So Saturday morning after sleeping away half of the day, I decided to meet up with another kid, Patrick, and tour around this gigantic city. Patrick and I actually met before we left for Copenhagen one night while we were both out in Charlotte. He is one of Molly's friend's friends from school. I am really glad that he is here and that he is a familiar face to hang out with while I still try and meet new kids in my program. Anyways, we met up and began our little adventure to an area of Copenhagen called Christianshavn. Christianshavn is a pretty neat place and has a really cool church that I am looking forward to climbing in the coming week or so.
It only cost 30 kroner to climb to the top, and I have heard that the view up there is really pretty. I figure I need to get the climb of 400 stairs done soon because it will get pretty cold, which will make getting up there pretty miserable. Inside the church is very beautiful! I found out that it was built during the time of Christian the 5th. The C5 on the third picture stands for Christian the 5th. There are more statues and historical pieces throughout the city that have C5 on them, and I sure there are other C and F markings around around the city. Fun fact: all of the kings of Denmark have to be named Christian or Fredrick.
On to the more interesting thing about this area of Copenhagen.... Christiania! It was something like I have never seen before. The best way to describe it would be a huge hippie area. It is still part of Copenhagen, but they have their own rules and ways of life. During some housing issues in the 70s, a group of hippies took over an army base and made it their own home and have been residing there ever since. Though drugs are not allowed in any part of this city, Christiania has a rule that you can smoke weed on their property. If you are to carry any weed with you, you can only have enough for one use. Though I do not smoke, I thought it was pretty interesting to learn about these things. The first thing I saw when I walked into the old army base was a long line of people waiting to buy weed. Definitely an eye opener to some who has never been around anything like this before. Pictures are not allowed, but I tried to sneak a few here and there.
The flowers obviously aren't the most exciting part about Christiania, but I thought they were really pretty, and something like I have never seen before. (Lesley Brillhart and Jess Nixon name these please! Carol would be so proud) The "houses" throughout the area were really run down and had a ton of junk in front and all over them. Definitely a different way of life. But I am not sure this would be my ideal place to live!
As we continued to trek around the city we came across a few elephants that were really awesome! Patrick and I planned on going around all of Copenhagen to hunt down these elephants and get a picture with each of them. There are only 100 or so of them, so it is not something that would be too too difficult to complete, but our hopes of completing this fun adventure were quickly shut down when we found out that the elephants are no longer going to be displayed around the city. They were only on display from June to the end of August. They will be auctioned off at the end of the month with the money going toward saving the Asian elephants. I found a few while out and about the first few days, and Patrick and I found a few while we were exploring. Each elephant has a different design on it from different artists. I am hoping that they put something else up that would be interesting to search for and take pictures with while I am still here!
I only had a few hours to explore on Saturday before heading off to one of the Klausen's family friends house for dinner and birthday celebration for one of their children. Before I made it home to get to the dinner I decided to take a little detour.... more like get lost. I hopped onto the s-train, which is supposed to stop right in front of the street I live on, but because I do not understand a lick of Danish, I did not hear them say that they were not going to be stopping there due to construction on the track. So as we are riding past my stop, and the next one, and the next one, I start to panic because I have no clue where I am, my cell phone is shut off, I am not sure what the code to turn it back on is, and I am supposed to be home in five minutes. After the train finally stopped 4 stops past the original one I was supposed to get off on I managed to figure out which bus I needed to take to get back home. I still don't get the whole concept of pressing the stop button on the bus when you need to get off, so once again I watched the bus drive past the stop closest to my house. Whoops! I finally was able to get off two stops past my house and run all the way just to get home to Klaus laughing at me for getting so lost and without a cell phone!
Sunday was a bit better when it came to navigating my way around the city and getting home. Because Patrick and I had more time to see what was out there we began our little adventure late morning and did not stop until we were both about to fall asleep while on a guided tour.
We started out near Nyhavn, my favorite place in all of Copenhagen! The buildings on the water are so colorful and fun that you can't walk by without taking a million pictures. It is all the ever seems to come up when you google Copenhagen anyway, so to see it in person makes it even better!
Patrick spotted a harbor tour that we decided to go on, and I am really glad that we did! It was cheap, an hour, and really informative. We got to see the new opera house that was donated by the richest man in Denmark, some cool apartments that used to be part of the naval base, the little mermaid, Christian IV brewing house that is still operating today, a really cool library, Parliament, the stock exchange building, and the outside of the number one restaurant in the world. (I don't think I will be eating there while I am here seeing that lunch costs about $200)
Christian IV brewing house
Parliament
The #1 Restaurant in the world
We did some more exploring and saw where the queen lives along with the prince and princess of Denmark and their four children. For the first time since I have been here I decided it was time to eat out instead of eating a packed lunch from home, so Patrick and I spotted a little cafe near the royal palace and grabbed a bite to eat. Though it was a bit pricey, almost $20 for a salad.... It was delicious
As we were heading towards the National Museum, we decided to stop in Parliament and see what it had to offer. Surprisingly there was a tour about to begin so we joined the group and learned a lot about what the Queen does, where she stands when people come to greet her, and many other things I can't exactly remember. It was around this time of that day that both we were starting to fall asleep and lose interest in all that was going on around us. We were not allowed to take pictures throughout the tour, which was a bummer because there were some really pretty things used to decorate this building! After deciding to pass on the National Museum we called it a day and would adventure again another day!
There was no better way to end the day of exploring without a little sweet treat! Stopping at one of the many bakeries on my way home I was able to pick up a little something tasty. There were so many to choose from, but the best one is the one with the chocolate on it in the second picture. It is sort of like a cinnamon roll with chocolate on top!
Yum!
