I arrived in Copenhagen on Thursday night, still exhausted from just coming back from Dublin on Tuesday, and met Lauren and her hostdad and hostbrother at the airport. Her host family was very nice for offering to pick me put, but I was surprised to find they spoke Danish, not Dutch. Even though I’ve been taking Dutch since I’ve been here and I’m awful at it, I could tell Danish was similar in the sense that it was hard to pronounce and sounded similarly ridiculous.
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| me and Lauren |
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| Nyhvan |
On Friday I joined Lauren and her host family to play a few games at the bowling ally. I of course was awful, but it was a nice chance to get to know the rest of the family. I found out the mother was a schoolteacher, the father was some sort of electrician, and they also had a teenage daughter along with the son who was 8. After the bowling trip Lauren and I went off to the city. My first impression of the city was that it didn’t feel like I was in a different country. It reminded me of an American city with the traffic, but with a twist of the Netherlands with its main shopping street, bicycle lanes, and of course the rain. I found myself comparing Copenhagen a lot to Amsterdam while I was there; I think that means I’m becoming attached and strongly biased towards Amsterdam. We spent the rest of the day in the city. After seeing the royal palace and Nyhavn (which is similar to the canal streets in Amsterdam but doesn’t do it justice) we headed into Tivoli.
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| Tivoli |
Tivoli is basically an amusement park in the center of the city. There were rides, two stages (an interpretive dance show was featured which was kind of weird but kind of cool), and booths and stands everywhere. It was also all decorated with orange lights and pumpkins for Halloween, which was surprising because European’s don’t really celebrate the holiday as we do. I even asked Lauren’s host family about how they celebrated it, and Malmis (the son) said it wasn’t normal for kids to dress up in costume. But Tivoli was great and even though it was pouring the entire night I couldn’t get enough of the Halloween spirit.
On Saturday Lauren and I decided to take the train through the underwater tunnel and over the bridge to Malmo, Sweden for the day. When we got there we were surprised how small the city was and ended up seeing almost everything there was. Sadly that’s not much of an accomplishment because the city was so tiny! But we did end up seeing the “castle” and walking around the King’s garden. Unfortunately since it was mid October the flowers weren’t in bloom, but if they were I’m sure the garden would have been beautiful. After a day of sightseeing in Sweden we got back on the train and 45 minuets later we were in Copenhagen.
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| The castle in Malmo |
My last day in Copenhagen ended with some more touristy things. Lauren took me to the Kastellet Military Barracks as well as Christiana. I found the military barracks to be ironic because the Danes built the land in the shape of a star as a complex military strategy, however once the first few bombs hit they surrendered. We then went to Christiana and on the way saw the Church of Our Savior, which has a spiral gold tower famous to tourists. I would have liked to have seen the Little Mermaid statue, but she's in China for the World Expo until December. Upon leaving Copenhagen I made a final assessment of the city and decided that I liked it, didn’t love it, but was happy I ended up going.
