Copenhagen

Well after avoiding a near disaster we finally made it to Denmark and Copenhagen. My dumb self left the bag with the laptop on the train from Berlin to Hamburg, so I ended up having to catch a train to the next stop in Hamburg, get the bag, and go back to Hamburg central… did I mention that German train officials are awesome!!! So anyway we missed our original train and it was after 10 when we made it to Copenhagen. Oh yea, during the winter Scandinavians eat rather early (no sun), so we of course got there after most of the kitchens had closed, so we had the choice of McDonald’s or Burger King… yum.

The next day didn’t start off too well either. I, in all of my natural idiocy, didn’t bother to check when the Tivoli Gardens opened, or for that matter, even if they closed at all. So much was my surprise when we go up the gates and they are closed… the Gardens are not going to open until the day after we arrive in the States… oops (The Tivoli Gardens are interesting because they are a series of flowers gardens, water features, amusement rides, and cultural venues, stuffed in the city center between the old city square and the train station). The day brightened up a bit though as we wandered around the giant pedestrian street called the Stroget (sorry no cool official lettering but I have no clue as to type so of these characters on an American keyboard).

We grabbed a really good milkshake at a coffee bar above one o the main streets, and began to notice something strange. There seems to be a ridiculous amount of people pushing around baby carriages, so much that we even began to count them (there were well over 40 of them while we drank our drinks, and had missed a ton before that). It was really quite… intimidating. The best is the fact that the Danes had stuffed these buggies so full that half of the time one of the parents was left with having to hold the kid.

The next day we walked along the water looking at a bunch of architecture stuff that bored Jeannie terribly. I was bummed (again) because the one thing I really wanted to see had been moved for repairs (the PLOT Harbor project for those of you who care). We walked around the castle of Christianborg… one thing I have begun to notice is that a lot of these “castles” are much more… well boring that I would have imagines, but oh well that’s what you get for watching Saturday morning cartoons and bad movies about knights.

Afterwards we walked through the Botanical Gardens and the University district; both were excellent. The parks around this city were really quite beautiful, and one can not complain about a weekend spent walking on a busy shopping street and wandering through quiet city parks. That night we had order-in pizza in an attempt to give some relief to our pocketbooks. This city is really quite expensive; hopefully London is not much worse than this. I knew Scandinavia was expensive but… man this could get bad very quickly. We were amusing by the huge group of Swedish girls that came to Copenhagen for only one night to go party. It was pretty funny, when they arranged for 4 huge van taxis to escort them to and from the club… sad… scary sad.

The last day we wandered around to catch a couple sights we had missed and walked the Stroget again to see how busy it was during the week (still pretty damn busy). That evening we decided to go see a movie since Denmark is cool and plays all movies (except for ones targeted at small kids) in their original language with Danish subtitles… man I wish more of America would do this, I just really don’t like dubbing, but that is a rant for another day. Anyway for those of you who are wondering, we saw Ghost Rider… that’s right, a good ole American action film… pure trash with a little Nicholas Cage drizzled on top for extra terribleness… it was awesome… seriously awesome… oh yea, they had popcorn and it was good…