Babies, Bikes, and Brød

I wasn't even trying to capture bikes in this shot of a downtown canal, but it's unavoidable.

Phil and I had an extended stay in Copenhagen because it is one of three locations where I know a local. This time, Saaaaaaaam and his wife Shikha took care of us. I fenced with Sam at Tufts, and he is hands down the funniest guy I know personally, so it was great to catch him during his comp sci postdoc at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Frederik's Church in the background

Inside Frederik's Church

Front to back, my liver, beef tartare, and herring smørrobrøds, then Phil's three

First thing we looked up was what Danes eat. Not much is the answer. They have excellent hot dogs and sausages, but how will they compare to Germany's? But their one truly signature dish is smørrobrød (translates literally as butter and bread), aka open-faced sandwiches almost always with rye bread. Why make a sandwich open-faced? Seems dumb. Sandwiches with two pieces of bread are convenient, right? Millenia of fine-tuning food brought us to the modern sandwich. Well, as Sam put it, don't think of these meals as sandwiches, but rather some concoction served over a piece of bread, like how Americans might add a piece of Texas toast to a meal. Phil and I each had a sampling of three smørrobrøds from a Michelin-starred restaurant called Aamann's. I think my warm one with a liver pâté, mushrooms, and bacon stole the show.

The Little Mermaid (Den Lille Havfrue)

A fountain

Søfartsmonumentet, we think it's for WWI

Kastellet, a star-shaped fortress

Twisted Metal, anyone? Not in Holland yet.

Telia Parken, our first European football (fodbold) stadium

What else does Copenhagen have? Lots and lots of babies in luxurious strollers. It's a weird cultural thing how much natives take babies with them wherever they go. And they take the babies in style. Phil and I grew up on the mean streets in our formative years. Not these toddlers. Many strollers consume a whole sidewalk's width. Pure baby.

And then bikes, which is really cool. Almost every street has a lane dedicated for bikes, with their own crossing signals and "ready-set-go" traffic lights to let the bikers pick up speed from a stop. Copenhagen is consistently rated the best city in the world for biking, and it shows. Everything is made to accommodate bikes. A bike parking area by the train station, just for example, is always near capacity with hundreds and hundreds of bikes.

Nazi Jumbo by Carlsberg beer (actually an Indian swastika, which predates Nazi usage)

A park near Carlsberg

The Danish opera house and a food market

What's the makeup of the city? Lots of water as would be expected if you know where Copenhagen lies. At the center of the city is the Tivoli amusement park. Then there's a fortress, a castle, a soccer stadium, a mermaid, and a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood called Christiania. This last one is the my favorite part of the city. It's like suddenly being transported to South America, as best as I can estimate without ever having been to South America. There's some drug use and hippie-dippie garbage, but the neat aspect is making the transition from walking in a park covered in trees to walking on people's property, still covered by the same trees and ambiance. Healthy, unleashed dogs strutted with no owner. One dog followed us for a hundred feet or so and then tailed off to go about its day, further away from the garage that initially housed it.

Part of Christiania 

Danish Kroner (the Euro is not used here, and it's not the Swedish Kroner either)
featuring a hole in the 5-piece and celebrating Niels Bohr in a commemorative 20-piece 

Niels Bohr Institute - We could smell the physics greats of last century.

The house in which Niels Bohr grew up. 

Our big museum stop of Copenhagen actually lies a half hour north of Copenhagen, in Humlebæk, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, known for its outdoor sculpture garden right on the shoreline. Two major exhibitions were up for our visit, featuring a Dane named Tal R and a South African named William Kentridge. Phil and I agree that Tal R's art is excessively abstract, neither of ours interest (the kind that makes you think a monkey could do it sometimes), but Kentridge's work made for quite an exhibition. I'd go so far as to name him one of my favorite artists, inspired to learn more about him since the museum visit. His work has changed significantly over time, from stop-motion videos with charcoal to a complete fusion of many artistic media.

Recent work from Kentridge

*snicker*

We got rained on for some of our outdoor sculpture exploration.

In our spare time, we booked all our travel up to France, which gets us through July 8, at which point Phil will head home and I will continue to southern Germany and Switzerland with Mike and Mark. We also booked our hostels for the next week. I was thrilled to learn it's easy to find them for ~$25pppn in most any city. Also, turns out the approximate 48 hours we have in each city should be enough for how Phil and I want to backpack through Europe. Many critics admonished our speedy plan but after realizing our downtime during five days in Copenhagen, we are really happy with our schedule. Yeah, some cities are bigger than Copenhagen and Stockholm, but that's the way it's gonna be.

This sofa store sells only two sofas, formerly just one according to Sam. So avant-garde!

Up next: Brussels (where Phil will try to retrieve a computer out of the airport lost-and-found from two years ago), Ghent, and Amsterdam.

edit: a couple shots I really like that I captured on my way out of Copenhagen, after I originally submitted this post