Copenhagen

So many reasons to come to Copenhagen:  Rob doing a 3 day “Cycle Friendly Cities” Masterclass; we’ve always wanted to come to Denmark and leaving the best to last, our daughter Zoe will begin her official “gap-year” travels with us for a few weeks.

Flying into Copenhagen.

If you arrive in Copenhagen by plane you are greeted with the great sight of wind turbines in the sea, the huge bridge that links Denmark and Sweden, and the new waste management and energy plant which is using residual waste to produce electricity and district hot water. The whole picture gives you an instant impression of “smartness”.

Once on the ground we had one of those rocky starts that can happen in any city.  While we’ve mainly been travelling around Europe by train, we flew from Porto to Copenhagen, and though we don’t usually catch taxis to our accommodation, it was getting late.  Our taxi driver did made good copy, for instance noticing that it was still really light at 9.30 pm, Alex chirpily asked him “So when does it get dark?”,   a reply came in a  resentful bored tone:  “I can’t remember”.  It could have been hilarious but we were tired so we fell silent, defeated by the depressive air inside the cab.  He dropped us on a busy road in the drizzle saying “I can’t stop here, you’ll have to get out”.

Our apartment, right near Tivoli Gardens,  was a great design, cross ventilated with generous rooms with views into courtyards with trees on either side.

One downside, other than incredibly noisy construction going on in courtyard, there were no blinds or curtains in our bedroom. We arrived on the longest day of the year and we’re so far north that it doesn’t really get dark till after 11pm and starts getting light around 3.30am.  Usually the longest day is celebrated with parties and bonfires in various locations around the city. This year the summer has been unseasonally dry and there was a fire ban in place for the first time anyone could remember.

But morning came – daughter Zoe arrived and all was right with world.

First stop – food markets at Torvehallerne.

Zoe had a much nicer entry to Copenhagen because she was met at the airport by our friends Anne-Marie Dalseg and Ole Neustrup. Ole has been deputy Danish Ambassador for the past 5 years in Canberra and their flight arrived almost the same time as Zoe’s.  Anne-Marie and Ole really threw themselves into Canberra life.  Anne-Marie, worked as a medical specialist, joined the bushwalking club, sang in 3 choirs, studied and gained new qualifications in Kinesiology!  Ole rode his bike to work everyday, was a great diplomat (we can’t list all his achievements as that would not be diplomatic, but they are many).   They both came to Folk Festivals, attended films, made many Canberra friends and joined us at Toms Crescent for festive occasions.

Returning home they must have been exhausted,  but in true Ole and Anne-Marie style they insisted on being our tour guides and cooking us typical Danish food.  We can’t thank them enough, it made our trip.

We talked with Anne-Marie about her farewell observations on a Facebook post.  She said she would miss so much about Australia – except for the slow internet speeds and how rude politicians are to each other, which she found to be such a contrast to how friendly Australians are.

 

Ole and Anne-Marie kindly invited us into their home for a traditional Danish family meal, delicious Frikadeller (pork meatballs) and Danish potato salad, with fresh in-season Danish strawberries. Yum. Also catered for the young vegetarians of both families. They live in a lovely light filled apartment, full of Australian mementos, including a kangaroo skin on one chair.

They’ve decided not to have a car, as they are located in a beautiful district well served by shops, parks, bikeways and public transport. The whole area had a fantastic lively feel about it, generally with apartment buildings of around 5 – 6 stories, and areas with shops and restaurants at street level.

Their gracious apartment is organised through a co-op system, common in Denmark.  Multiple apartment blocks surround an internal courtyard which has been opened up so that all can share the space.

Knowing Rob’s interest in waste management, Ole was keen to show some of the new systems for different waste streams.  Some of this has been introduced in the five years that Ole and Anna-Marie have been in Australia and they are having to get used to it.

Their waste is now separated into 10 waste streams

• bio waste
• paper
• cardboard
• plastics (other than bottles with deposit return system)
• metal
• glass bottles and jars
• residual waste (converted to electricity and district heating)
• electronic waste
• hazardous waste
• bulky waste / wood

Each of the streams are kept separately in their apartment, and they are also stored in shared bins in the courtyard. The people who provide municipal waste service come into the courtyard through locked doors and wheel the bins though a passageway onto the street for collection.

