coping in copenhagen

Mai and I took an overnight bus that smelt like urine.  It took 6 hours from Hamburg to Copenhagen and despite the fact that it was relatively comfortable to sleep we were woken half way through to discover we were on a vehicle ferry and had to get off the bus and wait in a lounge area. Fun at 3am!

We arrived at a stop jut near Copenhagen Central very early in the morning (all Mums should stop reading now). Needless to say, we’re never doing that again because a central station at 5 in the morning is just plain dodgey. We went to take a lift and as it was coming up, I noticed a bunch dudes doing, what seemed like some sort of deal and they were pretty pissed we interrupted them. I backed away and told Mai to just keep walking. We hurried the fuck out of there and took the long way round without looking back. They followed us for a while but then disappeared. We waited in the protective cocoon of McDonalds because we were a little freaked out by the ‘all-sorts’ of people wandering around.

An older gentleman decided to share his life story with us. I actually found him really interesting but Mai zoned out.  He was well-travelled a doctor for over 20 year and has worked all over Scandinavia. However he took a shift in his career and became a writer and has supposedly released a couple of books.  At the moment we met him he was working on a contract with some film makers and said one of his books is being used a script for a film starring Cate Blancett and some other Scandinavian actor. He said he is moving over to LA to be involved with the making of the film which is to be released in 2016. Now, the details of the film he didn’t give away much but it was about something that he described in medical terms as some sort of acronym, TSLA or TESLR or something like that. Anyway, apparently its some sort of syndrome that scientists have discovered as la legitimate social networking disorder. I’ve spent time researching to see if this guy is real or not and found no answers. Guess I’ll have to wait til 2016 til the “film” comes out. Haha.

We stayed with a lovely couple through AirBnB, where you find short-term rooms to rent online. They were very warm and hospitable and told us all about the Christmas culture in Denmark, suggested some nice breweries to visit and gave us some delicious baked goods.

We planned to do the city bus tour the next day as it was pretty cold (about -8 but windy), however we kind of missed the boat (or bus in this case). We naively decided to walk to the attractions visited by the bus tour. It took us about 5 hours.  We passed through a cute canal strip called Nyhavn with a bunch of Santa’s playing carols on brass instruments, jumped off boulders in the Kings Garden (which I’m sure he appreciated) and visited the Royal family’s Winter Residence . We stumbled across a funky café, called The Coffee Factory too. 

 

The Little Mermaid, apparently Denmark’s most ‘famous’ attractions, was the furthest away on the map and near the port so it was absolutely freezing. When we set eyes on this famous statue that was smaller than a human we just looked at each other and said “WTF?!”. We read later in an online article that it is THE second most disappointing statue in the world. HAH! We could certainly believe that. Oh well, we still saw everything we wanted to and saved a bit of money by walking instead. We rewarded ourselves with a big meal and a few pints at the Brew House and Mikkeller Bar (well-known breweries with pretty impressive Danish beers).