The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
The morning of my second day, I woke up at the same unholy hour that people in hostels always wake up at, namely 4am, when the one person in your room who has to go catch a flight gets up and proceeds, in a pathetic attempt to be quiet, to make the maximum possible amount of noise.
Instead of going to back to sleep, I got up and decided to plan my day. Armed with my Europe on a Shoestring, the aforementioned copy of Playtime, and a Copenhagen map, I sat down and thought. Within five minutes, I was sound asleep. At about 8am I woke up again, rested and ready to go castling. I made a plan to start at Helsingor, where the intrepid traveller can find Kronborg Slot, otherwise known as Hamlet's castle.
Kronborg Slot is situated right on the harbour and is not only a pretty Renaissance castle, but was also once a fortress used to block the Sound and levy tolls off passing ships. It's been burnt, sacked by the Swedish, overrun by slaves, and eventually closed down completely in 1981, left to the tourists, Shakespeare buffs and probably a whole lot of ghosts.
Not only does Kronborg have a moat, but it also has fortifications surrounding it, a huge courtyard, lots of wicked rooms, and (hee hee!) a dungeon. You can see lots of pictures and learn more about it here. After wandering the inside, which looked like the kind of place where a king could drink his mead and harass his serving wenches in peace, I took a look in the Casemates, an underground complex where soldiers were housed in times of war. The place is lit by tiny ineffective lanterns, and would make for a housing nightmare, as I doubt that even Debbie Travis could make the sloping ceilings, the impenetrable cold, and the dark corners seem like a nice place to live. On the other hand, it was fun to wander through, though I had to steal the lantern off the wall a couple of times to assure myself that someone wasn't about to jump out of a dark corner and dismember me. The Casemates also hold a statue of the sleeping Holger Danske, some kind of Danish hero who will return in Denmark's time of need. See? Everybody's got one of these guys.
The Hamlet's castle thing comes from the fact that Hamlet's castle is, like Kronborg, based in the Danish town of Elsinore (English for Helsingor). There are a few points of departure though. Kronborg was pretty much brand new when Halmet was written and well, Shakespeare had never been there anyway. Still, the big dark grey monster that is Kronborg makes a pretty adequate stand-in for Elsinore Castle, a fact that the Danish Palaces and Properties Agency exploits to its fullest. Once in a while, Hamlet is actually performed here, though usually out in front or in the courtyards and not in the castle proper.
After a look around the fortifications and the excellent view of the Sound, I took a look at the bright yellow painted regimental buildings on the outside and then left, ready to continue on to my next stop, the town of Hillerod, and Frederiksborg Slot, yet another great big old castle, and the home of the Danish National History Museum. I'm not sure if there was more to it than this, but the Danish National History Museum seemed to consist of a whole lot of portraits of various members of not only the Danish aristocracy, but neighbouring royalty as well. There's also a modern section, and a wicked photography museum. I enjoyed the Danish portraiture, if only for the utter freakishness of the people portrayed. I wondered about several of the paintings, because you figure if you're the queen or king, and somebody paints a non-flattering portrait of you, then you can have them beheaded and the painting destroyed. So why so many pictures of enormous people with tiny heads, bizarrely pale and skinny consumptives, people who look like they have no arms, people looking like giraffes, etc? There was a painting of Christian the 4th which made him look not only pregnant, but pin-headed and gouty as well. There were paintings of several princesses looking unhappy and on the point of death from tuberculosis. It was a bit like looking in a renaissance medical textbook.
I briefly had a look at the grounds which are beyond spectacular (have a look at them here), but I was in a hurry to get to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde before it closed, as it was 3:30pm at this point. Well, I obviously didn't have the Danish train system down yet, because though Hillerod and Roskilde are not that far apart to get from one to the other you must return to Copenhagen Central Station and go from there. So, I went to Roskilde, but I didn't even come close to being in time to get in. Thankfully, not only is Roskilde very pretty in itself (though completely deserted after 5pm on a Saturday), much of the Viking Ship Museum is outside, on the boatyards. I looked around and learned a lot about Viking ships, which were smaller than I imagined them, though pretty cool nonetheless. What I missed out on inside the museum include the remains of 5 ships which were found in the waters around Roskilde and other fun stuff. You can look it up here.