It’s wonderful to see such an intensive level of recycling. It does however require the space for the separate streams and a much more labour intensive level of service by the local authorities that we are used to providing.  The population density here would make the whole system more made more cost effective.

Summer comes and the town comes out to party.

 

Our visit also coincided with The World Cup, with Denmark at that stage still in the competition.  So bars were extra full.

The whole town was alive, with deck chairs on the harbour, pop-up cafes, craft beers and food vans.  The harbour is now clean enough to swim and people were taking afternoon swims.

There’s certainly a drinking culture and in contrast to home, lots of people walking around the streets with bottles of beer, even a young woman cycling with a champagne glass. One downside there is lots of broken glass.

Frederiksborg Castle

A touch of Danish Fairyland, now a museum and National Portrait Gallery.  There was also an exhibition by Australian portrait artist  – Ralph Heimans who has done portraits of Princess Mary and Fred.  It was lovely to walk into a Danish castle and see portraits of Quentin Bryce, Michael Kirby and Tom Uren along with Danish Royalty and Liz and Phil.   We also loved seeing the Danish portraits, including Jorn Utzen, the Andy Warhol of The Danish Queen.

Louisiana

No doubt one of the most beautiful art galleries and sculpture parks.  Views across the sea to Sweden only interrupted by sculptures by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder and more.  The sky was blue, the sea looked inviting, the gardens were shady and green. The galleries housing the most beautiful modern collections:  Kandinsky, Stella, Picasso, Mondrian, Delaunay.  We also really loved the work of Danish artist Asger Jorn a central figure in 20^th century Danish art.

Opening of installations at Copenhagen Contemporary

While Rob was doing his Masterclass, Alex and Zoe visited the Glyptoteket Museum which is right next to Tivoli Gardens near our apartment.  The entrance is into a gorgeous winter garden, so stylish and inviting.  It had a great exhibition of French artists and we also loved the Danish collection which gave us a great sweep of history.  Only bug bear is Danish Collection did not have English descriptions.  Nevertheless we loved our visit and our lunch in the winter garden.

Alex and Zoe also did the tourist thing and took a boat trip around the canals and harbour.  It was a hot day and many Danes were diving in to the water, or out in boats “Go Boat”, just celebrating summer.

 

Freetown Christiana

We also visited the famous Freetown Christiania. The hippy community right near centre of Copenhagen on what was once defence land.   It was a Monday, so many of the cafes and galleries weren’t open.  Not closed were the guys selling blocks of hash and bags of skunk (apparently these guys are more connected with bikie gangs than peace and love)  We actually got a bad vibe from the place, and made our way through the village as quickly as possible.  Alex stopped to take a photo of one of the entrances only to have Zoe urge her to move along as she hadn’t noticed a group of guys one in handcuffs.  A police van pulled up, pulled a black hood over the handcuffed guy and drove off.  It was an experience.

Bikes everywhere.

There is such good bike infrastructure and so many people on bikes, in fact over half the trips made in Copenhagen are on bike!  Rob will go into more detail in a separate blog on his Masterclass on bike friendly urban places.  The bikes really do rule in Copenhagen and you risk life and limb if you stray onto the bike paths.  It was incredible to see the mass of bikes tied up outside the railways stations and also when we went to an exhibition opening in an old industrial area some way out of town.

Tivoli Gardens

The Tivoli Gardens were right near our apartment. Tivoli is like a child’s fairground dream come true.  Even better than Willy Wonka had imagined.  Fountains, huge lollipops,  toffee apples, delicious ice creams, little trains, boats on lakes, scary roller coasters.  Zoe talked Alex into one of the more tamer rides (still really scary).  Then it was toffee apples and chocolate licorice.

 

 

We sat down on the grass in front of the stage with the Friday night crowd which was getting rowdy.  The night’s concert included Norwegian band Aha famous for their song “Take On Me”.  As more and more Danish beer was imbibed, Alex and Zoe headed home, leaving Rob to mesh with the crowd.  (He followed soon after). The Danes had out-partied us.

 

Smart

Tertiary education is free.  It’s a small country but is smart with technology, exchange of knowledge, diplomacy and trading.

 

We loved Copenhagen, it just felt normal – sure it was summer with the endless nights and hot weather.  We tried to imagine the winter where its dark on your way to work and dark on the way home.

From Copenhagen to Sweden across “The Bridge”.

Next blog, Sweden and the overnight ferry to Poland.