Storyline: Filling the gaps
“Watch it!” Alex shouts as I step off the sidewalk to a presumably parking lane, and while turning around I hear squeaking bicycle’s brakes (Dear me, do they have good brakes!). It is August 2015 and the city had won the European green capital award in 2014. And as I write this it is also recognised as the world’s greenest city.
Yes, we have just arrived in Copenhagen (København), where the principal mode of transportation is the bicycle. This is our first walk out of the apartment in which we’d spend about a week and we are not yet used to having anything between sidewalk and street but a row of parked cars.
There are many cities in Europe made for biking, but if one really wants to bike, Copenhagen is the one. They bike all the time, in all weather conditions. Young and old, pregnant and mothers with babies, drunks and business-dressed.
There are all sorts of tricycles with carts, front or back, where kids or dogs or loads are thrown in (well maybe the kids and dogs aren’t thrown).
There are bike lanes wider than the car lanes each direction of most roads.
There are special traffic signals for the bikes, and cycling rush hours too.
Solar-powered boats are the other big thing there. If you want an eco-friendly houseboat, this city is for you.
We had already noticed the garbage bags and garbage bins in the perfectly clean metro (subway) cars that we took from the airport to our temporary home here.
The metro trains are also built for bicycles with just a few seats and plenty of bike space. Garbage bags and bins would be highly visible in all trains and busses that we’d take during our visit to the happiest country in the world.
Sadly, we only managed to tour Nordsjælland (North Zealand), retracing my steps from 1994, when I first visited this amazing country and fell in love with its people and their spartan attitude towards life.
Back then, as an environmental researcher at Brussels University, I was invited to visit the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark. I was greeted at the Københavns Lufthavn (Copenhagen Airport) by the hosting professor, invited for an early dinner with his family in their Copenhagen house, and then deposited some 40km away at a place in the middle of nowhere. I was told that the Environmental Research Institute was next to the Nuclear Research Institute, far from civilisation just in case.
And so, I settled into the only building next to the institutes – a small visitor and student residence on the edge of Risø peninsula, north of Roskilde. There was nothing around but a bus stop. Not a grocery store or even a small convenience kiosk, let alone a café or a restaurant. No breakfast in the residence either. So in the morning I started my first day on the job hungry, and stayed so until lunch when there was a buffet open for all the staff. Not knowing anything about Denmark, I assumed I could do some shopping after work. At 5pm I left the office and took a local bus to another bus station somewhere. I don’t remember the location details, but this bus station was manned and I asked the lady there for the nearest grocery store. She gave me the bus number I had to take to a train station. Then I had to take a train to Roskilde. “But all stores close at 5pm”, she added. That’s that – I took a bus back to the residence and the next day left the office earlier, found my way to a grocery store, and eventually had my food supply for the rest of the week.
It was the end of January and although no snow, the weather was brutal. I remember glancing the sun through the residence window, to just walk out a few moments later to hail and blasting winds, followed by another sunny break then, by the time I reached the office, heavy rain driven horizontally by the winds. And people were cycling in this miserable weather and greeting me with a smile. It was surreal to see the Danish women with long skirts and coats on their high, typically Danish bikes in the middle of nowhere.
One day I was driven to the most famous castle of Helsingør, known in English as Elsinore from the Shakespearian play Hamlet. The name of the castle is actually Kronborg and it is one of the most important strongholds in Northern Europe.
Dating back to the 15th century, it has a rich history of wars, sieges, fires, destruction and reconstruction. It is a stone’s throw away from the Swedish castle of Helsingborg across the Øresund. I had the feeling one could swim to it.
Back to 2015: in April I booked a trip to Sofia with a return layover in Copenhagen the first week of August. We had friends living there at the time. They had been inviting us to visit and stay with them for some time, yet we hadn’t had enough vacation days to be able to take them up on their offer. Earlier in 2015 I had received an e-mail from Daniela saying that this year would be the last chance to visit them. They were considering returning to Canada.
So, a decision was made, and timing coordinated with them. But things rarely happen as planned. Just a week before our departure for Sofia, which was our first stop, Daniela reached out to inform us that she’d been offered her old position in Canada (where we had been co-workers in 2007/2008). The caveat was that she had to start in August.
We could still stay with them, but they’d be packing and selling their furniture, etc. I quickly found and Airbnb apartment close to the centre, and we met Daniela and Mike back home not long after we returned from Denmark. It appeared that they had actually booked a flight earlier and had flown to Toronto as we flew to Copenhagen.
We left sunny, hot and sweltering (upper 30s C) Sofia to arrive to drab Copenhagen; cloudy and humid, with temperatures barely reaching lower teens.