After that, I headed back to the hostel, and took a nap. I went out for dinner with two people that I met in the hostel. Surprisingly, considering we were in Denmark, we ate a pretty tasty Mexican meal. One of them was a Canadian and the other was Australian and for some reason, much of the conversation was taken up with how obnoxious Americans are, and how embarassing they are in other countries. I was mildly offended on behalf of Americans, but thought nothing of it until later in the evening, when the Canadian aptly proved that we're no slouches in the obnoxious race ourselves, by spending a large amount of time harping on the fact that Scandinavians are gorgeous to an obviously embarassed Danish boy. She went on to tell him about Nepal and how the Nepalese "are rich, without actually being rich," a pretty huge generalisation from someone who spent a couple of weeks in Nepal and read some stuff by the Dalai Lama, who is not actually Nepalese.
But anyway, we ended up going to a jazz club called La Fontaine, located somewhere in the centre of Copenhagen. It was a teeny smoky place with a wicked band playing jazz standards. The aforementioned Danish boy spent a good part of the evening buying us drinks and generally entertaining us, so it was a pretty cool evening. Or night. Or next morning really. We stumbled into the hostel around 4am. The next morning, I checked out, headed to the airport, went home, and here we all are, still left with a great big pile of Kroners (Danish money--the coins have holes in the middle!) and the effects of a whole lot of Danish pastry. Yum. posted by All at 10:52:00 a.m.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Fun quote of the day:
"In wars and in these kind of circumstances, people tend to have a drink."
Sadly, I can't attribute it, but suffice it to say, it came out of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. Looks like there's hope for me yet. posted by All at 6:45:00 p.m.
Monday, September 16, 2002
So Copenhagen. My trip to Copenhagen started in a stressed out blur. I bought my ticket online and was sent an e-mail that, among other things, said that I should get to the airport an hour and a half before my flight time. I got there an hour ahead of time, assuming that the e-mail was exaggerating.
I was wrong. Dead wrong.
I got to the airport and checked in on the fancy schmany machine, pretty pleased with myself for figuring it out, thinking about how I was going to kill a whole hour in Schiphol airport.
A few minutes later, while contemplating purchasing a life size Statler and Waldorf, anxiety set in. I thought to myself, "well what if I did it wrong? What if I try to board the flight only to discover that my boarding pass is invalid and I have to stay and I can never go see the wonders of Denmark and I've wasted all this money? What then, smart guy?"
I asked the lady at the desk, only to be told that if I didn't have a paper copy of my e-ticket, that I couldn't go anywhere. But, she said, looking at me like I'm the biggest moron to walk the earth, I could go get my ticket printed up at the ticket office. I sauntered over to the ticket office, only to discover that I had to take a number. And that they were 30 people away from my number. And I was now down to 45 minutes. 10 minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off, I got to the desk. The lady did a double take, got me my ticket in ten seconds flat and told me to run like hell. I got to my gate, panting, sweaty, about ready to pass out from lack of oxygen, and minus one swiss army knife, which was taken to be destroyed by security. I was the last person to board that flight, but board it I did.
I got to Copenhagen about an hour and a half later, around 6 in the evening. A train ride into town and a three-hour search for a hostel later, it was 10pm, I was in a hostel in the middle of nowhere, and about ready to pass out. That night was sadly wasted.
The next day, I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, determined to make up for lost time. I picked up a copy of Playtime, a free guide for younger, poorer visitors to Copenhagen and decided to do two of the city walks, encompassing the neighbourhoods of Vesterbro, Frederiksberg, Norrebro, and Osterbro. I was, perhaps, a little overambitious. After completing walk number one, I was hungry and tired, and wondering why so much of that walk was spent pointing out things of no interest whatsoever. By the time I finished walk number two, my feet were in shreds, I was sunburnt, one of my contacts had decided to bury itself in a part of my eye I couldn't reach, and I was so dehydrated as to be mummified. On the plus side, Copenhagen is really neat. The walk started at the Tivoli, one of the world's oldest amusement parks, which I skipped because amusement parks are no so amusing on your own. I continued on through the not-so-scenic meat-packing district, and ended up on a street called Skydebanegade, at the end of which is a wall, put up to protect the residents of the area from being hit by bullets from the shooting range on the other side.
The wall is wicked huge, with turrets and a big gate, but the firing range on the other side had been turned into a really neat playground. Leaving the park, I wandered a bit until I found the Copenhagen City Museum, which has a miniature version of the city as it looked in the 1700s outside on the lawn. I looked at all sorts of fun displays about the history of Copenhagen, like a mini-model of the old markets, and pants from the 1600s, then I left there and walked over to the Carlsberg brewery. I didn't go in because I don't really like beer, and the smell of brewing was well... icky. But they have a wicked entrance gate held up by massive stone elephants and a really cool tower. There's also a whole neighbourhood called Humleby, built for the workers of the Carlsberg brewery, which was kind of interesting. I wondered how the houses were alloted to the brewery employees, as they all looked pretty uniform. Maybe the closer the house to the brewery, the higher up the employee.
