Nina and I just got back from visiting my sister, who's taking a semester abroad in Copenhagen right now. She's shaping up to be quite the math genius, much to the surprise of her decidedly non-quantitative family (myself included), and so what better place to study abroad than the hometown of, uh, Niels Bohr? She's taking a breather on the math stuff right now, though -- her emails are full of rave reviews of the movies she's watching in her contemporary Danish cinema class.
The last (and first) time I went to Europe was three years ago. At the time, I was getting through a bit of a rough patch in my life and had resolved to just kind of throw myself into the trip and try to have an adventure. I'd brought my iPod with me and I was listening to the Pogues album Tom'd just bought me: Their first, Red Roses For Me. I kept listening to the song "Streams Of Whiskey," and it became kind of emblematic of the trip for me -- not insofar as I drank much whiskey, mind you (it was more of a wine-and-Unicum kind of holiday) but in Shane MacGowan's stoic disregard for misery. There's a video for that song where he's dancing a kind of jig amidst the ruined bricks of a factory, and that image is what I've come to associate with the sight of white clouds in an early morning sky out the window of an airplane and unfamiliar, better-than-average airport food.
The main leg of our flight was about seven hours, followed by an intra-European puddle-hopper. Nina was excited about our early morning stopover in Berlin -- more excited, even, than getting to see Denmark: She'd spent weeks asking her European and Internet friends about breakfast spots near the airport. Unfortunately, Air Berlin's second transatlantic flight (ever) was safe but not punctual, and so we got in to Tegel somewhat later than we'd planned. Breakfast, at least the way Nina'd sketched it out, was out of the question, but we still had a few hours to kill. The guy at the tourism desk suggested (in perfect English) that we hop the airport shuttle to the zoo. "I love it," he said. So that's what we did, arriving in the pale and early damp at gates of the Berlin Zoo. We bought our passes and embarked on a whirlwind tour. It being a weekday morning, the zoo was mostly empty. A Bengal Tiger lounged, yawning, in a hammock. Some reluctant elephants huddled in the chilly air near the entrance to their enclosure. We didn't linger too long in any one place except for the penguin tank, where some kids with the air of schoolchildren playing hooky -- which is what they were, maybe -- were gathered. The enclosure was structured such that there was barely any space between us and the penguins. They waddled and dove, oblivious to the fact that we were inches away. We could have almost grabbed one and run it into the end zone, American football-style. Anxious about making our connection, I resisted the urge. We rode back to the airport in an eerily-silent all-electric taxi, and then waited a good two hours for the flight to Copenhagen.
We were staying at the Saga Hotel, a sort of hostel / converted SRO about a block from the train station. Our room was small and we had to use a communal bathroom, but it was clean and had a picturesque of Colbjørnsensgade. And the food! We got a free breakfast every morning, which we could assemble ourselves from a regenerating array of breads, liverwurst, cheese, jam, granola, and yogurt. All mixed together -- which you would think would be gross but was actually delicious.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was drizzling and chilly when we got into the central Copenhagen rail station. We were exhausted, so before getting in touch with my sister we lay down for a little nap. It was getting dark by the time were rested and managed to get Nina's GSM phone working. We made plans to meet up with my sister the next day and asked what we should do to occupy ourselves in the interim. "Well," she said, "you could go to Strøget." It was thus that we learned some of our first lessons about Denmark. Strøget is sort of the main drag in Copenhagen, maybe the equivalent of Broadway or Madison Ave. in terms of its retail offerings. They've got Gucci and McDonald's franchises, but not much of anything, you know, interesting. Ultimately we stepped inside of one of the oddly ubiquitous 7-11s, which was were we learned another lesson about Denmark: Danes love 7-11s, and 7-11s in Denmark are actually high-end gourmet delis, with more in common with, say, a Dean & Deluca than with, well, a 7-11. We bought some thin, dark bread, some pre-sliced cheese, and some cured sausage, but that nearly used up our allotment of kroners for the day. It started to rain hard. We retreated to the safety of our room and watched Danish TV while making gringo smørrebrød. It got late, but I wasn't sleepy, and I was hungry but didn't want to eat any more salami. So I dragged Nina out of bed and hit Strøget again. My sister'd recommended falafel as a meal for a traveler on a budget and since every other place in town shut its doors at 9 o'clock, we wound up sitting at a table at Strogshawarma on Frederiksberggade. I shit you not when I tell you that they had the best falafel I've ever had. It was spicy and aromatic and weird, babies, like they'd tossed it in a bunch of cumin and cinnamon and god knows what else. Take a note, Maoz. Copenhagen has the ill falafel.
