Four Days in Copenhagen (July 9 to 12, 2023)

July 9, 2023 to July 12, 2023

Sightseeing

We have enjoyed four days in Copenhagen staying in a very nice, modern flat right by Rosenberg Slot, which I thought we might visit but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Dave and I had both been to Copenhagen but his visit was over 55 years ago; I had visited twice but always in conjunction with going off somewhere else, so it wasn’t a focus. It’s a great city. We rode into the City Sunday morning on 30 km of a cycle trail. Note these barriers that riders can use to balance and park their feet when they come to a traffic light!

Copenhagen is one of the best cycling cities we've been to. Here's a random convenience which allows riders who are stopped at a light to rest a foot.

It was a lovely sunny day and Copenhagen really showed off - tons of people out and about enjoying this little square near our flat, which is on the ground floor with a courtyard and electricity so we could easily recharge our bikes.

Our flat had a lovely kitchen, not that we ever used it.

We temporarily adopted "Hugo" who's seen here guarding the owners' liquor cart!

The first night we walked around the corner to Garden Restaurant and Vinbar and had a lovely meal outside which finished with a pretty odd Danish dessert which consisted of buttermilk, crumbled almond cookies and berries in kind of a soupy mess. Tasted surprisingly good but wasn't exactly aesthetically pleasing!

Scenic views everywhere in this lovely city.

Tourists amassed to visit Tivoli Gardens.

One of many squares, this one near our flat.

The weather turned bad the following morning so we walked the mile or so to the National Museum of Denmark and had a huge intellectual dumping of information about Danish prehistory, Viking history and Danish medieval history. The museum is famous for its prehistory presentation in particular; a lot of prehistoric peoples buried their dead in bogs with valuable items placed with them. The bogs in turn provided an ideal preservation environment. This has created a rich source of archeological finds in Scandinavia. The museum does a good job at tying together what was happening all over Europe with what was happening in Scandinavia. The Viking exhibit presented a view of a “kinder, gentler” culture, making the point that most Vikings were small farmers, hunter/gatherers, and the raiding was just a bit of a sideshow! Ask the British about this and I'm certain they would be quick to remind us that this kindly people managed to conquer and occupy over half of England. Between the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde and the National Museum we feel we have a much more complete picture of the age of the Vikings. The Danes, in addition to their notorious raids on England, actually stayed and settled a wide swath of the middle of England and established many villages in an area called the Danelaw.

We then made a quick trip up to the Round Tower but as you can see the weather was abysmal. The top allows good views of the city and also has a couple of small exhibits; I confess we skipped the exhibit on kimonos!

A dismal day to visit the tower, but what the heck . . .

I had booked a late lunch table at Restaurant Schonnermanns, which has been around since 1877. It’s the premier place to go in Denmark to do traditional open-faced sandwiches and they are not open for dinner. It’s in a really cozy basement with low ceilings and has a large selection of open-faced sandwiches which you eat in courses and consume with aquavit. Dave actually thinks he went there for lunch in 1967 when he visited Copenhagen on a trip as a teenager with friends (and their mother.) Dave really enjoyed his smoked eel sandwich!

The venerable, lunch only, Schønnemann's.

Smørrebrød, Danish open faced sandwiches, along with the required aquavit.

On another day we rode our bikes over to see the Museum of Danish Resistance (WW2), which was more manageable and concise than our previous museum. The Danes actually DIDN’T resist that much so the title seems funny. The Museum had burnt down in 2013 and was rebuilt and the curators attempted to present a more nuanced point of view about how people behave in wartime. When Germany threatened to invade Denmark in 1940, Denmark’s government negotiated a treaty that allowed Denmark to keep itself as a sovereign nation. Denmark and Germany actually worked together for much of the war, with Germany importing much of Denmark’s agricultural foodstuffs as well as manufactured goods used to support Germany's war efforts. Denmark, in turn, imported key raw materials from Germany. The Danish government was overwhelmingly supported in its collaboration by the people through several election cycles. Only a small group of resisters existed, primarily students. Beginning in late 1942, when the USSR stopped the advance of Nazi Germany on the outskirts of Moscow it suddenly looked like Germany was vulnerable and resistance activities increased, but in pretty small ways. Discontent and resistance activities increased as the war dragged on and the Germans got more draconian in their actions against the Danes. The Danes - unlike other European countries - should be proud of their effort to save Danish Jews from deportation to concentration camps. Upcoming orders for deportation were leaked by a sympathetic German official and word was spread through the synagogues. The Danish resistance raised funds and organized fishing boats to transport 7600 Jews across the sea to Sweden, who agreed to accept all the Danish Jews. Only a few hundred Jews wound up being arrested and sent to the Theresienstadt Camp in the Czech Republic and even then, the Danish government exerted political pressure to make sure those arrested were not deported to death camps and most of those people survived the war.

We had a fun seafood dinner at Iluka - which was written up as a trendy cool restaurant- that included wonderful oysters, squid mousse, soft- shell crab and orange wine! (All the necessary food groups….). We sat next to a couple from Chicago and had a fun conversation about the latest sports drama at Northwestern University (Dave’s alma mater). We topped that off by having ice cream down in Nyhavn with everyone else out enjoying the extra summer daylight before the weather turned nasty again!

Smaller plates, elegantly prepared greet diners at Iluka.

We had had enough of Museums and the weather was terrible so one day we rode over and saw the new “Mission Impossible” (in English with Danish subtitles) at a huge cinema inside the city's biggest mall, Fisketorvette. While this was of admittedly dubious cultural value it was actually interesting to see Danes at play - or shopping, whatever- and the ride over let us see a lot of the City. We were worried about leaving our bikes there but we needn’t have been: the mall had a separate, safe, indoor cycle parking area with cameras! We tried a polse (Danish hotdog) which is a traditional form of Danish fast food- it was awful and we couldn’t finish it. Our first really bad Danish food.

We had issues finding the entrance to the mall, but once we did we were greeted with an expansive covered bike garage.

The mall. The hanging sculpture consists of a school of herring. We're in Denmark, so of course it does.

We decided that things ARE very expensive in Denmark. They charge for tap water (2.50 USD) and for bread in restaurants. Pretty much any casual food item at a cart or casual restaurant is 20 USD. A glass of wine or simple cocktail is 15 USD. There are definitely ways to economize if you wanted to; I said to Dave we would save a lot of money travelling if we quit drinking alcohol! We both laughed at the idea…..

Apropo of nothing, we were delighted to stumble across this marker memorializing the 2022 Grand Départ of the Tour de France, which began in Copenhagen.

Midway through our stay in Copenhagen we determined from a round of emails that friends of ours from Los Angeles were in Denmark and we had one overlapping night to meet up. Our friends Rand and Jane are from Los Angeles and they were just finishing up two weeks in Scandinavia. We had some karma working in our favor; three weeks ago SAS cancelled their original return flight so they had to spend an extra night in Copenhagen, which was the night we could get together. We met up at a cool dinner place (Rand is a foodie and had done the research) called Maple Casual. It was so fun to share details about our mutual trips.

Look at Jill, wearing her skirt, on her way to dinner. How very European of her!

Being able to meet our friends while on separate vacations was a real treat.

Tomorrow we are off to Sweden. We have loved Denmark. It is so orderly and civilized and that is reflected in the cycling! Several people have mentioned that Sweden is different than Denmark - which surprises us- but we shall see. We just figured out Danish kroner, and now we have to switch to Swedish krona.

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 415 km (258 miles)

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