A Quick Look at Copenhagen, Denmark

Zagan the motorhome’s again facing across the choppy, grey waters of the Øresund, this time looking back at Sweden from a small free car park about 20 minutes north of Copenhagen (N55.79526, E12.58876). In front of me I can see the edge of the UNESCO-inscribed Dyrehaven (the Deer Park in Danish), and if I climb out and walk a short way, I can see the Hermitage Hunting Lodge rising up from the park’s grass, built in the 18th Century for the Danish King. We found this spot in the park4night.com database and opted to come here just for a rest and a night’s sleep, but it looks like it’ll be well worthy of a walk around in the morning. We opted to move from the parking spot near the Visit Carlsberg Exbeerience (ha, cracking name!), as some fellas came and parked beside us last night, chatting and listening to music into the small hours (aka, midnight). Passenger trains are currently running past 20 metres away every 18 seconds though, so a decent night’s sleep (10 hours) might have to wait another day.

Free parking at the Dyrehaven, north of Copenhagen

My preconceptions about Denmark mostly stem from a book Wayne, a fab chap of charliethechucklebuss.com fame, gave to us when we met him and the lovely Angie in the Arctic a few weeks back. The book’s entitled “The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia“, snappy! I won’t try and talk through what’s in there, largely because I’ve forgotten, but a summary might be: Danes, and their Scandinavian Neighbours frequently top the charts in the World Happiness Report, but it can’t be true, as the author has decided these countries are shit. He’s spent long enough living in ’em to have a good idea, but hey, from an outsider’s view they look half decent to me, and I had to wonder if he was just taking the opportunity to find the very worse in the place in order to just sell the book.

The main downside of living Nordic style, apart from the endless frozen darkness in winter, appears to be tax. These countries have somehow managed to walk a middle path between full-on capitalism, and full-on communism. You have to work for a living here, and very roughly speaking half your earnings are going to be deducted in income tax, but the flipside is the social safety net here is like having your own personal Spiderman: there’s not much chance of anyone falling very far. On the whole, folks seem to like this, and I’m finding myself looking for evidence to the contrary (as have the New York Times).

Door of the Day in Copenhagen: the whole building was skewed

Did I find any in Copenhagen? Nope. Although we were there all of about 19 hours, everyone we came across seemed happy. The folks we got the Carlsbergs tickets from, the bartenders putting up with my ‘I won free beer’ antics, the salesfolks in the Lego shop, the lady walking towards us grinning like a Lottery winner when we acknowledged her dog. Folks seem happy. Even the neds who kept us awake last night were laughing! Hmmmm.

Lego Death Star – £550!

We took a walk into and around the city this morning, as Charlie slept in the van. I’d read roughly 50% of all journeys in Copenhagen are by push bike, and man-o-man are those bikes in plenty supply. They’re everywhere. There are 430 km of dedicated cycle lanes, not just painted lines on the road, but lanes separated by both the footpath and the road by kerbs. Bikes have their own traffic lights, and their own set of rules to abide by. Bikes are piled everywhere, in all shapes and sizes but mainly comfy-looking things. There are very few mountain bikes and racers here, they are all down-to-Earth one gear, big-seats and high handlebars. Someone’s worked out Copenhagen saves $35million a year through the use of bikes and not cars. And that’s not including how much individual folks save, probably enough to buy many years of early retirement?

We walked maybe 5 or 6 miles, and from the start it felt a little like home. Other Nordic cities have felt like, well, Nordic, but Copenhagen felt like an over-sized Nottingham with a dollop of other UK cities thrown in. Exactly what made it feel that way I’m struggling to put my finger on. Brick built cottages on the way past the old Carlsberg brewery area? A more rough-and-ready feel with more cars and more graffiti? The broad array of eating options, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese, Thai, English(?), you name it, just like home. The mixture of classic and modern buildings in the centre reflected what we often seen back home. Perhaps the fact Denmark once rode the back of an empire, like Britain also did, has left a common stamp on the two disparate countries? Dunno.

We enjoyed our wanderings, finding the Tivoli Park was closed for renovations, being heavily geared up for an upcoming Halloween Zombie-fest. The waterfront along the Nyhavn seriously outshone Bergen with it’s array of colourful ex-merchant’s houses and forest of masts from moored-up house boats. Our guidebook gave the us the wink: the National-museet is free! Yep, free to look around the shop and cafe. Which we did, then exited and headed for home as it was 75 Dkk to visit the rest of it. There are a fair few museums I want to see in Denmark: bog man is high up there, as is some Viking boat action. None the Copenhagen museums were massively exciting us though, so we yomped alongside the train track back to Zagan. Once Charlie had calmed down, and the Carlsberg horse-drawn wagon had bounced over the cobbles past us, we nipped out of the city, trying not to squash any of those thousands of cyclists.

Tomorrow we’re looking to head north, after a wander around the park, probably.

Cheers, Jay