Copenhagen

CHAPTER 15

Our journey from Germany to Denmark took an unexpected twist.  We had anticipated a leisurely train ride across the flat expanses of the Jutland Peninsula, but were treated instead to a leisurely ferry ride across the Fehmarn Belt- a wide straight separating the various islands of the two countries.  To our surprise, the conductor on the train we had boarded in Hamburg, and expected to disembark in Copenhagen, announced that we all needed to get off two hours into our four and a half hour trip.  Without our noticing it, the train had seamlessly rolled into the belly of a waiting ferry specially equipped with iron rails.  We grabbed our camera bags and rushed to the top deck to get the best view of the ship leaving port.

On the other side, the passengers diligently returned to their seats in the rail cars, and an hour and a half later we glided into Copenhagen Central where Jake and Jackie were waiting for us just after their own arrival, via the airport, from London.

We made short work of our bags, handing them off to our BnB host Boris, who kindly ferried them to his guesthouse, while letting us proceed immediately into the brightly painted chaos of the Nyhavn Canal, the social and historical heart of Copenhagen.  A few cans of gold plated Tuborg beer, and then right onto a scenic water taxi tour of old Kobenhavn.

We followed up the canal tour with a two-wheeled tour the next day- stopping at the famous Tivoli Gardens (think a much older version of Elitch’s), but which was sadly closed for the season, and then a stop at Copenhagen’s other “playground” of sorts: Christiania, an illegal squatter community of free-loving hippies and hard core drug addicts.  Not typically a place you would find us, but in the sin bleaching rays of the mid-morning sun, we felt comfortable, or at least not in danger of getting shived by a crack dealer taking our prudence for an insult, and took the opportunity to walk around and get a little insight into this, let’s say, alternative way of living.