COPENHAGEN

Land of Hans Christian Andersen ( not the ice cream ) and the Little Mermaid. Though Copenhagen city itself has a more urbane feel than Stockholm, the architecture still bears some looking at.

And interestingly, here we met a couple of Asians too. One was a Malaysian girl, who noticed us on the streets and heard our accents, so guessed we were from where she was. ( which is about half correct ) We first noticed her sitting in a Sex Museum ( No, we didn't go in after all ) and then later, while walking on the street, she came to talk to us. Turns out she'd been to Berlin, so talked to her about how it was there.

The second was a student from China, who changed the bedsheets in our hotel, but you can read about her in the entry. :)

29th June, 1055am

On the plane, waiting for it to go to Prague.

Yesterday, 28th June, Jordan came back from the hospital, weak, groggy but otherwise fine. Turns out he might have eaten something wrong, but otherwise nothing major, so he was sent back fine.

"It's that damn pear!" I exclaimed, backed up by Sophia: "Yah lah! Ask you not to eat you still eat!" while Jordan sulks weakly.

"OK LAH! Sick already still kena scolding!"

Recap: On the 27th, when we first arrived in the hostel and had already booked our beds, we took a break, and sat down in a little garden in the hostel having a late lunch.

Searching through her bag for food, Sophia found some fruit which we had taken from the hotel buffet in Malmo. [hey, poor backpackers here...] The oranges were fine, but the pear was soft to the touch, and covered with brown spots.

"Ew, look at the pear, better throw away lah." I grimaced.

"Huh?? Why?? Still can eat!" Jordan looks at it, turning it over with his hands.

"Are you kidding me?? Look at it! It looks disgusting!"

"Aiyah, don't want I'll eat!" and proceeds to take big juicy bites out of the pear.

"Sick don't blame me ah..."

And no, I didn't get any blame... And it's definitely the pear, because all the other foods were shared between the four of us.

And Danish hospitals, according to Julian, are really nice and FREE! The Danish govt apparently takes care of all medical costs, so Jordan got to stay in a class A ward for FREE! They did a bunch of tests on him, ( Including a rectal one, where he had to shove a thermometer up his own ass ) and all of it was free of charge! [Not to mention Juls got a free breakfast and the male nurse was apparently cute beyond belief. Bloody hell...] Thank god or we'd really be broke...

We also shifted from the hostel to another hotel nearby, 'cos Jordan complained that he wasn't able to sleep at night. The drawback of a mixed dorm is that you can have travellers coming in at odd hours of the night, and also the bed really sucks. Every move I made on my upper deck was amplified to the bed below. Also at am 1am or so, there were still pple coming in to the dorm! Although hotels cost more, I'm beginning to think that the privacy and bathrooms are worth it.

Actually, none of us slept that night, but whether due to Jordan or the beds, we don't know. BTW the showers for the hostel were nothing more than 4 shower heads stuck in a wall, facing a row of sinks. No separating cubicles, or curtains, though at least the sexes were separated. As it is, Sophia was already highly hesitant about using the showers. I just waited till an ungodly hour, when no one would be showering, and took my bath in relative privacy. She did the same about an hour later.

We settled into the hotel and went for lunch at a nearby Turkish buffet. Cost us DK39, which was roughly S$10, so very worth it, esp considering we went back for 3rd helpings. :p The restaurant makes its money from the drinks it sells, so we drank out own water all the way, making sure to hide it whenever the waitress appeared.

Also I'd like to mention the chambermaid from China who changed our sheets in the room. She heard us talking in Chinese, and asked if we were Chinese, then we started yakking away. Turns out she's a university student who was working at the hotel on break, a suitable choice, since she's studying hotel management. The big kick? She earns S$3K just by being a chambermaid!!! Wat the freak?? And since she's an intern there, she doesn't pay tax! Wat the!!!

Needless to say, Jordan was highly enticed to work there...

Later after lunch, the guys were too tired to move and fell asleep on the hotel beds. Not surprising, since they were awake half the night. So me and Sophia decided to explore Cop on our own on bikes. I think the most fun part about Cop so far has been the bikes! How often do you get to explore a city on such cheap transport?? DK20 gets you a bike which you can use as long as you like, and you even get a full refund when you're done, like the trolleys at NTUC. Only thing is that there are NO brakes on the bike, you have to jam the pedals backwards, which gave me no end of problems at first. I have the habit of kicking the pedals backwards before I start cycling, so as to give me a good pedal forward, and when I tried that here, my bike just jammed into brake mode when I expected it to go forward. Bleah.

