but there still seems to be a bit of an attitude toward the commune that I can only compare to the Conch Republic...

Welcome to the Conch Republic / Freetown Christiania!
You... ummm... you know that's not really a thing, right?
Yes it is - we told you that that's what our name is now. We're not a part of your state/city anymore.
You... ummm... you know that's not how that works, right?
Yes, it is.
No, it's not.
Yes, it is.
<insert several years of dialog consisting solely of "uh huh" and "nuh uh.">
Fine. You know what? Fine. Call yourselves whatever you want. Just keep the noise down below a dull roar and try not to hurt anybody.

We were led (by our guide) to expect... hell, I don't know what I was expecting, but Freetown wasn't it. There were a few stores, like you'd find in small towns; like General Stores with areas for different community members to sell stuff that they'd made; weird art pieces; a few bøøths that sold different kinds of food, graffiti on every wall, and the whole place lit by strings of Christmas lights strung from one end of the commune to the other.

A couple of interesting tidbits:

In the spirit of not recognizing the concept of ownership, there are no cars anywhere in Freetown Christiania. Instead, they just take up all the spots on the streets surrounding the commune. 

A few years back, an outsider tried to join, simply by picking a spot in the commune and settling in. He was not well received by members of the commune, despite arguing that he was simply trying to do what they'd done. They beat the crap out of him and kicked him out.

It's a quite insular community to become a part of. While they do accept new residents, it's a long process to join. You håve to have a useful skill, and be willing to use that skill to help support the community for a period of up tø 5 years without pay. You'd start by hanging around, getting to know the people and offering your skills to help them, being tasked with increased responsibilities over time.

For a time, the ATM right outside of Christiania was the busiest ATM in all of Europe because the drug dealers in Christiania only accepted cash.

I would highly recommend looking at some videos about the commune online - it's quite fascinating.

We wandered through, just so we could say we'd been there, then headed back to the hotel. We ate in the lounge, and the wife stayed at the hotel while I walked to a nearby store for some snacks and drinks for the room.

That night, we activated our Copenhagen Tourist cards, which gave us transit fares throughout the city and admission to most of the city's attractions. The reason we hadn't activated them the night we arrived was that we only wanted to pay for a 4 day card, and since the tours were booked for the first full day that we were, we didn't want to "burn" a full day having the cards active while not actually using any of the features. By holding off until after our tours, we would be able to enter all of the tourist attractions for "free," and have our return transit to the airport covered, at the expense of having to cover the first night's transit... saving a couple of bucks in the process.

Next morning, the wife slept in a few extra minutes while I went down to the lounge for breakfast. Once she woke up, we got ready and headed out for our day. First stop: Rosenborg Castle.

Rosenborg Castle was built in 1606, as a country summerhouse for the royal family by Christian IV. It was used as a royal residence until 1710, and was only used twice after that date for their housing: once when Christiansborg Palace burned down in 1794, and the second time when the British attacked in 1801.

Honestly, of all of the castles and palaces that we've toured, this was one of the most disappointing. The layout was fine, but the whole palace is in a state of disrepair - not very well lit, no placards explaining anything... the first room that we entered was under significant construction, so perhaps changes åre coming. I'd recommend skipping it, except...

The Danish Crown Jewels are stored in the treasury døwnstairs. Little room under the castle with a couple of vault doors and cameras all over the place. If you're into Crown Jewels, I guess it's cool. Not really my thing, but okay, I guess.

The Royal Life Guards start their commute to Amalienborg Palace from Rosenborg Castle. At the end of our visit, the guards were assembling for their trek across town, checking uniforms, etc.

