Last weekend in Copenhagen

Last weekend in Copenhagen. I go to Germany this week. I am trying not to think about the culture shock, there.  I know it will be much harder there than here. Language barrier. Random German religious holidays. Grocery stores closed on Sundays. Much less cultural diversity.

Copenhagen is a very international town. Walking around, I hear Spanish, French, German, Russian(or Ukranian/Polish -- I confess I have trouble hearing the differences), various Scandinavian languages, and more. It's pretty comfortable as a foreigner (who speaks English) because, well, most people speak English, even if it's just the minimum needed for the job.

Example: I was fighting a cold recently, on and off feverish and a runny nose. I went to the the pharmacy (Apotek -- I keep calling it the apothecary, since that's the corresponding word in English),  which had a take-a-number-and-wait system (like the post office).  The guy at the counter looked Asian, so I guessed he might not be local, and first asket him if he spoke English (a little). It was enough English for me to say I needed for something for a runny nose and him to offer me Duact (main ingredient: pseudoephedrine). Which, by the way, was about 16USD for 24 capsules (bleah).

Another great thing is that there are plenty of grocery stores that are open on Sundays (unlike Germany), and some of them are even open relatively late (8pm or 10pm).  Not quite as indulgent as being able to buy ice cream at 1am if you want, but relative to German standards, pretty great.

I also appreciate that their foreign TV and movies is are subtitled in Danish, not dubbed, since I'm not here long enough to learn Danish, and it's nice to have that piece of familiarness around. They're all dubbed to German in Germany. :/ I'm told that they're very consistent, though (of course ;)). E.g. the same voice actor is Sean Connery in every movie with Sean Connery.

A little of my daily life here: 
When I come home from university by bus, I stop at Nørreport and walk from there, usually down Købmagergade, a mostly-pedestrian street that leads to the Strøget:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Then I pass the stork fountain

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

and get a view of Christiansborg Slot:

Christiansborg Slot in the rain, at night

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

When I get home, I walk up my somewhat amazingly crooked stairs (like someone rolled a heavy metal ball down them or something)

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

and often find something on the TV to watch in the background while making dinner (Wer wird Millionär? on RTL, or maybe a movie on some other channel. They also show Mythbusters pretty often).

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I did a little touristy stuff this weekend.
I saw the following park/kids play area, which has models of the tops of the Rådhus, Rundetårn and the church in Christianshavn:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Saturday, went up to the Rådhus tower. This is much taller than Rundetårn, so I don't feel to bad skipping the latter. It's also very cheap, 20dkk. The city hall (Rådhus) was built in 1903/1904, which I think was after the second Christiansborg Slot burnt down. It has ample fire-fighting gear installed inside, which is interesting to note.

When you walk in, you get to see some nice stained glass above the door:

Stained glass above the Rådhus door (untouched picture)

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The inside of the main hall is designed to look kind of like the outside of the building:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The stairs up to the tower were very narrow and winding and mainly of wood. It had several landings, which gave a reprieve from the winding.

On the walls of one of the landings:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Another landing had old clocktower parts:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

It was a windy day, even windier at the top. There were very nice views, although I wish it'd been on a nicer day. Some of the pictures I over-saturated a little to make up for the bleak lighting.

Christiansborg Slot and Slotsholmen (the island it's on) from the Rådhus:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Aforementioned Christianshavn church (far away, so the zoom was a bit fuzzy):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

And a view of Tivoli:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Half of the town square:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I don't know if the resolution is good enough, but that building center-right has the following on its front: 

From Copenhagen and Germany 2008

They legally can't say that they're the best beer in town, so this was the compromise. :) 

And here's the other half of the town hall square:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Inside the town hall were some things in glass cases from the early days of its operation, including this over-engineered German pencil sharpener: 

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

They also had an elevator that could carry gods. 

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And, what would a city monument be without some murals. These depicting Copenhagen circa 1616. Notice the scaffold with people hanging from it in one of them.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I also went back to the National Museum (National Museet) and wandered through prehistoric Denmark. Denmark is/was very boggy, which is great for preservation. Speaking of, they mentioned digging peat during the Occupation, 40-45. Anyone know why peat-digging is associated with being occupied by Germany?  For fuel for factories, maybe?

