“​Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen..."

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Copenhagen

 

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After a bit of a lazy start and some proper Danish bacon (well, it was bacon cooked in Denmark. May well have come from a pig in South America for all we know), it was time to grab some bikes and hit the road. Meg had made her opinion felt about her clown bike yesterday, and I don’t think it got any better after a night’s sleep either. It reminded me of one of those bikes at a fair where it steered in the opposite direction, but considering I was on a bike for giants, no-one was feeling particularly relaxed cycling around. Plus, the added consideration for the complicated road rules of Denmark. Being both used to China cycling rules (i.e. none whatsoever), it was quite a shock when Christine kept stopping at red lights, letting pedestrians cross, and on occasions even indicating to fellow road users that she was planning on turning or stopping.

 

Copenhagen is a great city. Like most good cities it is built along a river, and there’s something very cool about crossing bridges and cycling along the waterfront. It has some very cool architecture, both modern and old, but with no obvious skyrise glass buildings (which I only think look good amongst other skyrise glass buildings). We stopped at a couple of design museums, a funfair and the famous Little Mermaid statue - thankfully we had read a bit of lonely planet on the way, so knew not to expect to be blown away. And we weren’t. Pretty much a small statue on a rock, at the water’s edge. If it wasn’t so famous, you could pretty much avoid it. Is it ironic that Hans Christian Anderson also wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes..?

Christine was doing a grand job of guiding us around, with the stress of our demands to see cool stuff whilst not getting lost, whilst clutching a map, in a city she hasn’t spent all that long in.

I would love to live for a little while here. It has some great ‘warehouse’ type areas to live in, with the kind of grand 5-6 story apartment blocks that you find in Paris, Rome, etc, but interspersed with Scandy-looking modern buildings, with everything within cycling distance, amongst chilled out Danish people. The only downside is that I would be out of my depth looks-wise. The Danish girls are all tall, blonde and good looking. And the Danish guys are all tall, tanned, with good beards and the ability to carry off wearing glasses. I would have no chance at befriending any men, nor attracting any women.