June 6 - Copenhagen 101

Today we woke up bleary-eyed and droopy-tailed, at 4 am local time, ready to greet another day. We intended to wake up at 7 am, but you know how that goes.

We had quite a nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I found out those things we call "Danish" in America are IMPOSTORS! I had the real deal today. They were flaky and light with jam centers that tasted like raspberries, not like sugary generic jam. And here they call them Vienna pastries, more or less.

Next stop was the place where you buy Metro tickets. My pre-trip research told me that you could buy 24-hour passes, 72-hour passes, etc., and they would automatically be activated the first time you used them. We walked up to the booth and ordered two 24-hour city passes and two 24-hour all zone passes. To be safe, Ken asked if they would be activated when we first used them. Oh, no, said Mr. Helpful, they become activated when you purchase them. Oh!, said I, in that case, we just want two 24-hour city passes. 

(Hey, Mr. Helpful, were you going to tell these two obvious tourists if we hadn't asked? Who would buy two sets of 24-hour passes that start expiring at the same time?) 

Me: Oh, and could we have a map of the bus routes and Metro system? 

Mr. Helpful: No. 

Me: ???

Upon leaving the ticket-buying area I encountered a machine that sought feedback on your ticket-buying experience. You could press a happy-face button, a neutral-face, an unhappy-face, or an angry face. I pressed the unhappy face. Wow! What a great idea - instant feedback, and so easy to do. Think of all the places where you would appreciate finding a little machine like that.

We waited less than one minute for the Metro, got on, found seats (!) and had a pleasant 20-minute trip to downtown Copenhagen. Oh, yeah, this ain't London. (See last year's blog.) We emerged at Kongens Nytorg and walked down some interesting streets toward the City Hall Square.  

As we began to orient ourselves to this new city it was easy to spot our fellow tourists, due to various pre-arranged secret signals that enable tourists to identify each other without letting the locals know. For example, if you pretended to look at your Copenhagen street map, your fellow travelers would reveal themselves to you by pretending to look at similar Copenhagen street maps. Another secret signal is pretending to take pictures of fountains using a camera that doesn't actually have any film in it. (Now that I think about it, we never have film in our camera these days.) There can't possibly be that many people interested in that fountain, so they are clearly members of the tourist network, and are giving you the secret signal.

The Stork Fountain - the best place to spot undercover tourists

The result of our undercover work

Without these, and a few other secret signs - which I won't reveal because they are secret - it might be very hard to identify other tourists. Or maybe not. But there sure were a lot of us there today.

After completing our surveillance work, we proceeded to the City Hall Square to meet up with our tour. We had signed up for a tour with a company called Copenhagen Free Walks. So had 140 other smart tourists. Not to worry - they divided us up into 5 groups and our group gathered around our intrepid guide Roger, to have the secrets of Copenhagen revealed to us. Roger was a terrific guide, and received a nice tip from us for his informative, entertaining, and clearly audible 3-hour "free" tour.

City Hall was a marvelous building.

Bishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen

Polar bear on top of City Hall

There are also some interesting figures on top of the building. Two polar bears represent Greenland, a former Danish colony and now an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. My research did not turn up any other city hall with polar bears on the roof, though there is a sculpture of a polar bear in front of the Winnipeg, Manitoba City Hall.

Hans Christian Anderson - a lot of people have been sitting on his lap. And speaking of HCA, it is said that the Little Mermaid statue is quite underwhelming. It is a mermaid, but it is disappointingly little. HCA's fairy tales were not based on folktales. They were allegorical stories that he made up. My favorite is The Emperor's New Clothes. I find parallels to this story almost daily in real life.

Tourists on a boat tour. Everybody duck!

Christiansborg Palace

Read the banner

I'm not a church; I'm an art gallery. And I am proud of my beautiful tower - the tallest in the city

The knowledgeable and entertaining Roger

Nyhavn

Guarding the Queen

One of the palaces at Amalienborg Square - this one is for guests

The Marble Church

While we were in front of the Marble Church a bride arrived in an Alfa Romeo driven by an older man we hoped was her father, and went into the church. Roger said it is a very big deal to be able to be married in this church. After the bride went in, some young men tied a bunch of cans to the back of the car with pretty white ribbons.

At 2:05 our tour ended and we hightailed it back to Kongens Nytorv and thence on to Restaurant Schonnemann, where we had reservations for lunch at 2:30. We made it just in time and it's a good thing we had reservations. The place was full. Almost all of the diners were locals. About half the tables consisted of groups of middle-aged men who ate a lot and drank even more. This was a very hygge place. (I'll explain that in a future post.)

Standing guard outside Restaurant Schonnemann

There were two things on the menu here: smorrebrod and aquavit. Smorrebrod - a Danish tradition - refers to open-faced sandwiches. Wink, wink. A big pile of food on a tiny piece of bread that you can't even see. Don't even think about picking these "sandwiches" up to eat them. We had herring salad, meatballs, fried plaice, and corned beef with horseradish cream. They had 140 kinds of aquavit on the menu. I tried one that was cherry-flavored. Ken had one that was aged in an oak barrel.

Herring salad with a poached egg - there really is a piece of bread underneath

Corned beef on rye with fresh horseradish shavings - Danish style, with a rye bread crouton under the meat

We also had beer and aquavit - but not as much as the guys sitting across from us. At one point their glasses were refilled  so full that only surface tension was keeping the aquavit inside the glasses. As we said to each other that it would not be possible to lift those glasses, they all leaned over and slurped out of their glasses. The guys were still going strong when we left about 4:15.

All things touristy close at 5pm, so we decided we would just return to the hotel. We were hot, stuffed, tired and a little bit sunburned after our tour and feast.