One thing I gathered was that early Danes ferociously hunted everything to extinction, from giant reindeer and oxen (auruchs) to, well:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I also hadn't realized that a lot of prehistoric Denmark is now at the bottom of the ocean. So, boats often dig up archaeological finds [Edit: the reason it's under water is that following this period 10,000 years ago there was a period of North American glacial melt since the weather had warmed up significantly, which caused the seas to rise]:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Here are some pretty things found in bogs (from 700-500BC):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

And, the obligatory thing that people sacrificed things to, also found in a bog (yeah...):

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Bells, Ruins, 2nd to last weekend in Copenhagen

[[Pre-note: 3.5 years ago, summer of 2008 was my first time in Europe (and Copenhagen). I made travelogs about it, sent to a few people, and am adding them (with retroactive timestamps) here. If you would like to go see them, they should be in the archives under 2008. Here's the first one. Here's the flickr set from that trip. (I plan on migrating it as my pro account expires). My favorite re-discovery is this, from one of them:


"Danish is very foreign. A swedish woman told me a while ago that it's very much like swedish, except the people speak like they have a potato in their mouth."


Honestly, after recently discussing the Danish noise used when one sees the letter ''d'', it's pretty close to what you'd say if you tried to say a(n English) word ending in the letter d, assuming you have a potato in your mouth.  ]]

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Snow of late was followed by fog. It looked very nice from my office window:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

And a less snowy, yet still foggy day when I was walking home yielded this picture:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Something about bells: 
My office in Illinois was across the street from the math building, which has a bell tower. I was pretty aware of the bells, being a good way to keep track of fractions of an hour and also sometimes a source of amusement when the carillon would (try to) play popular melodies between 12:50 and 13:00.

Here in Copenhagen, I live near the town hall (Rådhus), which also has a bell tower.

(it's the thing on the right in this picture:)

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

There are four mini-melodies, 1,2,3,4. If you've listened to a such a bell tower, you'll notice that one is played at quarter past, say 1. Then at half past, you get 1 and then 2. Quarter til, 1,2,3. The full four at the hour.

My friend remarked that each time he hears it, it sounds different.

Thinking about it, I realized that 4! is 24, and you *could* rearrange the bells so that you could tell not just the fraction of hour but the hour from them. E.g. if I heard '1,3' at half past, maybe that would be 2:30 am.



Carnival?
If I were in Germany, or any (nominally) Catholic country, I would have been recently surrounded by the sounds of Carnival. Well, Denmark, historically protestant, did a good job of outlawing (several times, with varying degrees of success) such festivities (Shrovetide, Shrove tuesday, Carnival, whatever you call it).

Results? Well, they celebrate...Fastelavn. Kind of. Used to put a black cat in a barrel and hit it until it got out, to chase off bad luck or such. Now it's candy/oranges in a barrel, and you get declared king or queen ''of cats'' based on whether you were the last/first to break into/break the barrel. It was pretty hard to find out about any festivities (read: there weren't any, really), although walking around on Sunday I saw a few kids dressed up in various halloween-y ways. Also, had some of the traditional pastries:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Flaky pastry dough, around (surprisingly not super sweet) cream (whipped with strawberries). It was really very good.

Other touristy things accomplished:



1. National Museet :  I actually went here 3.5 years ago, but what I saw was ''prehistoric Denmark''. This time, I wandered through the 1600s and 1700s. My visit then and my visit now didn't overlap at all, and neither cost me anything. It seems like the characterizing features of the time were expanding economy and wars with Sweden.

Danish West Indies, because everybody had 'em:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The museum had several rooms that they'd re-assembled (the panels/ceilings and/or furniture from) in the museum, from the 1700's. Kind of weird. Makes you think about what similar displays in future museums of our times will look like. Oh, wait. It'll just be a preserved IKEA. :P

Bed in one of the ornate 1700s rooms

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I think living in Austin for a long time made me partial to funky depictions of the virgin Mary. I dig this one with antlers, hung above the door on the way back to the main hall:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

2.Ruins of various castles (under Christiansborg Slot)
When I had first visited Copenhagen, I had wanted to see these and didn't end up making it. I'm glad I did this time. The history itself is interesting. First, how they found the ruins was during one of the more recent re-buildings of Christiansborg slot, where they dug up the courtyard, and found ruins of the original castle and the one following it (the successive castles had burned down a few times...). People thought this was nifty, so they decided to open it up to the public.