From there, I continued on to a park called Sondermarken, which eventually turns into Frederiksberg Castle, a really pretty building which is still in use as a military academy. I wandered in the front gate and ended up being chased out by a surly army guy. I had a rest by a riverbank in gardens, sitting next to a bunch of ducks taking a nap, while watching a loony jogger run up and down a really steep set of steps. After a protracted period of being hopelessly lost, I finally came to the lakes, a series of small manmade lakes in the middle of the city. Next to this was the Tycho Brahe Planetarium, fun because they're named after a guy who had his nose cut off in a fight and went around wearing a fake metal nose. Nearby, and across a bridge was the Radiohuset, a really neat building from the 30s, still used for the purpose of radio, hence the name.
After this I ended up in a couple of cemetaries, one of which had some seriously hostile groundskeepers, the other of which was the Assistens Kirkegard, one of the coolest green spaces I've ever seen. Apparently, the city is peeved at the fact that the people of Copenhagen have taken to using this cemetary as a park, but I can really see why. There's plenty of untenanted lawn, lots of shady trees, well-maintained paths, a really neat bright yellow wall around it -- really everything you need in a park. It's the most cheerful cemetary I've ever been in, a strange contrast to the gothic splendour of the Pere Lachaise in Paris.
Still, their signage could use a little work. I followed a series of signs to the grave of Hans Christian Andersen, only to discover a series of signs pointing the other way. At one point, there were two signs separated by about ten feet, pointing at each other. Maybe I'm a complete dribbling idiot, but nowhere in that ten feet did I see a grave that said Hans Christian Andersen. I rapidly lost interest in seeing the grave after that, assuming that it probably looked much like all the other graves in the cemetary and left it at that.
After a bit more wandering I decided to take a look at the city centre, and eventually ended up at Frederikskirken, a wicked domed church across the street from the Amalienborg Palace, the current residence of the Danish queen and her family. I felt kind of stupid gawking up at what was essentially someone's house, so I took off and went to the harbour, NyHaven, where, if I'd been more sensible, I would have taken a boat tour and seen the city while sitting on my ass. Oh no, not for me the soft and comfortable life of a boat tour rider. I kept walking, across the bridge to the island, to Christianshavn, and from there to the infamous Christiania.
Never having heard of it before, I was somewhat curious about the place. Apparently, sometime in the early 70s, a bunch of hippies took over an abandoned military base in Christianshavn, and set up shop as the free area of Christiania. Stupid name notwithstanding, the place has managed to hang on until now. The big attraction here is the cleverly named Pusher Street, where hash is openly sold and consumed, though completely illegally. I didn't find this so impressive, but I was kind of curious to find out what the place was all about. Sadly, I had arrived too late for the guided tour, and I wasn't entirely ready to just wander into people's homes, so I took off. They had some really cool grafitti, which was worth it in itself. Sadly, pictures are not allowed within the confines of Christiania, because a lot of people are standing around holding great big bricks of hash on the street, trying to sell it. So, I left and took the bus back to my hostel, ate my dinner, and fell asleep.
Tomorrow: Day three of Copenhagen -- Alleen goes to Hamlet's castle, looks at Viking ships and listens to jazz!
I got back from Copenhagen yesterday and decided that while I liked it a lot, I could never live there. Aside from the immigration and finding gainful employment problem, there's a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I would spend all my time chasing Danish boys, many of whom are very very tasty. Then, when they said things like "You're very nice, but I'm looking for someone who's a little more...well...Danish," I would go home and console myself with large amounts of Danish pastry, many of which are also very very tasty. Then I would end up in this vicious cycle of eating and depression that would end up with me becoming enormously fat and trapped in my house. Then the Danish equivalent of Jerry Springer would come along and save me from my house.
It's probably better all around that I stay in the Netherlands.
A long and detailed blog entry and Denmark is on it's way, hopefully by tomorrow. In the meantime, things to ponder about Denmark. There are many metal fans in Denmark. There are also many jazz fans in Denmark. Are these the same people? Or is there a jazz clique and metal clique? And if so, can they hang out together? Can they date? If they have kids, who picks the music?
