Copenhagen Trip
Other Notes
This is just a collection of other random things I noticed, which didn't quite fit into the main diary.
Tivoli Gardens
Take a theme park like, say, Alton Towers. Remove the really big rollercoasters, but leave all the small ones, the other rides, the sideshows, etcetera.
Next, add about 3 dozen restaurants, ranging from cheap burger bars up to £50+ per head, book-a-month-in-advance places. Note that, this being Denmark, all but the very cheapest fast food kiosks will happily sell you a bottle of wine to accompany your meal.
Throw in a concert hall, bandstands (regularly populated, by bands playing show tunes, big band, and other stuff), a small lake, a large open-air stage (acrobats and other circus-type acts, replaced by a rock band every friday night), fountains, and a traditional dance pantomime theatre.
Finally, squash the whole caboodle down into a 300 by 400 metre city block, and drop it in the middle of a european capital.
This place is bonkers. Every city should have one.
Random Jottings
I am in awe of the language skills of the Danes. Okay, we were in touristy places, but virtually everyone we had to communicate with spoke damn good English, and I spotted an awful lot of them swapping into what sounded like pretty good German, with hardly a pause for breath. I'm rather grateful for this, being a rather stereotypical monolingual Englishman.
Danish is pretty tough for newbies - mutating vowel sounds and silent consonants all over the place make it very difficult to figure out how to pronounce words based on their written form. Also, the shared ancestry with English is often obvious - like German, there are many words in Danish that have a written form uncannily close to the English equivalent, even where the spoken word has diverged radically.
The transition to LED traffic lights is well underway in Copenhagen.
The Danes (unlike Brits) don't jaywalk much. Danish drivers have impeccable manners - in 7 full days in Denmark, much spent in the Capital City, I think I only heard a car horn once. Drivers correctly gave way to pedstrians and cyclists as appropriate, without any revving of engines or inching forward. Good thing, too, considering how many times in the first few days I looked the wrong way before stepping out into the street.
The rail service is good (not perfect, but good) with excellent rolling stock - spacious and comfortable, with loads of luggage space.
Alcoholic drinks may be expensive, but they're taken seriously - numerous restaurants
have an extensive and detailed list of spirits in their menus. Very little cider,
though. :-(
As well as the usual "No Camping/Fires/Litter", the park rules at Kronborg castle include "No Gutting and Cleansing of Fish." They like their seafood, the Danes.
There's Lego in the souvenir shops.