Copenhagen: It is nicer when it is sunny

August 8, 2013

The next day I cycled north for another one hundred kilometers until I reached Copenhagen. I wish I had some interesting stories to tell about this ride, but it was pretty uninteresting. It was grey and dull and drizzling with rain. The roads were long and straight and went almost entirely through flat boring farmland. And then I came into Copenhagen. Getting into the city, it wasn't really all that great either. Grey and boring with lots of cars until I got into the centre. Even the town centre didn't look like much to get excited about.

But fortunately I had some friends to visit and stay with in town, and when I went around to their apartment things got a lot brighter. I met Conor and Malene in January 2012 in Havana, Cuba. They were standing outside a closed tourist information point and I told them about one up the street that was open and then one thing led to another and before we know it we were drinking mojitos together and confronting criminals and all sorts of crazy capers. Now it was a year and a half later and the two of them had become the three of them with the introduction of this wonderful little creature.

What is the world record for the youngest round the world cyclist?

Just to clear up any confusion, the wonderful little creature is baby Sean and he is wearing grey in the above picture. The other wonderful creature is myself, in the red, but I prefer to be referred to as the wonderful creature of normal adult size.

It was really nice to spend the evening with Conor, Malene and baby Sean (played by Macaulay Culkin.) They live in a really nice apartment in a central location with balconies overlooking Tivoli and one of the main streets. After everyone else had gone to bed I actually stood and looked down and watched all the rickshaws going up and down this street. There were really a lot of them and it got me thinking about my former (and future) life as a rickshaw cyclist myself. It seemed like this would be a good city to do it (very flat, cycle-friendly, English-speaking tourists) but I was not in a position to stop and work now. In fact, earlier in the evening I had been able to speak with Karin online about meeting up and cycling with her in Finland and agreed to arrive in Turku on a boat from Stockholm on the 28th. That gave me only 20 days to cycle one hell of a long way if I wanted to get up to Oslo and west to see the Norwegian fjords and back east to Stockholm.

The view of Tivoli from the balcony. I wish my camera was better. The big hole in the ground in front is sadly set to become a giant skyscraper which will steal this view

Myself, Sean and Conor. Conor is Irish and the fact that his apartment is directly above this particular public house is, he assures me, entirely coincidental

The morning brought blue skies and sunshine and I marched off (can you march on a bicycle?) to do a quick tour of the Danish capital. I did not have the time or funds to actually enter Tivoli, which is a famous tourist theme park thing in the city, but luckily they have gates which it is easy to take a photo through, so no worries. Here it is:

Tivoli ticked off before eight a.m. and I was making good progress. Next on my to do list was a place called Christiania. To get there took a bit of cycling across town, which was alright because the cycle lanes looked like this:

Not all of the cyclists in Copenhagen were blonde girls, just most of them

When I fought my way through all of the girls I eventually found Christiania. It is an unusual place. As I understand it, it is basically an area of the city that was kind of abandoned and so a bunch of hippies in the seventies decided to move in and they declared it as an autonomous region, independent from the rest of Denmark. It has its own laws, which seem to mostly involve legalising cannibis and avoiding paying taxes. It is also very definitely okay to do graffiti.

Everything was grafittied or painted brightly

There were not very many people around but there were a few drinking beer on benches. I've seen places like this before. It starts with the hippies but now its the homeless alcoholics holding it together. Then I came to the 'green light district' where a lot of signs tell you it is not allowed to take photos. 'Selling cannibis is still illegal' it says. I thought you made up your own rules here guys? Anyway, I hope I'm not giving the game away by saying there are lots of shifty characters selling weed here. My understanding is that this place fills up with tourists and lots of people during the day, but it was still early in the morning and only a few people were sitting around smoking. Most of them were old, bearded and didn't smell so good. I was most intrigued by a young kid, still in his teens, sitting with his travellers backpack, looking like he was on a gap year, just out of high school. He was sat on a bench talking with and in fact sharing a joint with, one of these bearded old men, who had on his patched up old winter jacket with last nights dinner in his beard and they were talking in Danish and I would have given anything to know what they were talking about and what circumstances brought them to be here passing a joint at nine in the morning.

But I had to get on. Stockholm was a long way away (via the Norwegian fjords by bicycle anyway). So I continued with my tour of Copenhagen, and here are some things what I saw:

There are lots of canals in Copenhagen. I really wished I had a solar boat to explore them, but as you can see, there are no solar boats on this canal.

There are lots of bicycles in Copenhagen. And girls.

This was, as you can probably tell, a very impressive sand sculpture (don't ask me what it is)

Some of the rickshaws in Copenhagen. I tried to talk to a man fixing some near here but he was Bulgarian and not very interested in my interest. He reminded me of a man I used to know from the Czech Republic.

Some boats and buildings pretty typical Copenhagen

I followed the sea out of Copenhagen to the north. On the way, there is the Little Mermaid, which is the sculpture you see above, sitting on a rock just off shore. Around it are crowds of tourists taking it in turns to take a photo in front of it (you may notice my picture was taken at a slight angle and with the zoom, due to my general impatience and dislike of crowds of tourists.) One can only wonder at how this rather unspectacular bronze statue came to have such spectacular tourist appeal, somewhat akin to the 'Mannekin Pis' of Brussels. To further complicate matters, she appears to not even be a mermaid at all as she clearly has two legs and is just wearing some slightly flipperish boots. The mind boggles as to what these tourists want, it really does.

One good thing was that there were three rickshaws sat waiting by the crowds and I took the time to say hello. They were all from Poland and just here to do this as a summer job, but I did get some useful information about what it costs to rent a rickshaw and what it is like here and I think I could make money if I ever wanted to do it here. The three young Polish lads hadn't made very much during the course of the summer but they explained that was because they had been spending too much time in Christiania, sampling the local delicacies.

I carried on north along the coast, which is quite a nice ride in the sunshine. The beach is right there and Sweden can be seen just a few miles away across the water. I stopped to swim a couple of times, in surprisingly clear water. It was good that it was clear, because it made it easy to spot these guys and avoid them:

A good chance to use my underwater camera

After about 40 kilometres, I arrived at the town of Helsingors, which is a pleasant little place with an impressive fortress. From here it is very easy to jump on a ferry to Sweden; you don't need to pre-book anything, just cycle up with the cars and pay about four euros and you get to go at the front and be first on and first off. This I did, and I was on my way to Sweden!

08/08/13 - 106km

09/08/13 - 99km (60 in Denmark)

DENMARK SUMMARY

Time in country: Two and a half days

Distance cycled: 278 km

Danish bacon consumed: No

Best bits: Free cycling paths, free camping, free internet, not spending a cent in two and a half days

Worst bits: Stop being so negative

Top tip: Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul (Democritus)

Today's ride: 166 km (103 miles)
Total: 2,050 km (1,273 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0