Then another problem was the winds, which were bloody strong. When the winds gusted at us, it was actually strong enough to almost push our bikes to the side! Never had such a tiring biking experience.

On hindsight, another problem was the wheels of the bike. Most bike wheels are just spokes and nothing else, to make them lighter. This city bike had its spokes covered with advertising, so everytime the wind blew, it acted as some kind of sail and helped push the bike. damn.

Sophia and I went to Christianhavn,of which the main attraction is Christiania, a free community in the middle of the island. It's almost like going back to the 60s. The whole area is cordoned off with a graffitti splattered wall, and inside is an alternative culture totally different from the rest of Cop, or the rest of the mainstream world, for that matter. Drugs like hash are sold freely in the stalls here, along with pipes of different sizes, colours and purposes. [some of which I had NO IDEA watsoeva what they were for] Other alternative lifestyles have also found homes here. I saw marijuana symbols, gay symbols, and shirts with 'Free Tibet' on it, to give you an idea of the range. Basically all the causes that aren't supported by the mainstream population.

All of them are attracted here because of the 'No Rules' feel of the place and hence its acceptance of all the socially outcast. Think of it, where else can you find hash being sold legally? The whole place has a seedy feel, some drunks, some addicts, [a Chinese man sitting in a doorway, muttering gibberish to himself and occassionally the public. A pub full of rawdy drunks, and too much cheap beer. Policemen patrolling the area, casually talking to some people on the streets, but with an air of ready vigilance] so Sophia and I didn't exactly linger too long or take too many pictures. [Something else discouraging me was a sign saying "NO CAMERAS!" and an insistent streak across a picture of a camera. Ok, get the idea] Frankly was a bit relieved when we made it out without much harassment.

The few pics I did take:


Unfortunately, I forgot the name of this church... bleah... but love the spiral...


Entrance to Christania. On the back of the sign, as you leave, it says, "You are entering the EU"


Waaaay out graffiti!


Part of the graffiti-ed wall that cut off Christania from the rest of Europe.

Then we cycled back to our rooms and rested a while, before Jordan came and told us about us music being performed in the square outside City Hall. We took the food out and had sort of a picnic there in the square, watching these guys dressed as North American Indians perform turns on their tribal instruments, set against a synthesized beat. Somehow suited the mood of the place. The blue was a clear blue, the clouds were rolling fast across it, driven by the wind. Gulls were gliding overhead, [the ever-present gulls] and suddenly, a long mournful note would rise up against the background, blending in and adding to the free-riding spirit of the place.

Too bad it was too cold to sit there for too long. The winds in Cop that day were terribly strong, and though it was only 19deg, the wind made it even cooler. We were all freezing through our clothes and so we made our way back.

In the morning, it was breakfast again, and then to the train station to the airport to the plane I'm on now. Towards Prague we go...

Actually I'm tempted to say there is nothing to see in Cop, but truthfully, we didn't go to many places like we did in London and Paris. They get bored in museums, and art galleries too so no point. Well, at least there was Christania. That was something different all right. If I ever come back here, at least I have to check out some of the museums and maybe the castles and Nyhavn.

One last view, of the Indians in the square that day:

28th June, 920am, COPENHAGEN

Welcome to Copenhagen!

We arrived in the City Central Station at about 1pm yesterday, [27th June] and the first order of biz was to find accomo for the night. [Recap: Juls cancelled the original accomo because we got a car for the weekend in Stockholm, and hence stayed longer there.] Checked out a few hotels near the train station, but all were pretty expensive. Finally me and Sophia found this hostel hidden away behind a construction site. Had my reservations, esp. since we were to sleep in a dorm with other people, but turned out to be quite safe after all. Well, we had a setback, but that's later...

Also found out that in Copenhagen you can rent bikes from the city for free! You insert a 20kr coin into the bike, take it out and it's yours for the day! So we spent a while cycling around the city, checking it out. I was supposed to lead, but I kept getting lost, and the map on the bike was too small to make out. Bleah. And I almost got into a few accidents half the time, trying to figure out the biking rules in Cop, and went into the wrong direction, or onto the pedestrian lanes a couple of times. Bleah.

