Copenhagen

The last weekend in April (three weeks ago), we took a trip up to Copenhagen, Denmark, which will likely be our only travel into the Nordic countries. As you'll see in later posts, a lot has happened in those three weeks, so my memory may not be perfect, but here goes nothing...

A few months back, probably around February, our friends Eric and Anne Yurkovich asked if we'd be interested in going to Copenhagen with them, since they'd found some cheap airfare. We of course accepted. Now we've talked about the Yurkovich's a couple of times before, but since we spent the weekend together, and because of the eerie connections we have, they probably warrant a full explanation.

We met in NYC at the Global Exchange Program orientation last June, when they happened to sit right next to us in the large conference room. As it turns out, they are both from Kansas City, and went to high school in Shawnee Mission. So, we had a lot to talk about and ended up "hitting it off", I guess. We've hung out quite a bit since we got here to London, and since have found out the following:

1. Eric's main client in KC, Garmin, is across the street from where Jenna and I went to Jr. High and High School.

2. Eric's Mom is a principal at one of the Olathe Jr. High schools, and knows Jenna's mom, who teaches at a different Jr. High in the district.

3. In fact, as it turns out, Jenna's mom and Eric's mom went to high school together in Shawnee Mission, and knew each other back then.

4. Anne went to college at K-State, where she worked at Payless (corporate, not one of the stores). There, she worked with my cousin (in law) Erin White, and apparently they knew each other pretty well.

5. Also, Jenna's brother Hesse and Eric's brother both live in Omaha and as far as we know they do not know each other, but they very well could.

6. Worst of all, we seem to dress alike (as you'll see in the photos). In Vienna, Eric and I both showed up in long sleeve gray t-shirts. Day one in Copenhagen was blue long sleeve t-shirts. Also, day one in Copenhagen, Jenna and Anne both wore jeans, hot pink shirt, black jacket/sweater over the pink shirt, and the same pair of Puma tennis shoes. All of this was of course unplanned.

So anyway, "small world" seems like an understatement, but enough of that and back to the travelling:

Friday, April 24th

We flew out of London on Friday night, as all of the early Saturday flights were at airports that we couldn't get to in time without a car. It was a little annoying to have to pay for the extra night in the hotel, but we actually ended up appreciating it, because we didn't have to do our standard "up at 4:30 am" to catch a flight. Since we got in late, we just went straight to the hotel, the Cabinn Scandanavia. As in a cabin:

Saturday, April 25th

Since Eric and Anne do have a car (he's actually working in one of the London suburb offices, and needs a car for work), they were able to catch the early morning flight, so they didn't get in until around 11:00am. With our free time, Jenna and I enjoyed a nice danish for breakfast (since we're in Denmark!), and went to the National Museum. This is something that was lower on the list of things to see, and we didn't think we'd have time for it, so the 4 of us had decided not to go. Since Jenna and I had about an hour, though, and it was free, we stopped in. They had a lot of artifacts from the early Nordic days (more spear and arrow heads than I've ever seen). In all it wasn't super impressive (we didn't take a single picture), but was a nice way to spend the hour.

We met up with the Yurkovich's and started off on our tour of the city. We first went down the main shopping street Stroget, which had a lot of clothing stores and eateries. We were surprised at the American influence that we saw in the city, which was probably more than we've seen anywhere else in Europe. Within the first block, we passed McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and TWO 7-Elevens!

This main drag led us to Nyhavn, which was once the seedy waterfront neighborhood filled with drunken sailors and prostitutes. It is now a chic waterfront neighborhood with trendy outdoor restaurants. We stopped here for a traditional open faced sandwich, called smorrebrod. It is basically a piece of bread with anything you can imagine on top. Traditionally I think they do some kind of fish, but from what we've read there are literally hundreds of different exotic options. We went away full and satisfied.

Our next stop was to head off for a boat tour of the city, where we saw most of the major sites, including the opera house, the palace, the back of the famous Little Mermaid statue, and the place named the Best Spot for a First Date in the city - the Royal Library (LAME!).

After the tour, we decided to see some of these sites up closer (or from the front), so we had a nice stroll through most of the city.

By doing this, we ended up at the far end of town, and thought it would be nice to have a bike ride back (bike riding is huge here). The city has a free bike rental program, where a ~$4 coin unlocks a cheap-o bike from a stand, which you get back when you lock back up.

We took these bikes back into the main part of the city, and decided to make the trip out to Christianhavn. This is a small community just outside the central part of the city, and was set up in the 70s by a bunch of hippies. They basically thrived there over 30 years, and most of their activities (drugs, etc) were ignored by authorities. We'd heard that it had been cleaned up a bit recently, so we gave it a try. This was a huge mistake. We made it in about 50 yards before we decided that it was still not clean enough, and we made a u-turn. In the five minutes or so that we were there our bikes, which we'd left at the entrance, had of course been stolen, leaving us $8 lighter in the pocket. We took the subway back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out to dinner at the Tivoli.

The Tivoli is the world's second oldest amusement park, and is located directly in the center of town (the oldest is actually in a town just north of Copenhagen). There are a few rides, a few restaurants, and some carnival games. Seemed like a mini version of the Texas State Fair, but with more nice restaurants, less fried food, and a lot less fat Texans. We'd heard that the food there was the best in the city, so we ate at one of the places there and walked around a while. It was quite interesting and a fun environment, we were a little scared to ride the oldest operating roller coaster, so we stayed on the ground and ate Cold Stone instead (which may have been the highlight of the trip).

Sunday, April 26th

We got up relatively early and started our day by taking a tour of the Carlsberg Beer Brewery. This beer is pretty big in the UK, but since we're not exactly big drinkers, we'd never heard of it prior to moving over here. As we soon learned, it was started in the city, became big when the king ordered that everyone drink only beer, as the water wasn't potable, and is today one of the largest manufacturers in the world. The tour was interesting, although you couldn't see the working brewery, so it was more of a historical tour. The best parts were the beer bottle collection (they have the largest in the world, with over 20,000 different unopened bottles), and the fact that there were very few workers, so we had free reign to do stuff that I'm sure was not allowed.

After the tour, we took a train up to Helsingor, which is an hour outside the city and home to Kronborg Castle. To all of us, it is better known as Elsinore Castle. Still not following??? Apparently you aren't up on your Shakespeare (like us). This castle was the setting for the play, Hamlet. We were too cheap to pay the entrance fee, so we walked around the grounds, took some photos, and enjoyed some nice views of the countryside and of Sweden, which can be seen just across from the castle.

We made it back into town and had a few more hours to blow before our flights, so we went to the other place we weren't planning on, the Rosenborg Castle. This, again, we didn't actually go into, but we walked around the gardens took some pictures, and realized that we're too old to climb a tree. Upon this discovery, we said goodbye to the city, and headed to the airport for the flight home.

We had a great weekend. We were so glad that Eric and Anne found the cheap flights and came up with the idea to go there. It was a lot of fun to travel with them. It was nice for Jenna to have someone to chat with while the men would go off and take all of their pictures. We had a fabulous time and were glad we made the decision to go to Copenhagen.