Some history of the castles:
I. Absalon's Castle:   
Copenhagen/København (formerly just 'Havn') really started gaining in size and importance in the mid-1100's, when Bishop Absalon was given control of it. He built a castle with giant white limestone walls, atop which he would put pikes with enemies' heads. The idea of the walls was to make it really easy to see, actually. As a kind of scare tactic (well, in combination with the heads). This castle lasted for quite a while, until enemies of Copenhagen/Absalon managed to conquer it.  It then took 47 Hanseatic stonecutters to level the castle, which they did a decent job of. Pieces of it were either left standing or re-assembled, not sure which, but you can see (in the background) part of a wall of Absalon's castle:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The main things you could see down there are: walls from Absalon's castle, pieces of Absalon's outer wall of limestone, walls and pieces of towers from the next castle, and...''secrets''.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Here are two ``secrets" (described in the text above):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

II. Copenhagen Castle : 
After Absalon's castle, another was needed, so they built (and renovated several times) ''Copenhagen Castle''.  Walking around the next day, I saw the outside of Copenhagen's Museum, which includes a model of Copenhagen during the time of that first version of Copenhagen castle. It's in the top background of this following picture, the thing with the very rectangular tower:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

It included use of such advanced technology as hollowed out logs for ''pipes''. No, really: 

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

   Hundreds of years go by, and a few renovations. Here's Copenhagen Castle circa 1700:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

However, it was not popular with the critics. They thought it was ugly and small and dirty.  Just to prove this, we were given quotes of said critics:

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So, they tore down Copenhagen Castle and built Christiansborg Slot/Palace. Which then burnt down twice. (1794 and 1884)

3.Fredriksberg
Fredriksberg is a city within a city. It actually is a city, and surrounded (now) on all sides by Copenhagen. It's home to a lot of cool little shops and this neat building side/sign:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

It of cours also has a palace/castle, which is on the only hill I've seen here. It has a nice view:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Nearing 4 weeks in Copenhagen

The weather has turned quite cold, here (down to -8 and -10C during the day). Homeless people dying in Poland and Ukraine, and Heathrow canceled a ton of flights last Sunday. It snowed Sunday and Monday. Here's the view out my office window (from Monday):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I did go do something touristy last Sunday, but it was a bit hampered by the cold. Turns out, -8C and windy is not good weather to go explore something that's sort of mainly outdoors/something to look at. Christiania. Interesting place. The ''Green Light District'' was some incredibly blatant/straightforward, calm...well. Selling of wares that would be illegal other places besides Amsterdam. No picture-taking allowed, so I can only tell you that it was interesting, and that the internet has sufficiently many pictures to entertain. This was next to where I entered.

So, rather than continue on about touristy things, I'll tell you about odds and ends of living abroad/in Copenhagen.

1. Immigration:  On the surface, it seems like Denmark is better to its immigrants than Germany. There are free Danish classes for foreigners, e.g.  Everyone speaks English, which makes it easy/not stressful at all to order food or buy groceries or anything like that.  What I was told is that Denmark likes its foreign visitors, who are guaranteed to leave after a limited time. To actually immigrate, however, there's some weird points system for becoming a citizen. Lots of points for going to an Ivy League school or a Scandinavian school, etc. They also don't like allowing in spouses of Danish citizens when the spouse is less than 28. Supposedly to block arranged marriages (is this an oblique reference to Islam? I don't know). My impression is that Germany likes to pretend that it has no foreigners. 


2. Currency: All kroner (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are seriously devalued. 5 Danish kroner per USD, but it costs 50 Danish kroner (crowns) for a half liter of beer, 100 dkk (Danish crowns) for a winter hat, 300-1500 dkk for shoes, etc. That is, the buying power is not reflected by the ratio to USD or euro. As a result, the lower level coins have been disappearing. There are no coins for anything less than half a crown. I saw a sign by a train station advertising the halting of use of the .25 dkk coins (or, that's the gist I got; it was in Danish).
   
   The result?  Rounding. Their stores have the same deceptive prices as in the states (albeit, they all include tax). E.g. Yogurt for 13,95 dkk.  So, what happens if your bill totals to something like xxx.65 dkk?  Or xxxx.14 dkk? Rounding, up and down, to the nearest coin in use. It makes sense. And would also never fly in Germany. Makes me think of how nice it would be to not have pennies. :)



From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)



3. Bikes: It is pretty exhilarating to be in a town with bike traffic. Bike traffic lights, bike lanes, and cyclists that signal turns and stops (which they have to, otherwise there would be accidents, an no one wears a helmet). It's definitely more fun than normal traffic, and I haven't seen any traffic jams.


