Christmas in Copenhagen

If we’ve learned one thing about air travel during our fall abroad, it’s the importance of being aware of when you’re leaving Point A on your journey. An early morning rise, like when we left for Greece, throws your day off, while an evening trip, like this past weekend, gives you a weird span of a few hours where it’s too early to go to the airport but you’re bored sitting around home and don’t want to start anything new. When you’re looking at a flight a few weeks down the nose of the calendar, it’s easy to forget the correlation between bad timing and grumpiness.

We packed our heavy coats and umbrellas for a weekend in Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark positioned right on the eastern edge of the country (on the island of Zealand, which has no connection to New Zealand) with just a thin strait between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea separating it from Sweden. Kayla had Vikings on her mind, while I was in tow for the Scandinavian Christmas lights—both of which we found in droves.

We landed in Copenhagen well after dark on Friday night and found the metro line connecting the airport to the city centre. When we found ourselves at the doorstep of the cozy Sleep in Heaven hostel, we were worried about being those people who show up in a dorm room after everyone is asleep and make an obnoxious racket, putting on pillowcases and stowing their bags away.

Somehow, we ended up being the first two in a nine-person dorm room, and were able to flick on the lights and find our beds (stacked in bunk beds three mattresses high) without incident. That also meant that those people referenced above weren’t here yet, and so we were glad we picked up earplugs in Amsterdam before we came.

Saturday morning dawned in a manner fairly consistent with our whole time in Copenhagen—a chilly 5 degrees, a bit of wind, a bit of rain. Enough to be a nuisance, and for Kayla to insist I wear my hat (and win that argument, much to my chagrin/benefit).

We had such good fortune with our Airbnb in Athens that we arranged to stay with a Danish student with a two-bedroom apartment about fifteen minutes outside the city centre this weekend. We walked to Trine’s apartment from the hostel, relinquishing our damp luggage and making for Copenhagen Central Station on the trains.

Copenhagen usually ranks on the lists of most expensive cities to visit, and so we were careful with prices, especially since we’ve spent three and half months learning how to quickly convert euros to Canadian dollars in our heads, only to have the wrench of the Danish krone thrown into the mix. All the public transit are on the same ticket, and the prices depend on how many “zones” within the city you travel—two tickets to the city centre from our Airbnb worked out to just under $10.00, which is pretty reasonable. Meanwhile, we lived off 7-Eleven pastries and pizza, and while Tuborg beer is more expensive than Dutch beer, it’s still cheaper than Molson Canadian!

Copenhagen has a definitely urban, European vibe—wide, clean cobbled streets, impressive architecture, and crowds of pedestrians and cyclists protected by billowing scarves and mittens. It might be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but it’s also been ranked as one of the most livable.

When we set off from Copenhagen Central Station, we headed to the National Museum of Denmark, a free exhibit in the massive Prince’s Palace, former residence of the Danish king Frederick V. We easily could have spent a full day here in Denmark’s largest museum, tracing the history of the country from the prehistoric settlers to the modern day, but our focus was on the very earliest inhabitants.

In the nineteenth century, Copenhagen went through a bit of an identity crisis, and desperate for a new source of national pride. The Viking Age, with its heathen warriors and epic sagas, was easily romanticized and fulfilled that role, but the National Museum made it pretty obvious that these Norsemen and their roughly three-hundred-year existence was just one piece of Danish history.

Take, for example, the Huldremose Woman, a body preserved from the Iron Age. Her corpse has become part of the permanent display at the museum, a so-called Bog Body that ended up being naturally preserved in a peat bog.

Nearby, the Christiansborg Palace houses the three supreme powers of the Danish government: the executive, the legislature and, with the Supreme Court of Denmark, the judiciary. That just so happens to be the only single building in the world that does that, for all the political science trivia buffs out there.

As for that imposing tower overlooking Copenhagen (it’s the highest tower in the city, at 106 m), it’s now open to the public by way of a series of elevators, affording expansive views of the city stretching out along the historic alleyways and harbour. We waited until it was a bit darker before we made our ascent, nearly getting blown away by the sheer force of wind but getting a good view of the city adorned in glistening lights.

While we were waiting for the sky to darken and the lights to come on, we passed through the neighbourhood of Nyhavn—colourful canal houses, an iconic shot of Copenhagen as the afternoon started to clear.

By the time we made it to the pedestrian walk along the harbour, the grey sky had bits of sunlight peaking through. Copenhagen started as a fishing village in the 10th century, and its name is a rough translation of “merchants’ harbour,” so it should come as no surprise that this is an important part of the city.

Not to mention that a minimalistic statue serves as a major tourist draw along the harbour—the Little Mermaid, based on the fairy tale written by one of Denmark’s favourite sons, Hans Christian Andersen. Meanwhile, here’s another Copenhagen connection—the statue was commission back in 1909 by one Carl Jacobsen, whose father founded the Carlsberg brewery.

The statue sits a little ways out into the harbour, perched on rocks, but that doesn’t stop a few brave souls from skipping over the stones and getting their pictures up close and personal. And, of course, with fame comes the potential for vandalism—the head isn’t the original one, but you’d never tell.

Meanwhile, it’s also said that this statue bears  a passing resemblance to a certain statue along the waterfront in Napier, New Zealand. What do you think?

Walking through Copenhagen, from the waterfront to its green spaces, it isn’t that hard to imagine the city inspiring fairy tales. There are no castles clinging to the hillsides, but there’s something about silhouettes of sparse trees along the edge of a lip of green in the fading light of an overcast Scandinavian afternoon—something that’s capable of transporting you, somehow.

By the time the chilly evening was almost upon us, we were almost back to the train station. But first, speaking of fairy tale worlds, we took a spin through Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park dating back to 1843 (that makes it the second oldest in the world, incidentally). The park was in full-blown Christmas mode, and the deepening evening meant that it was just the right time to see some of the illumination.

We strolled along the crowded footpaths, in between stalls selling Christmas decorations and mulled wine while roller coasters zoomed by overhead. Admission to the Gardens doesn’t get you any ride tickets, but we were more than contented to people watch and look at the lights before we made our way to our cozy little spot on the edge of town. Tivoli is more compressed than even Disneyland Paris, but it makes the most of its limited space literally in the heart of the city, giving visitors a whirlwind of sensory overload and serotonin.

As we traipsed through the streets of Copenhagen, we borrowed every rogue wave of wifi we could lay our hands on, to get all the updates on a brand new niece back home in Newfoundland. Happy to say little Avery and her mom are both at home and doing well, and her new big brother couldn’t be much prouder if he tried.

 
The last Saturday night in November (and one of our last ones in Europe) wasn’t too wild—we picked up a few seasonal Tuborg Julebryg (a liquorice-infused flavour that’s popular this time of year—the fourth bestselling beer in Denmark, despite its very limited shelf life) but only got through one before we were yawning and tucking ourselves in.

Fresh air will do that to you, and we had a busy day of gallivanting on Sunday to look forward to, and it would take more than a bit of cold and rain to mess that up.

Cheers,
rb