the merchant's harbor pt.2 & 3

April 14th, 2014
Our first full day of Copenhagen and we had a set schedule in mind.
Our first stop was another touristy spot and the most famous tourist spot, Nyhavn and the harbor with the colored buildings that when you google Copenhagen you get those colored buildings.

 The harbor offers a Canal Tour of the city in Danish and English giving facts about the history of Copenhagen. These are the facts that I remember from the tour:
1. Copenhagen means "Merchant's Harbour" Copen in Danish means "merchant" and hagen in Danish means "harbor" which equals to Merchant's Harbour.
2. The famous fairytale author, Hans Christian Anderson was Danish but was born in a small town outside of Copenhagen, but came to Copenhagen to be a ballet dancer, which obviously went downhill because he then become a famous fairytale writer.
3. Copenhagen, Denmark is the host of this year's Eurovision. What's Eurovision?
Eurovision is the equivalent to America's American Idol but involves many countries in Europe. Each country that participates in Eurovision selects one singer to represent them and all those singers come together to perform and one winner is chosen. It's a huge deal and many famous singers have won in Eurovision such as ABBA and Celine Dion. Wherever that singer is from, that country hosts the next year's Eurovision. Thus, Copenhagen is the host this year with its win from last year.

When googling "Copenhagen" these are the buildings that you get, however, on Google the weather is sunny and beautiful not gloomy and windy like this picture. 

I did the best I could when editing the photo to not make it look gloomy but it didn't work.

I did the best I could.

After the canal tour, we walked around the harbor and settled down for lunch. My meal was a chicken bacon sandwich with french fries and balsamic vinegar. It was delicious

After eating, we walked around some more and headed towards the Tivoli Gardens where Jenn & Madeleine would tour around while Cassie and I toured around the streets and headed towards the palace.

Underwater statue of a merman and his sons.

One of the things that I noticed while in Copenhagen was the amount of Danish flags flowing in the wind. Having lived in Sweden for a while and going to Stockholm a couple of times, I never notice the lack of Swedish flags until Copenhagen. Mentioning this out loud, my friends realized it too. To our minds, we guessed that Denmark shows patriotism to their country than Sweden does. Sweden hangs their flags on special occasions like holidays and anniversaries whereas Denmark hangs their flags everyday. Unless Denmark does the same thing as Sweden and we just weren't aware of the Danish holiday. 

This is the entrance to Tivoli Gardens, Cassie and I didn't go in as we wanted to explore more but according to Jenn and Madeleine it was a mix of It's a Small World from Disneyland meets Carnival.

 During Cassie and I's exploration, I found something that had me even more excited and had me appreciate Denmark.

Waffles on a Stick

It sounds too good to be true and it was too good to be true. White chocolate with Oreo crumbs, it was the perfect mid-afternoon snack to nom on. But it also made me question why I hadn't thought of this sooner.

The entrance of the Palace (I'm not sure of Danish royalty, nor is my friend Cassie and I think it's because they don't have a good looking prince like Sweden does).

 Once we met up, we walked around some more, headed back to our apartment for a while and then headed off to dinner. Having a restaurant in mind, we headed there, but was too late. According to the internet the restaurant was supposed to close at 11PM and at 8:45PM when we were there, the kitchen was closed and only drinks were being served. Disappointed and hungry we walked around Copenhagen trying to find a place to eat, and with Copenhagen having a plethora of Middle Eastern food at every location, we settled on a schwarma (pita bread filled with lamb, tomato, garlic sauce, creme fraiche, lettuce and mixed greens). A delicious dinner and always a good substitute when you are angry at a restaurant/the internet for giving out wrong information.

April 15th, 2014

Our last day in Copenhagen and I decided to give myself a little history.

Starting with Christiania. 

Christiania or also known as "Freetown Christiania" is a self-proclaimed neighborhood, located in the borough of Christianshavn. Housing over 900 residents, Christiania was once a military base, but was taken over by squatters in 1971. Since then, residents of the neighborhood have lived and worked here creating a community of markets, schools and business. Christiania, has been known for its controversy of selling cannabis within its neighborhood. With marijuana being illegal in Denmark, the residents of Christiania and the Danish government made a negotiation with each other regarding the selling of marijuana. The deal was this: no evidence and it didn't happen. 

When you enter Christiania, there is a section called the "Green Light District" where the selling of marijuana occurs. There no pictures are allowed, along with no running and no yelling because it causes panic. The Green Light District is a place where people can walk around observe whats going on and be respectful. Walking past the Green Light District, we were then able to take pictures of the resident's houses, farms, children's school and even a lake.

Another note: Christiania doesn't consider themselves a part of the EU, but it is not established as a country.

After Christiania, we headed off to Kongens Nytorv to check out some graffiti from a picture that a friend took during her trip to Copenhagen. 

The cool thing about Copenhagen was that, during its construction, they have graffiti on the construction walls so people can take pictures and admire the construction and not look at a plain wall that is in the way of the main street (America take notes on this, I hear Walnut Creek is in construction and is looking pretty bad, graffiti the construction)

Called the #HappyWall, it's covered with little boards that you can flip and has colors in the background and where people can create figures and letters and take pictures.

 In the above picture, I saw a H-E and an L and decided to extend that and pay tribute to my NorCal natives and spell out "Hella" as Hella is only used in Northern California and has a native of it I get made fun of for saying it.

Hella Cool. 

And of course I took advantage and made an "E" to represent my name. I would spell out my full name but it would have taken the whole board and I would have made people mad. So an E was fine.

If I hashtaged Happy Wall I could get a prize of 10 boxes of Tuborg beer which is a Danish beer. With the spring festivities of Valborg coming up I of course posted #HappyWall on my Instagram picture in hopes of gaining 10 boxes of Tuborg beer.

I'm still waiting...

Once we were done, we ventured off to the National Museum of Copenhagen and split again. Cassie and I stayed at the museum and Jenn and Madeleine went to grab lunch.

This van was settled outside in the quad of the museum. The purpose of this van was that its a drug substance van. This van allowed people with drug addictions to come and take their drugs in front of health care providers.

It only cost him an arm just to get to be in the museum 

#museumjokes

Despite the Danes and the Swedes disliking each other, the famous Swedish, Uppsala born botanist Carlous Linneas is still a huge deal in the Scandinavian world. 

So I guess there's one thing that they all agree on.

I'm not sure if it's because I was hungry, but this rock totally reminded me of an Oreo Sundae.

This caught Cassie and by surprise. The purpose of this painting was that you could see the actual painting in the clear cylinder standing in the middle. The bottom picture is stretched out to create the picture on the cylinder.

To wrap it up: this painter had way too much time on their hands.

I saw this and giggled and then realized that at 20 years old, I'm still a child.

This flag combines the flags of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Where's Finland?

No one cares about Finland, probably because she forgot to wear pink on Wednesdays.

How could she.

This exhibit displayed Danish dollhouses that resembled houses in Denmark and in the wall behind them, the inside of the Dollhouses were decorated and set.

These toys were not left by a child on accident. These toys were purposefully placed in the exhibit along with the Hercules artifacts, which made Cassie and I laugh hysterically.

Danes are so silly.

Heads up!

#musuemjokes

"One day I saw Voldemort not have a nose, so I decided to not have a nose."

Once our museum tour was done, Cassie and I went and got schwarmas again and then met up with Madeleine and Jenn and headed back to Copenhagen.

Having this be a last minute trip was very spontaneous, adventurous and worthwhile yet a little unorganized, but then again, when can you ever have to opportunity to go on a spontaneous trip?