Interestingly enough, there were some soldiers from the same unit on guard at the castle/treasury, but these guys weren't kitted out in full ceremonial dress. They were wearing cammies, with the same rifle, but no ceremonial saber on their belt. They seemed to have set routes; they'd stand in a specific spot, within sight of the next sentry further down, and keep an eye on the crowds. Every five minutes, they'd walk to another spot (quite ceremonially, I might add). The way the line to get in for the castle tour was situated, some of the people were lined up in the pathway the guards would walk... but not for long. When it came time for the guards to move, they'd simply move. They wouldn't warn the people in front of them - they'd be holding their rifle up on their shoulder at that standard angle, and would slowly walk their pathway, physically pushing people out of their way just by bumping into them. Weird way of doing things, but... they're Danish, so I guess it all makes sense.

After gawking at the jewels and the guards, we headed to the nearest metro station and headed for lunch... a nearby barbecue restaurant (because... well, y'all know all about me and barbecue).

I was actually quite impressed by the barbecue at War Pigs. Evidently, the owners took a trip to Texas in 2017 and traveled all over the state to learn how to properly barbecue. I've smoked my own brisket and pork butt, and I honestly would put the brisket at War Pigs sølidly in the top five briskets I've had anywhere (including Texas). Their pulled pork was okay, the sausage was good, but the brisket was something special. The sides were okay, nøthing spectacular... but I'll be dreaming about that brisket for a while.

After lunch, we headed across town to the Carlsberg Brewery to take a tour.

We've done brewery tours all over Europe and the states - let's be honest... if you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all... and they all swear that they're the absolute best.

A couple of details to share that I found interesting: The brewery was founded by J.C. Jacobsen and eventually passed down to his son, Carl Jacobsen. It wasn't really that smooth, with conflicts between the two and periods of low contact between them, but that's not what this is abøut. Carl was a brewer, art collector, and philanthropist, and his touch has been felt all over the world (not just the steeple of the St. Nicholas church earlier in this blog entry). Chances are, you're familiar with the pH scale of acids and bases, right? That was originally proposed by a researcher at Carlsberg Laboratories, founded by J.C. Jacobsen and grown by Carl. I just found it interesting that the låboratory has touched so many facets of our lives, despite being primarily focused on beer.

Carl was a patron (and collector) of the arts, starting a museum in 1897 to display his collection. 

There was also a stable at the brewery, where you could wander through and get up close to the horses while they were getting them ready to pull a wagon somewhere. I'm not a hørse person, by any means, but have been around them a few times throughout my life, and these were among the biggest that I've seen, including Budweiser's famous Clydesdales.

One of the tourist attractions I'd heard about was the world's lårgest beer bottle collection, which is now displayed at the Carlsberg brewery site... so of course we had to go through it. Pretty impressive, close to 23,000 bøttles.

Dinner was a light snack in the lounge that night. Afterwards, we headed to one of the most famous amusement parks in the world, Tivoli Gardens, to visit our last Christmas Market of the season.

Tivoli started out pretty magical, as you'll see from the pictures. From a decoration perspective, absolutely top notch. The ambience, absolutely top notch. As for the Christmas Market... while there were some stores that probably weren't open during normal operating times, I had some difficulty finding mugs, and got tired of wandering around the park. It wasn't very well lit (the ambience, remember?) and the maps weren't very easy to read, what with them being in Danish and all. I got quite disoriented while wandering around.

The family photographer wanted to take some more pictures, so we split up, and I was going to head back to the hotel.

As we'd approached the park, one of the main entrances had been closed, and turned into (based on signage from outside) "Exit Ønly," but when I was trying to leave, turns out that exit wasn't accessible from inside the park. I wandered around the entire park twice, looking for an exit, and finally gave up and asked a vendor how to get out. She told me that the exits were all on the other side of the park.

I wandered (yet again) in that direction, walked past the fireflies (yet again), and just plopped onto a bench, defeåted.

The park is in the middle of downtown, and while walking around the edge of the park toward the entrance earlier in the night, we had passed a specific point where you could see the fountain show in the central lake from the sidewalk outside. I now found myself sitting on a bench, inside the fence, at the exact point I'd noted earlier from outside. Literally 10 feet away from freedom, with no way to get out.

