Day 83: Copenhagen

K decided to stay in today, so I explored the open air museum by myself. It was a bit out of a walk after getting off the subway, but there were signs every now and then that kept me going in the right direction.

The open air "museum" was *huge*, much bigger than the one we saw in Oslo. I didn't get to explore *all* of it, but after a while, you have a pretty good grasp of the general lifestyle that's presented. I like seeing the old style homes, how it might look if modernized cities didn't crop up, and probably how it still looks in some of the countryside. This one felt more rustic and thus slightly more genuine than Oslo's open air museum. There were a good number of animals, too -- roosters just randomly walking on the path and sheep and pigs, among other animals.

Day 82: Copenhagen

Maybe the city's laid-back feel is rubbing off on us. After another late breakfast morning (past noon!), we headed out to the spiral tower. It's a church in which the second half of the tower spirals around the outside of the building, all the way to the top where you stop and turn back around because, well, there's no where else to go!



The interior of the tower before reaching the outside portion was sort of old-looking and scary in the hopefully-this-wood-stays-together way.

I remember the first time I saw sliding glass doors in metro stations during our Southeast Asia trip. They were *so* cool! We've since seen them in other places (though not the U.S. yet). Unfortunately, after seeing enough of the world, certain things that are interesting the first time no longer surprise or delight us when we see them again. However, Copenhagen does have cool metro interiors on some of its trains -- the chairs, dim lighting, and sliding glass doors give it a futuristic look.

The late afternoon was spent exploring Christiania, an autonomous community of about 800 residents. Every once in a while the government wants to close down the community but so far the resident have managed to keep it there. It was... different.

Copenhagen reminds me a little of Amsterdam. The overall vibe feels similar and the dedicated bike lanes (and bikes) everywhere probably contribute to that feeling of similarity. But, Copenhagen seems cleaner, less crowded, and happier. It also nice that there's much fewer tourists than Amsterdam ^-^

After a brief visit to the the Little Mermaid statue (Hans Christian Anderson was a Dane and apparently in the original, the mermaid dies in the end), we headed over to Tivoli, an amusement park. It had a slightly different feel from U.S. amusement parks though. Mainly, the rides aren't necessarily the central focus for everyone. There's a fee to enter the park but then each ride costs a certain number of extra ticket coupons (sort of like boardwalks or carnival rides in the U.S.). It seems like some people just go to the park to eat and watch the shows. Some people drop by to swing dance to a live band...


We didn't go on any rides, most of which were pretty toned down in comparison to other parks we've been to. Instead, we just walked around and watched some shows, which were fairly entertaining. Like other amusement parks, there's quite a few games here and there. We saw the standard 'claw grab' a number times, but with non-standard prizes; one had some huge stuffed animals and another had an ipod shuffle among the prizes!

We waited to see the water/light show on the pond at the end of the night, but it was an utter disappointment, not even close to Disneyland's Fantasia or Singapore Sentosa's show >_<

Day 81: Copenhagen

It was a pretty lazy day. I went out and bought breakfast at the supermarket and then we ate it before going out. Does it get any better than living near a yummy bakery? Yes, it does! That yummy bakery sells yummy custard danishes! It's the first time we've ever had a custard danish. Actually, the "danish" is called wienerbrod here, literally "Vienna bread" ^-^

As usual, we explored most of the city on foot today, ending at the Nyhavn docks for a canal tour.

Copenhagen feels like a laid-back city. Maybe it was seeing all the locals out and about. Today *is* a Tuesday, isn't it? We're pretty sure they were locals, not tourists, since we saw many just hanging out on the Nyhavn dock drinking beer and chatting. (The tourists are all sitting in the restaurants thinking that's the way to fit in with the locals, but the locals are all outside!) This atmosphere of not rushing anywhere, just enjoying the warm, sunny day wasn't just at Nyhavn; it was all around different areas of the city.

And yes, it was *warm and sunny*. We're feeling ever so slightly disappointed that he the Scandinavian weather's not living up to our expectations. (Our days in Oslo and Bergen were sunny, too.)

Day 80: Bergen

Our "early" day today started at 10:30 at the Fish Market. The market sort of confused me. I felt like they catered to the tourists as well, rather than just the locals. And then sometimes I wondered whether it was a market *for* tourists, but that didn't make sense at all because what tourist would buy lots of fresh fish?

We got to try a little bit of whale at the market! It was interesting, but I don't think I'm a fan of whale. We tried samples at two different stalls. The one from the first stall tasted "bloodier" whereas the second one was slightly milder.

Historical walking tour of the small preserved part of Bergen near the harbor. The area called Bryggen has rebuilt buildings from the 14th to 16th centuries, from when Bergen was part of the powerful Hanseatic trading empire. Hanseatic? I only had a slight feeling of "I think I've heard that word somewhere" before arriving in Bergen (not very strong with the history thing =/). It was basically a very wealthy trade monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe all the way to the Baltics.

The buildings are "rebuilt" ones because most of the area had already burned down many times over! I think it was something like six or seven times (maybe more?). There was this cool soil cross-section in the Bryggens Museum where you could see that people just kept on building right over the remains of the previous fire, and with wood each time, again!

Our last stop of the day was the Floibanen viewpoint over the city...


I then went to the supermarket to spend our last NOK (minus bus fare). It's always a bit of a headache when I do it, trying to use every last coin to buy things that I would buy anyways sometime. This time around we messed up somewhere along the way, because when we got to the bus, we realized we were 5 NOK short of the fare. Though the driver wouldn't accept our 1 EUR coin (which was a brilliant exchange rate being that 1 EUR > 8 NOK), someone on the bus traded with us so we could pay our fare and use up all our krone. Otherwise, we would have had to use our credit card for one of the fares and then have leftover krone.

The Bergen to Copenhagen flight had a really cute CGI video giving all the usual safety procedures. Airline: SAS.

We arrived in Copenhagen a little after 7:30pm. It was the first time we've ever had the screen in the baggage area alert us that our luggage would be late -- it would be 15 minutes before the luggage from the flight was to start appearing.

After finally grabbing our luggage, we got on the subway, stopped at a supermarket to pick up some food, and showed up at our new "home". We're staying in a room in this nice lady's apartment/house. The entrance goes to four doors: our room, the shared bathroom (us and her), and two doors to her side of the apartment.