The next day the rain was gone. My sister met us at the hotel and took us on a walk through Copenhagen. Our first stop was at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, where we sat on a bench drinking (in public!) the cans of beer she'd brought us, as well as some funny little cured cocktail weenie sausages and these delicious chocolate-covered marshmallow candies unfortunately named Skum Bananer. After we ate, she walked us back towards the center of Copenhagen, to the Radhuspladsen, the big plaza where Stroeg begins. There's a big bronze fountain there, corroded blue-green, with a statue of a bull fighting a sea dragon as its centerpiece. We spent a long time admiring it and taking pictures from different angles, in part because of how grotesque it was -- the bulging eyes of both combatants, the dragon's spiraling tail. It wasn't easy to see where the bull ended and the dragon began. My sister dropped us off there to go finish up her exams, and we made our way to the Dansk Design Museet, the Danish design museum. They had two exhibits, one on the top floor about encouraging sustainability through design, and a permanent installation in the basement that traced the emergence and evolution of Danish design as distinct among other design traditions. For each decade of the 20th century, they had objects that characterized the design philosophy of the period; the zeitgeist via chairs, phones, and urinary catheters. What they didn't have, a little frustratingly, was any frame for people like me who are a little shaky on what "design" is in the first place. Maybe it's like poetry: If an aspect of an object cues the user that a designer was at work, well, then, that's design.
The next day we hit up the National Museum of Denmark, a huge arts and sciences museum with a focus on Danish natural history. We decided to let the place play to its strengths -- which was not a mistake, as it turned out, because holy shit did they have hell of awesome artifacts. I'm not gonna lie, most of what I read didn't stick, but the sheer number of objects (and honest-to-god preserved human bodies) on display was staggering -- and made possible by the unique ecological features of Northern Europe (bogs) and the convenient cultural traditions of early civilizations in the area (throw everything into the bog). They had fragments of weapons and jewelry and combinations of the two, like the circular metal "belt ornaments" that were apparently never not in style, arrayed chronologically, room after room, for hundreds of years. There were entire vehicles (a chariot, a warship) that had been retrieved from the bogs with their cargo and drivers intact. There were material records of military victories (plundered loot) and defeats (trash left behind by invading armies), births, deaths. It was truly a thing to behold.
My sister met us again later and took us on a ride on the metro (fast, clean, nearly silent) under the Havnebadet to Christianshavn where we took a walk through the "Free City" of Christiania. Christiania's a kind of large-scale punkhouse / squat that occupies about three square city blocks, primarily including some big warehouse-style buildings that used to be army barracks. They don't pay sales tax and they're semi-allowed to sell drugs in a big open-air market, but they also get raided periodically by the Copenhagen police. For that reason, among others, the denizens of Christiania are extremely sensitive about picture-taking. Not that I was particularly inclined to snap any photos: More power to 'em -- and I certainly don't claim any familiarity with the political issues at play -- but I wasn't aching to buy any of the dusty cubes of hashish being hawked on their main street, and everyone I saw there looked like Europe's ubiquitous version of The Eternal Hippie: Bad skin, dreadlocks, leather vest with no shirt. We walked around sloping green that leads from Christiania to the Stadsgraven, and then we left.