Wat we saw from the bikes:


One of the world's oldest funfairs, Tivoli, is actually quite famous. It's also actually quite expensive, and since we went to Disney already we didn't go in.

But there is a shop next to it that's quite interesting. This shop sells stuffed animals, but the interesting thing is that rather than just buying it ready-made, you choose the skin of the animal, the clothes for it, the eyes and so on. Then you take it to the stuffing machine.

At the stuffing machine, you can choose little ornaments to put inside. A red heart for a lover, ( duh ) a yellow one for a friend and others.

Then the guy at the machine will tell you to hold it to your head, hold it to your heart, kiss it once and then put it into the skin to be stuffed. I swear, when Sophia and I saw it we both went, "AWWWWWWWWWW.............." The guys just stood around with these "Duhhhhh........... it's a girl thing...." looks on their faces.

Men. Sigh.


It might not be clear, but there's actually a digital thermometer on the corner of the building, which told us just how cold it actually was, as compared to how cold we actually felt.


The Town Hall in Central Square.

So what's to say about Cop? Don't really know yet. We've only been around the city centre, near the train station, and it's pretty much just a city, with some fine old buildings as usual. There aren't many major attractions and it's a more developed city than other cities we've seen. I mean developed in the sense that it's grown into a city that tries to be cosmopolitan but has lost much of its unique flavor in the meantime. [Just like Singapore I might add]

So everything was as usual till round dinner. We were cooking in the kitchen, [or rather Jord was cooking in the kitchen. I was hanging around, trying not to feel helpless.] and this guy knocked at the kitchen door.

A slight description here. Once again, the hostel at the time was completely hidden by a construction site, and to get to it, you enter this back lane, past the site, before you see the hostel proper. You walk along the building, passing by the kitchen, before you enter the main lobby.

So I blurly went to the door, opened it, and the guy walked in, saying merci merci, and going on in broken English about how cold it was outside, blah blah blah, and then walked around the kitchen, taking out food. Then when he finally left the kitchen, Jord looked at me with a weird look and said, "Why the heck did u let that strange guy in?"

Oh oh. note to self: Be less trusting of strangers.

Well, thank god nothing happened to us tonight with that guy anyway. He mainly hung around the hostel and the kitchen and talked funny but that was about it.

Or rather something did happen, but not of my doing. Jordan felt sick late in the night, complaining of stomach cramps and kept burping. Apparently it was quite bad, cos I heard later that they called a dcotor and then Julian went with him to the hospital in a cab. ( I heard all this, 'cos I was in bed, and Soph told me later. I wasn't sleeping, but more sitting around to see how he was . Ok fine, I'm a kaypoh. )

As I'm writing this, Sophia is sleeping and we're waiting for the guys to come back. What bad luck for us, that one of our group would suddenly fall ill so badly. Hope he's fine and that it's nothing major.

Me and Sophia also left the hostel ard 5 or 6 in the morning, since we were both awake and had to wait for the guys till 10 anyway. We went walking a great deal around the city central again, ( led by my strange sense of direction ) but there's nothing much else to see around here. Oh well.

As to why we didn't hope on a train to go somewhere.... well we'd given Juls all our money in case he needed it at the hospital, or for transport back, so we were down to about a few kr between the 2 of us, which was just enough to buy us some buns from a 7-11 before we were officially made destitute. Hence, no money to take train, no coin to rent bike, could only hobo it around City Central.

But we did see this in the City Central:


Any ideas what this is? Well, it's a public urinal for 4 men. Yes, a public urinal.

The thing is that the night before, they were screening a football match in the square for everyone to see, cos I think it was a match between the danish team and someone else. Anyway, there were tons of football fans, and this is to, er, accomodate those who didn't wanna leave the action.

The gross part? Early in the morning when Sophia and I saw it, there was overnight urine still in it. Ewwwwwwwww.........


Oh, and one funny thing: Jordan continued his bottle-picking habit here as well, so as me and Sophia were walking around, we decided to continue for the sake of it. ( Or rather, she wanted to, I was, admittedly, reluctant. ) and then when we went to the shop to redeem the kr, we realised that all our bottles were only redeemable in Sweden! We've been picking the wrong bottles all this while! Gosh I wonder how Jordan's gonna react to that...

To really see how funny it is.... consider that by the time we realised it, Jordan and Juls had already been picking bottles for a whole day in Cop. Hence, there were about 2 big plastic bags of empty plastic bottles back the hostel. Now ain't that funny?