Sat, 16 Aug 2003

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 12:40 CEST 21/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Danmark/Danmark 2 ( all photos )

København ( 33 photos )
(Continued from Sverige 2).
Getting used to the Danish road signs again, we picked a random entrance into København (Copenhagen in English), and stumbled across exactly what we were looking for purely by luck - another Autocamper place, located just as conveniently as the one in Stockholm was, this time near Fisketorvet (old fish market, now modern shopping centre).
After chatting to the amusing attendant at the Autocamper for a while, he showed us where to get the bus into town. But after the walk around Stockholm, this was going to be nothing at all. So, map and GPS again in hand, we wandered off in search of the fabled free bikes you can use in the city for a small deposit. However, the combination of perfect hot weather, summer and Saturday meant that these were well-and-truly spoken for, leaving us on foot. No real problem, but would have been nice for a change.
We walked through an industrial area (in fact, looking back, much of the city has that feel) past the Hovedbanegården Central Station to the interestingly-named Wonderful Copenhagen tourist office. Lonely Planet describes this place as having long and fretful queues, but that didn't quite prepare us to have to push past people just to get in the door. After about thirty seconds, we decided to go it on our own.
Just next door is the famous Tivoli Gardens century-old amusement park, which we later found out has the world's oldest still-operating roller-coaster. Deciding to save our money and see the town instead, we pushed on to Rådhust-pladsen (Town-Hall Square). The Rådhus itself was closed, however.
This amazingly busy square had a noisy concert going on, and we decided that all our walking we were doing meant we were able to be naughty and have some KFC for lunch. After this, we spent most of the afternoon on Lonely Planet's København walking tour.
This took us first along Strøget, billed as the world's longest pedestrian mall. It's actually quite a few of them joined together, with roads in between, so I'm not sure if it really counts, but the locals didn't seem to care. There were so many people, so many shops (mostly selling "modern" things), all along these amazingly beautiful old cobbled streets lined with tall old buildings.
One interesting place we stopped in was The Amber Specialist. Amber seems to be a specialty here in the way you associate crystal with Waterford, but we were only interested in the fact that this shop had a huge model of Sydney Opera House made out of the stuff!
We stopped along strøget in between Gammel Torv (Old Square) and Nytorv (New Square) to eat some wonderful peaches bought from a fruit-seller, and admire the surrounding architecture. There is an impressive fountain in Gammel Torv which was drawing the crowds on such a hot day also.
We wandered down through plenty more squares, past plenty of statues and generally overloading the senses. This photo shows the inter-twined dragon's tails spire on top of the Børsen (Renaissance stock exchange building) on the left, and Christianborg Palace on Slotsholmen on the right.
A couple of hours was spent in the interesting diversion of the Guinness World Records Museum. Not too suprisingly, it focused heavily on Danish entries, but there was plenty enough to keep us entertained. A movie of 1.5 million dominoes being toppled (not actually the record, though) was less worrying than the movie of the fastest oyster eater.
The huge not-really-square square Kongens Nytorv has the interesting Nyhavn canal leading off from the far side. This was dug to allow merchants to bring their goods into the heart of town, but now holds plenty of people on its sidewalk cafés enjoying the weather. One previous occupant was Hans Christian Andersen, who's house we looked at from the outside. He is now a big tourist drawcard for the city, as is evident in every touristy shop we visited.
Through some back streets and along the docks, we sat down at one café where after fifteen minutes of waiting, a waiter actually came and cleared our table without taking our order. Needless to say, we got up quick smart and walked along. Sure, we may not be sixty with greying hair and diamonds hanging from everywhere, but we still have money to spend and it is annoying when people assume otherwise.
Not much further along, we walked past yet another fountain and into the cobbled square Amalienborg Plads, which is surrounded by four mansions forming Amalienborg Palace, home of the royal family. Once again, we had timed it right for the changing of the guard, although this was far less elaborate, you would have missed it if you didn't look hard.
North from there, we felt compelled to go and see the Little Mermaid statue, as it appears on every variant of tourist junk imaginable. It was built in 1918 or so under design from H.C.Anderson, and came to fame with the modern movie based on the same tale (or so I believe). In fact, it was the most disappointing tourist "attraction" we have ever bothered to walk a long way on a hot day for. About a metre high on a rock behind a concrete barrier with an oil refinery or something as a backdrop, we grabbed a snap just to say we had been there, skipped the queues of hundereds of people waiting to have their photo taken with it (geez people, see the real city), and sat down for a while. After resting our legs, we headed into town through Kastellet, an old castle surrounded by a moat in the middle of an attractive park in search of a cheap meal.
We came across a café in the right place which looked from the outside to not be too good, but the food was excellent and reasonably priced, so we stayed a while to rest. We noted with interest that the people on both sides of us were also Aussies. What a coincidence.
Looking into our guides for something to do for the night, and noting that København is famous for its jazz, we decided to go to the Copenhagen JazzHouse on Niels Hemmingsens Gade just off Strøget. This is the most famous jazz place here, and the night had a cheap cover charge with cheap-ish drinks. Perfect.
It wasn't open for a while when we arrived, so we watched the street musicians and people trying to ride an amusing back-to-front handle bars bike (you turn left, it goes right).
Eventually getting in, we spent a great few hours totally immersed in the great live jazz from some local unknowns, Tao Højhaard Organgrinder. The four piece had an organ (playing bass with pedals), drums, guitar and tenor sax, and each was a great musician. The drumer was especially entertaining and very good at his chosen "instrument".
When the band had finished at 12:30am or so, we pushed our way out through the crowds that had formed to go to the night-club that the place turned into at 1am, proudly wearing our daggy clothes (me shorts!) amongst all the dolled-up glamor of the clubbers. Pushing the "home, James" button on the GPS, we dragged our weary bodies back to the van. Still no bikes to be seen anywhere.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:53 CEST 21/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Sverige/Sverige 2 ( all photos )

Through Malmö Again ( No photos )
Awake bright and early, we drove down the road to a servo to put some of the expensive fuel in Rosie and some caffeine in us (still no gas, so we can't make our own).
Next, we drove the remaining hundered or so kilometres to Malmö, finally joining up to the motorway where we had driven a month earlier. I had a recollection that there was Campingaz available in the caravan park we stayed in there, but after a detour there it was apparent my memory was doing strange things.
From there, it was a drive across the Øresund Fixed Link and onwards back into Danmark.

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