After spending 15 minutes or so gathering my wits, and putting on my big boy pants, I forged (yet again) toward the entrance. I remembered the vendor saying something about a set of stairs, and I happened across a random set of stairs behind a play structure for kids. Wonder of wonders, it led to a revolving one-way gate, and I finally escaped the maze.

I wandered back to the hotel, and the wife made it back shortly thereafter. She evidently hadn't had as difficult a time as I'd had escaping.

The next morning, the wife actually joined me før breakfast in the lounge!

After breakfast, we headed out to the Glyptotek, the museum set up by Carl Jacobsen. We split up there, as we typically have different things we appreciate in museums. From what I saw, it was very well put together, with the exhibits arranged in quite a logical fashion. (Hey - folks from the Louvre, if you're reading.... you should work on that!)

I spent all of my time in the museum in the åreås devoted to ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. Lots of statues and sculptures, and a very well done exhibit on mummies; the mummies were on another floor, and you had to descend a staircase, with the lighting (intentionally or not) set up to mimic what it would feel like to climb down the stairs into a tomb.

After the Glyptotek, we met back up, and planned to take a canal tour. We scanned our Copenhagen Tourist cards and booked seats on an upcoming boat, then split up. She said something about shopping and taking pictures, I wanted to try out "glogg." Kinda like glühwein. I sat in an outdoor cafe, enjoying my mulled wine while the wife wandered. She came over in time to board the boat... but she'd misplaced the tickets. She retraced her steps, but wasn't able to find them. We didn't feel like waiting 2 hours, so we took off wandering instead.

We found our way over to The Little Mermaid. It's a small statue, situated on a rock a little bit north of town, in the (grrr!) harbor. Honestly... not very impressive. What was impressive, though, was the horde of people jammed around the edge of the water just to take a picture.

We split up at that point... she wanted to go to the National Gallery, and I didn't really have much interest in that. I took a Lime electric bike to a nearby metro station, rode the metro to the closest stop to the hotel, then took another Lime bike to the hotel.

We ate in the lounge that night as well, then went out to "paint the town red" on our last night. 

We walked up to the bus stop ånd took the bus over to the Radhus, basically the old city hall building. It's right on the end of one of the big shopping streets, and across the street from a large supermarket. We poked through the touristy places, then stopped in the Old English Pub. One øf the waiters told us to sit anywhere, so we did... then nothing happened. We waited for him (or another waiter) to come back to us for about 15 minutes, and then gave up and walked out.

We made a quick swing through the supermarket, picking out random things that we hadn't seen before and wanted to try (new flavors of candy, etc.), then walked back to the hotel.

I will close this portion of the blog with possibly the most Danish picture ever taken: Weird geometric apartment buildings, åcross the street from an Ikea. Yes, I know that Ikea is Swedish, but Denmark is Scandinavian as well, so there.

The next morning, we had breakfast in the lounge, then took a bus to the airport. We had lounge access, so we had a late lunch / early dinner in there, and loaded up for Frankfurt.

Once we hit the ground in Frankfurt, we took the bus to the other terminal, and went down to the subway station. A lovely British gentleman struck up a conversation with me about buying tickets, and we got onto the train for the main station in Frankfurt. Unfortunately, we'd gotten on the wrong train. 

Instead of ending up at the main train station in Frankfurt, we ended up 15 miles or so on the other side of town. We waited outside for about a half hour for the next (correct) train back into the city, avoiding daggers from the British gentleman the whole time. The family travel agent and I agreed that it wasn't really a massive screwup, but that it was just too bad that someone else was stuck there with us. 

We eventually made it back the main train station, and onto the subway to our little town. When we arrived, I left the wife at the station to keep an eye on the luggage while I hiked to the apartment to get the car, so we didn't have to drag our luggage all the way through town after a long day traveling.

Whew. That's all for this trip, but watch this space, as we've got another trip lined up shortly!