Copenhagen recap

St. Nicholas Church and Statue of Bishop Absalon

The last leg of our trip was also the most relaxed, thanks in large part to the fact that my brother and Danish sister-in-law guided us around. Doing the tourist thing took a back seat to spending time with my brother, whom I hadn't seen for years, and getting to know his wife, but we still got to check out some cool sites (when it wasn't raining).

I learned a little bit about the culture from my sister-in-law, and as far as I could tell, the two biggest departures from the culture here are that the people welcome a much bigger role for the government (more socialistic) and there is less of a rat race to get as much stuff as you can. It is considered more noble to be content with what you have. As a result, the average workweek is 36 hours, and like in France, you see a lot of people lounging around the city with friends. When I told her about my general desire to accomplish more, she found it strange to hear someone openly saying it.

Once again, our hotel was located right next to a major public transit station in the city. Copenhagen had the best system as far as I can tell. On top of the buses and trains, there was an automated underground rail system that runs 24/7, so you don't have to worry about being stranded late at night. It was a lot like the airport trains that you catch to get from terminal to terminal.

There were a lot of hotels in that part of the city, an area that also happens to be the city's red-light district. The walks back to our hotel at night were "interesting," but we always felt safe.

This was by far the most expensive city on our trip. I thought the hotel was relatively cheap until I saw how tiny the room was (this is normal from what I was told). The food was fantastic, but eating out isn't as common as in the US, so prices are higher. Even the food at 7-11s, which were everywhere, was pricey. At some point, I stopped converting prices from kroners to USD and just accepted that prices were going to be higher.

On the first day, we walked around downtown and did a river cruise, which took us by the city's most famous landmark: the Little Mermaid Statue.


Little Mermaid Statue

The next day we visited the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which had a great iPad/iPhone art exhibit by David Hockney, and Kronborg Castle, which is where Hamlet takes place. The castle is grand on the outside but surprisingly simple in the inside. My favorite part of the castle was the Holger Danske statue in the crypt.


Kronborg Castle

On the 3rd day, we visited the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, which ended up being my favorite museum of the entire trip. The museum is filled with statues, reliefs, and paintings from various periods and regions that were originally collected by the Carlsberg beer founder from what I understand. Like Louisiana, the museum had a beautiful design that made full use of natural lighting.

At night we watched a movie, The Tree of Life. It was wonderfully shot and edited, but I still have no idea what the movie was about. A couple of things that surprised me about movies over there are that you get assigned seats and ticket prices are based on the length of the movie. I wonder if any small theaters in the US will ever do the same.

We spent the last day with my sister-in-law's parents. We walked through Christiana, the "hippie" part of Copenhagen, got to know each other over drinks, and went to Tivoli to watch a concert with Savage Rose.

Overall, Copenhagen was a wonderful way to end the trip, and now that my brother is moving back at the end of the year, it is likely that I'll be back there sometime in the future.