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:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

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)