4. Bread: So far, not impressed by Danish bread. Much more pricey than what I expect of European bread (compared to Germany and France), and overall underwhelming. However, interesting side-note:  The import of the merchant Sephardic Jews to Denmark in the 1600s brought with them their baking habits, including covering their breads with poppy seeds. The hebrew word for these yielded the word in Danish, which is now commonly used to refer to (any) roll -- birkes.


5. Canada Goose coats: This is sort of random, but it seems like the next big thing in coats (at least here) is the brand Canada Goose. These suckers run about $600 USD (in the states) in my experience, and are Arctic-expedition levels of warm. I've seen at least 50 people here wearing them. I tend to see 5-10 people in them every time I walk around for any extended period of time. Not sure why, as we're not living in particularly arctic conditions. Maybe it's a status symbol. 


6. Recycling?: So, Germany recycles some crazy amount of their waste, 85% or such. Here? I have seen the occasional glass-recycling bin, and plastic bottle collectors at the grocery store, but overall, I'm told they don't recycle here, they incinerate, and use it to heat the place.


7. Heating: On the topic of heating -- all the buildings (so says the apartment rental guy) plug into the same central boiler system. I imagine there's some redundancy to protect against things going wrong, and to keep anyone trying to fix it from suffering 600C steam burns, but I find that pretty interesting.


8. Danish: About as crazy as English, with a worse number system. :) Here's some Danish that helps you get by:  
• Biograff = movie theater (don't ask me, I didn't do it) :) 
• Smørebrod = ''traditional Danish food''. Don't bother. Go find yourself some of the super-dense schwarzbrot in the store, cover it with mayoand a piece of breaded fish, voila. ;) 
• Tak = thanks
• Unskyld = Excuse me 
• Bøf = steak, oksekød = beef 
• Kylling = chicken 
• Skinke = ham, Swinekød = pork 
• kød = meat (said ~ ''cool'')
• dag = day (Said the same way, roughly).  Tirsdag, Ondag, Torsdag, Fredag, Lørdag, Sondag. Only weird one is the name for Saturday. It's comes from a word for washing/doing laundry. So, Saturday = laundry day. 

The worst part is that they have the same greetings as English. So, if someone says Hi/Hello/Hey, it does not mean that they will assume the conversation will continue in English instead of Danish. At least with German, I can hear the difference between ''Hallo'' and "Hello".

I was asked pretty recently if I miss anything from the states. Outside of the obvious (friends, affordable alcohol), yeah. Since I'm on a roll with lists, here's another:

1. Netflix. Man. I miss being able to just put something on, of my choice. Don't get me wrong, I've been pretty impressed so far with the frequency of decent movies on the Danish television, although it's hard to figure out what'll be playing as they translate most of the titles into Danish. E.g. tonight, they're showing ''Slothed og Fordom'', an ''Amerikanisk romantisk drama fra 2005''. Stumped? Here's a hint: it stars Keira Knightly and was written by Jane Austen. Also, there's the daily showing of ''Venner''(friends) and ''Greys hvide verden''(Greys Anatomy).


2. Cheap, good coffee. Even in Berlin, I could get an espresso for a euro. Here, I'm lucky to pay 4 USD. 20dkk (and that's a deal!).


3. Customer Service. Man. Something happened, my internet's out. There's no company for me to harass, so I have to wait for the apartment rental agency to harass them. However, they both keep limited hours (9-4pm, at best), which is shocking. that is, there is no one for me to call at 6pm or on the weekend to say ''Hey, my internet's out. Please fix it''. 


4. Craigslist. Not for now, but the future. It just doesn't exist over here. Why? What do people do with their old stuff? Burn it for fuel? 

I also kind of miss Americans. I find Scandinavians (and Germans) pretty reserved. I was talking to a guy about this, and he said the Netherlands are worse, that you wouldn't talk to someone unless you knew them since elementary school. Bleah.

On the practical front, I think I have a place to live for March, and theoretically, April onwards (well, I put down a deposit, so I ought to). I am resigned for now to pay out my teeth, especially as there is no Craigslist with which to cheaply furnish a place, so I would have to factor in the cost of furniture when thinking about renting, on top of the actual cost of rent/utilities (and probably also courtage/provisions/i.e. commission fees for the realtors).

The ''lakes'' (glorified moats/puddles or maybe dammed up canals) have frozen over. I walked by about sunset the other day (before the complete freeze) and took some pictures:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

They have swans:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Copenhagen, after 2(.5) weeks.

