Copenhagen!

Haha, so much for that update schedule, hey?

Anyway: I spent the weekend in Copenhagen, and it was great.

We left Friday morning around 10:00 after picking up our rental cars, ready for the 330km trip south. Sadly, the cars didn't have a place to plug in an iPod, so we resigned ourselves to 3 hours of nonstop Swedish radio. There was far more Pink and far less ABBA than I had anticipated.

1:00 saw us arriving in Helsingborg, which is a nice little coastal Swedish town. We drove onto a ferry (I'd never done that before. We just drove on! Crazy!), and twenty minutes later we were in the remarkably different Danish town of Helsingor. I'd hazard the two towns have far more in common than not--starting with the first seven letters of their names.

Anyway. Copenhagen (or Kobenhavn, in Danish) was another ~50km south, so after a little panicked gesturing we continued on our way. Danish radio is crap. Utter crap. At one point, we heard the words "Nonstop music" through the stream of Danish babble. This bold statement was immediately followed by several commercials and what seemed to be the DJ's life story. Incidentally, hearing English surface in a flow of Danish is both amusing and strangely heartening.

Our first glimpse of Copenhagen!

The idea was to head to our hostel and check in, then get food. However, we were amusingly (and retrospectively, idiotically) mapless, deciding instead to count on one friend's repeated assurances of "It's a big, white building!" and "I know what it looks like in my head." I'm honestly stunned we got there: we made two random turns, and then someone said, "Isn't that it?" To which the reply was, surprisingly, "Yeah! Now turn around!"

Sorry about the dialog. It was necessary to truly immerse you in the scene, though.

Anyway. One check in process later, and the 10 of us are on the main streets of Copenhagen, excited, talkative, but mostly starving. The tourist office referred us to a buffet, and so--30 minutes after arriving in the 3rd country I'd ever visited--I found myself walking into a Turkish buffet. It was delicious.

Corporate-free Stroget.

After our 4:00 lunch, we wandered down Stroget, the world's longest pedestrian mall. If you can see, that's a Burger King on the right. A little farther down is a McDonalds. The pristine, capitalist-free environment was novel, as were the cobblestones and hanging street lights (one of those things was not novel, or true.). 

Over the next two days, we spent a great deal of time traipsing up and down this street, past shawarma shops and crepe stalls, by fashion stores and LEGO outlets, and, for some strange reason, two Irish pubs. 

Friday night, we went wandering about in search of somewhere to sit and have a quiet, subdued discussion. We found a nightclub called Kant that seemed to suit our purposes--though that was after a trip to The Moose, which was definitely a local bar, and The Francis Pony. Now, I'm not a big party person, and I'm definitely not a barhopper (seeing as it's still illegal for me in the States...). Maybe that'd explain why I felt like walking into The Francis Pony was like entering Copenhagen's seedy underbelly. We nodded to the bouncer, took a few steps down into a dark, smoky room with lots of lasers. The first person I saw was a very angry girl in studded black pants. 

Luckily we escaped the Pony alive, and danced the night away in Kant instead. Incidentally, it's pronounced with a short 'a', so it rhymes with 'haunt.' Several people were more than slightly bewildered when they thought I said we were headed to dance in Copenhagen's vagina. 

That was tasteless. I'm sorry. 

Uh, yeah. The next day was devoted to exploring the city. I spent the morning with monstrously tall Australian, then met up with most of the group for lunch at an awesome Danish chain called Chili-Mili's, which makes massive and delicious sandwiches. After lunch, I headed out by myself to explore--but that's a story for another post. 

There wasn't a whole lot more. More partying on Saturday night. A late night shawarma, lots of inebriated friends, and not enough sleep later, we were checking out of our hostel. We took a leisurely brunch at a great French cafe called Croissant 'En, where I had a great quiche and even better orange juice. As a side note, I had no idea orange juice had discernible levels of quality--but after watching the girl squeeze the oranges directly into a glass, I'm a convert. 

We left the city at around 2:00, and were back in Jonkoping by 6:00. And now I'm packing for Greece. I'll be there for a week starting Tuesday. :)

Cheers!

Daniel