Upon arrival in the evening, we found that our host had left a vase with nice wild flowers from the surroundings and a note recommending Papirøen (Paper Island, so named as it was previously home to warehouses for storing paper) for dinner. Alex, studying the map decided to take his father’s short cut (an inherited tendency to find the shortest distance between two points only to find that the route does not exist, effectively doubling the time taken to reach the destination, but taking in sights otherwise unseen – A), which led us to some murky fields.
In the approaching dark we got lost in an apparent drug exchange area. People were nice, but no one knew how to get to Papirøen. A funny lady told us that we are close to an area where they smoke hash. We eventually turned back and ended up with a pizza at the apartment.
Usually, combined city cards that offer you public transport and museum visits make no sense for us. Except in Copenhagen (CPH). We visited the tourist information centre near Tivoli gardens (we didn’t have time for them, but I had been in the gardens in 1994) and a nice young lady recommended the CPH card as the best and cheapest way to explore the city and Nordsjælland. We took the 48-hour version, but if you have time, take a longer one. It combines museums and attractions with public transport that covers all North Zealand and some parts south and west of CPH.
Public transport in Denmark is fascinating. One can have multiple connections across the country, just hop off a train and onto a bus or another local or regional train, etc. We never had to wait more than a few minutes.
With a 2-day card we travelled to Helsingør, where I was eager to show Alex Kronborg castle,
then visited the new Maritime Museum next to the castle.
The same day we took a train to Humlebæk and visited the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
This one was the highlight of our stay. It is situated in a lovely setting on the shore with beautiful gardens that include open air art.
We finished the day by climbing The Round Tower in CPH.
It poured afterwards, and dinner was inside a restaurant where the locals were chatting away despite the rain and big puddles around them.
Next day we took the S-ban to Hillerød and a bus to the Frederiksborg Slot (largest Renaissance palace in Scandinavia).
We actually liked it more than Versailles. It is modest, charming and walkable with gardens that are perfect for a day picnic.
Then we took a train to Lyngby, and a bus to Vilvordevej.
There we managed to visit the Ordrupgaard Art Museum with a collection of notable French & Danish impressionists.
It is also situated in lovely gardens with some architectural art, a small café and a restaurant.
From there we took a bus to Klampenborg and a train back to CPH.
The following day it was time to visit the famous independent city of Christiania, in the vicinity of which we got lost on our arrival night. Or more accurately, Freedom Christiania (Fristaden Christiania or Staden).
If you don’t know much about it, google it. It is a commune of about 1000 people, proclaimed as self-governing since 1971, occupying the former military barracks of Bådsmandsstræde and some parts of the city ramparts in the borough of Christianshavn.
Its people have their own set of rules that forbid theft, guns and violence, knives and hard drugs among others. Nowadays it is the fourth largest tourist attraction in CPH.
The main drag is famous for openly selling hash and weed from permanent stands. They are spread among many booths selling all kinds of souvenirs to the tourists.
This city-within-city is also called the green city. (How chic to have a green city in the greenest city of the world?) Photos are not allowed.
They have their own police. Walking away from the green city I turned back and took a photo from a distance. Two guys showed up immediately from nowhere and asked me to delete the photo, which I immediately did, not wishing to cause trouble.
After Christiania we finally reached Papirøen, the locals’ favourite street food market with ethnic food. On our way to there we met a local family.
Jette, the mother, took a photo of us and then circled on our map all the places where the locals eat and grocery shop.
So aside from learning about the cheaper neighbourhoods, we managed to enjoy food as locals.
We loved the atmosphere and the food in Papirøen so much that once finding our way to it we continued with dinner there every evening.
Among our favourites at the many booths were the local seafood; the fries, thrice-fried in duck fat; and the local beers. Alas, this market didn’t last for long, as I recently discovered, due to redevelopment in 2017 or so.
We walked by the opera house which is 3 times bigger that the Reykjavik’s Harpa hall.
Alex enjoyed all the boats and took quite a few photos. Later we crossed the harbour channel and walked through the touristy area all the way to the Little Mermaid.
Alex felt that the little mermaid experience was similar to going to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa or Brussels to see Mannekin Pis.
Big crowds milling around to get a view of the smallish attraction. Only the crowds here weren’t quite so big and the attraction wasn’t quite so small.
Attempted to get a meal at the Almanak restaurant by the harbour channel, just to find out that it wasn’t cooked to our pockets (or so to say it wasn’t geared to our wallets). Having just wine wasn’t an option according to the waiter, so we ordered a small appetiser to share.
This was the only time we encountered a grumpy person in Denmark. He was frowning although the tables around were empty.
We, however, didn’t let him spoil our enjoyment. Perhaps he wasn’t a Dane, but a seasonal worker.
For the rest of our dining out we were frequenting Papirøen and the areas Jette had recommended.
We wished we had more time for Denmark to at least visit the fjords and a few more museums. Perhaps we can do this during our anticipated (now a dwindling hope, but one for which we are continuing to feed the flame – A) tour with our campervan next year.
Join the conversation around our e-Table