I feel I owe at least two posts at this point, and I should probably write at least one before this gets away from me :). This will be mainly pictures, and I will endeavor to provide a bit more content soon.

The weather has gotten quite cold here. It was -8ºC a few minutes ago, and between -5ºC and -7ºC all day. Despite that, I still biked in this morning. I am inching closer to breaking down and giving up my spare kidney for proper gloves and maybe a better coat.

Recent good news: my diploma arrived in Germany on February 1st, so no one can argue with me whether or not I have a Ph.D. any more. :)

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Walking around Copenhagen in the cold -- the canals freeze and thaw (you'll notice, perhaps, lumps on the water? Those are rocks people threw from the bridge.):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

A view alongside a bridge across the canal, heading towards the university area:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The birds walking on the ice and swimming in the water:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

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This past weekend's touristy excursions were:

1. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (regularly 75 dkk, but free on Sundays!)
2. Kastellet (part of fortifications of Copenhagen from the 1600's)
3. Lille Havfru (the little mermaid statue)

Around the corner from the museum is the town hall:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

1. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (New Carlsberg Egyptian Museum)
The view as you walk up:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

A note: this is adjacent to Tivoli, which is (sadly) closed while I'm here, so I won't get to see it. It does make sense for it to be closed during winter, with the outdoor rides. The story is that Walt Disney got inspired by it to make his own amusement park. Also, after Michael Jackson visited, he offered to buy it.

If you don't know, I'm a big fan of ancient Egyptian/Greek/Roman/Etruscan/Babylonian/Assyrian stuff. That's what I tend to go look for when I get to a museum. And that was (most of) this museum.

The museum had a winter garden. Not a garden full of things that do well in the winter, but a garden where the climate is relatively constant inside and you can visit in the winter.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Egyptian and antiquities museum. Including some Assyrian (Babylonian?) stuff, such as this:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Nearby was also the following lion. It was one of several animals there from a large gate.The gate (the smaller of a pair of gates) is on display in Berlin, at the Pergamon .

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

One really nice thing about the museum is that they're conducting research (in combination with the university and some other institutes) on detecting the original coloration of ancient statuary. This uses some combination of UV-light exposure and other techniques. They then made a mold of the original and displayed it with the recovered colors.

Here's a good example, original on left and 'restored' model on the right:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

And another, this time of Caligula:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The museum also had some Etruscan grave/tomb paintings, which is something I hadn't seen before:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Here is the side of a Roman sarcophagus:

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I would hazard a guess that these mummies come from Ptolemaic Egypt. There was an interesting blend of cultures at that time. I will just pass on what wikipedia has to say:

``Ptolemaic Egypt began when Ptolemy I Soter invaded Egypt and declared himself Pharaoh of Egypt in 305 BC and ended with the death of queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman conquest in 30 BC. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.''

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

2. Kastellet If you've looked at a map of Copenhagen, maybe you've noticed the star-shaped piece of land. That's what I headed for, and it turned out to be an ancient fortification.

Größere Kartenansicht

I have to say, picking something that looks weird on the map and walking towards it sometimes works out. Ah, also: Kirkegård=cemetary. Kind of a weird thing to have as a last name.


Another wikipedia quote:  

``Kastellet, located in Copenhagen, Denmark is one of the best preserved fortifications in Northern Europe. It is constructed in the form of a pentagram with bastions at its corners. Kastellet was continuous with the ring of bastioned ramparts which used to encircle Copenhagen but of which only the ramparts themselves Christianshavn remain today.''

Here's a cool map of the thing, as you walk in.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I entered along the bridge in the south and exited north. It's still used by the military, apparently, but open for people to walk around in, and I saw several people jogging along the ramparts. It was quite cold out, but I'm glad I went. It was pretty neat.

View inside:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Some views from the ramparts. You can kind of see the star-shaped ness of the ramparts.


A requisite cannon (no ancient military fortification is complete without one):

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And of course, a moat. Also, a view of the north bridge.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

3. The Little Mermaid. People keep saying how disappointing the statue is. I say, you have to just tack it onto a trip to the Kastellet, or maybe the King's garden and Kastellet, then swing by the statue. Going all the way out there *just* for the statue might not be worth it.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

There she is, pretty as a postcard:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

Around the corner are some funky buildings:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I liked the mix of old and new architecture. I'm sure some of it was due to the money you'd need to build around the harbor area, but the new buildings around there were new and nice to look at, which I appreciated.

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I will finish with a lovely view at sunset around the corner from where I live:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)