A few days before were due to arrive in Copenhagen, I got a message from our AirBnB host to let us know we’d be arriving slap bang in the middle of ‘Distortion‘, that it’d be loud and crowded and that we should enjoy it while we could. 

Our travel day started off at 7am, with the first of two trains to Edinburgh, followed by a tram to the airport – first tram experience, not bad Edinburgh. Though a tenner if you don’t get your ticket from the machine seems a bit steep. 

The flight was delayed for a whole hour, because they couldn’t get a bus to get the people who had arrived on the plane, off the plane. Something the pilot was all too quick to point out before we took off – “Not our fault, promise!” I might not believe you, but your free wi-fi made up for it. 

The first experience, having left the train that took us to our destination, was seeing a guy on the floor, vomiting on the ground. Welcome to Copenhagen(?).

Our host, Christina, was extremely attentive and helpful via text, making sure we were getting the right trains and helping us with directions the whole way. Not that that didn’t stop us taking some wrong turns and getting a little lost, but we made it in the end. 

The apartment is small, but lovely (I will post more about it in a later post). 

We ventured out into the streets, after being given the tour of the apartment by Lone (Christina’s Mum). The streets during Distortion are… Something. The ground was sticky. The crowds were thick. The bass of the music vibrated my rib cage. 

At one point, I commented to Allan that I’d hate to be someone wearing flip-flops walking the street, due to the broken glass everywhere. Five minutes later, there was a guy picking glass out of his toes. 

People were swaying around drunk, but the people we encountered seemed nice. One guy even stopping to welcome us to Copenhagen, after asking if we were tourists. 

It was an unconventional start to a trip, but it was an interesting way to be thrown into the action. 

Before coming to Copenhagen, people would ask me if I was excited about the trip – to which I could only respond, ‘not really’. That’s not to say I didn’t think I’d have a good time, or I didn’t think I’d like the city, just that I knew next to nothing about the place, so I had nothing specific to be excited about.

On our first full day, we wandered. Before leaving, I had looked at a map and planned a rough route to take, but I had no idea if that route would work out or not and being as we didn’t have anywhere we had to be, or had to see necessarily, the wandering method was sure to work.

And it did.

We walked through various different neighbourhoods, commenting on the fact that a lot of Copenhagen looks like a film set. Both in terms of it’s cleanliness, but also the buildings look like giant facades, to the point where if you could just get behind them, you’d realise there was nothing there, just plywood and scaffolding. 

We also commented on the fact that we saw pretty much every demographic on a bike, young, old, men, women, different ethnicities… The only demographic we didn’t see were unattractive people, because there are none. Everyone is attractive. Sometimes too attractive. 

On our meandering journey, we found The Little Mermaid statue. Which… Is a thing. I’ll probably never understand art, never understand why something like that is popular. I feel the same about the Mona Lisa in Paris. It’s nice, sure… But there are other more impressive pieces of art (to me).

At night, we headed to Tivoli gardens, one of the only things I had wanted to make sure we did when coming here. I’d read about the Friday night concerts they put on, which made the decision of what day to visit a no-brainer. 

Once in the park, we went on a few rides and then had some food. Avoiding, the whole time, the 80ft chair-swing ride. Because, I’ll go on pretty much any other ride going, but I don’t trust those things.
I thought the music would start around 8pm. However, it was 10pm before Beth Hart took to the stage and midnight before she left again. It was interesting watching her with the crowd – the crowd that clearly knew who she was and knew the words to her music, as someone who had no idea who she was and knew none of the words to her music. I’m not sure I’d set out to listen to many of the songs again, but I enjoyed it while there.

After a day of wandering the city though, then over two hours of standing during the gig, everything was sore. Feet, back, legs.
Outdoor concerts should be a sitting down thing.

Not content with the 16 odd miles we walked yesterday, we walked a further 11 or so today. We set off around lunch time, having had breakfast at Dyrehaven, a small cafe-bar just down the street from the AirBnB.

Our first stop of the day was to be Christiania, I’m not sure what I expected it to be, but it what I got wasn’t what I expected. The place looked cool and had a relaxed vibe to it (helped along, I’m sure, by the amount of pot going around). We stopped to eat, for the second time, at a juice and sandwich bar, inside Christiania – is there a mandate somewhere that requires all juice/smoothie bars to be painted in the same shade of green?