We were looking for a pastry to bring to my sister's host family when we met them for dinner that evening. Left to my own devices I might have brought Danishes, or as they call them in Denmark, wienerbrød. My American readers will understand when I say that I've always thought of Danishes as the pastry of last resort -- soggy; sticky in a bad way; filled with sugary, translucent goo. I shouldn't be surprised that "real" Danishes are a whole different story. They're better in every possible way. I could eat a dozen of them in a sitting. I had at least three of them a day every day we were in Copenhagen. Luckily my sister pointed out that bringing wienerbrød to Danes would be coals to, well, you know. So we settled on some kind of fruit tart. It was fine. Gift in tow, we walked along the banks of the canal until we came to the Royal Library of Copenhagen, which is also known as The Black Diamond, on account of the formidable angle of the black glass that forms the exterior of the "new" part of the library. There's an "old" wood-and-brick library in there, too, partially enveloped by the newer building, the way Olin Library at old Wes. U is, and we spent some time sitting there and catching our breath.
That evening we made the trip out to the suburbs for dinner. My sister's hosts were gracious and charming, and their house was full of light and artwork they'd made themselves. Although it was almost June, it was still pretty chilly out, and yet their garden was full of fruit and flowers. They even had a lemon tree with, I noted with a twinge of envy, actual lemons dangling from its branches. "Let it experience a frost," suggested my sister's host father, when I complained that my tree was barren. They had a very cute and friendly dog, a kind of Basset Hound, I think, named Nukka, who had something wrong with her butt or genitals. She kept scooting her rear parts around on the patio flagstones.
Friday we struck out on our own. We wanted to go see visit the ruins of Christiansborg Castle, in all of its incarnations -- the castle and the structures that preceded / succeeded were burned and destroyed several times over, and each time the new buildings were built on top. The entrance to the museum is by the Danish parliament building and it took us some time to distinguish the two. In the process, we accidentally wandered inside what turned out to be the royal stables. I'm not sure if we were supposed to be there. There were no attendants, there was no signage, just midday sun streaming through the small windows above the horses' pens and lighting up a sea of dust motes. We walked up and down the central corridor, looking in on the giant, silent horses. Some of them seemed friendly and put their noses over the bars to be petted, others kept to the backs of their pens and chomped hay. Getting to touch enormous horses almost overshadowed the castle ruins, but the site was pretty amazing. Your ticket bought you entry via a small and unadorned hatchway to what felt like a raw archaeological dig. The centerpiece of the site was the set of original stone fortifications (plus wells, ovens, shit shutes) from Absalon's Castle, the structure that became Christianborg. And there were artifacts, structural bits, and things to read about the first two versions of the palace that were destroyed by fire, both times by poorly-designed stoves.
We followed that up with a guided tour of the canals. It was very relaxing, bobbing up and down in the boat, staring up at the fronts narrow, pastel-colored homes that lined the canal. It was so relaxing that I fell asleep a little bit.
And as I think is often the case, we found one of the coolest things on the last day of our trip. We'd been resistant to the idea of visiting Tivoli Gardens, the city block-sized theme park that was around the corner from our hotel, in part because it was pretty darn expensive, but also because we didn't think it had anything to offer us. We could see a couple of the rides from our hotel room window -- a ferris wheel and something that looked like an oil derrick -- but walking by the place it just looked like a park, albeit one that cost the equivalent of $25 to enjoy. Nonetheless, on Friday night we yielded to the suggestions of all the people who told us to do it. Tivoli Gardens is kind of what it sounds like, a theme park in the classical mode, part technological wonder; part manicured, private green-space. At the center of the park, there was a big open space with a stage, and it was packed with people, thousands of them. There was a show going on! From what I could tell it was the northern European Justin Timberlake -- a dude wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, and sneakers singing and dancing around the stage. We couldn't understand a word of it, but the Danes were going apeshit for him, so much so that the rest of the park was almost empty. We were too chicken to ride the rides, which promised stomach-churning levels of inertia, but we continued to explore the park, clomping across footbridges, ducking into doorways, and poking around the hedges. Some of the regions of the park seemed geographically themed: There was an orientalist fantasy version of the far east -- the Dragon Boat lake, all pagoda and gold filigree; and the middle east was represented, too, I think, by an enormous minaret-bedecked building that housed a restaurant and a dance club. There was no U.S.A. Just as well -- we were on our way back in the morning.
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