Both the Smoothie I had, and the Turkey sandwich were delicious.

After Christiania, we started to make our way through the streets to Copenhagen Street Food, a large warehouse, essentially, on the docks, inside of which is row upon row of street food merchants, selling pretty much every type of food you could possibly want. We ended up with some ice cream, and I got a brownie – a dessert to our Christiania main, if I come back to Copenhagen, it’s definitely somewhere I’d re-visit and get more from though.

We started making our way back to the AirBnB after that. Winding our way through the city streets, stopping off at The Round Tower, which has a viewing platform at the top, giving views across Copenhagen.

We got back late afternoon, and after the 27 miles of walking across two days, opted to stay in for the night, save for a quick shopping trip to the nearby supermarket for some snacks.

Copenhagen is a lovely city for walking around in. They do love cobbles though… Cobbles which I’ve tripped over multiple times now, though, as yet, I haven’t fallen flat on my face. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

On our last full day in CPH, we split up. The weather, having been amazing for the first two days we were here, was now terrible with torrential rain. 

I had considered doing a museum or something – something indoors, something dry… But, in the end, the zoo was closer, even if it meant getting soaked. 

I didn’t bring any waterproof clothing on this trip (not that I really own any anyway), so with just my hoodie for protection, I set off in the direction of the Copenhagen Zoo.

I quite like visiting zoos in different cities, they’d never be my first port of call, but if I’ve done the things I want to do and have some time? Tell me where your zoo’s at. 

The zoo in Copenhagen was an interesting mix of new-style enclosures and old-style. All the animals appeared relatively happy and well cared for, unlike some zoos I’ve been to (looking at you, Rome), but certain enclosures left a little to be desired. 

I wasn’t really paying attention, but I can only assume I was getting a few weird looks from other zoo patrons as I walked around. Everyone else in the park was wearing several layers of waterproof clothing, ponchos, umbrellas, etc.. I was walking around in jeans and a hoodie, with the hood down and the sleeves rolled up. 

At the giraffe enclosure, they had set up branches for them near the fence, which the giraffes were stripping of the bark. If you wanted to, you could have reached out and petted them and while I didn’t opt to do that (do giraffe’s bite? I didn’t want to find out), I did strip a little bark off the branch, which the giraffe gladly took out of my hand. 

It was only later that I noticed the sign at the top of this post – but that was next to the rhinos… I assume it referred almost exclusively to the rhinos, not the giraffes. Right?

After a couple hours there, in the rain, I decided to head back to the airbnb. Drenched. But I fed a giraffe, so it was all worth it, no?

Just like that, the trip to Copenhagen is over.

While we felt we had done everything we wanted to do, there was still a niggling doubt in my mind that we might have missed something big, so it was nice, while sat in the park, that a woman came over to us – to rest, apparently. I felt sure she was out to scam us, she seemed like the type to suddenly break out a clip board asking for donations  to some obscure cause – but ultimately, she seemed to just genuinely be looking to chat.

She asked us where we were from, how long we’d been here, “had we done everything?”

We told her we thought so, but weren’t sure.

“Have you done the castle? (we were sat next to it), The mermaid? Chrstiania? … She named a couple more places, which have slipped my mind, but the answer to them all was yes. “Ok, bye”, she replied. “You’re done. You’ve done it all. Copenhagen is not that big.”

‘Check out’ of the AirBnB was painless, we went for food in the morning, and were back in the apartment for around 12 – the time we’d said to Lone to come meet us. She showed up. We said goodbye and we were off.

I was a little worried about doing this trip with just one other person. Having done trips before with just two people, the confines of a trip can be exhausting, but I think the fact that we were able to ‘escape’ each other when we got back to the apartment (and the fact that we were comfortable spending a day alone) meant that that strain didn’t get to be too much.

Copenhagen, before I went, wasn’t somewhere I’d ever really considered before. While I don’t necessarily want to rush back, it’s only because I have other places I’d like to visit first. I’ll definitely recommend it as a destination for other people.

So, thank you, Copenhagen… or… Tak, København. Mange tak.