Victor's Adventures: November 2005

fact of the day...

Shaving your own head is hard.

Denmark, with a short stay in Sweden

Hey all, I’m back from my trip to Copenhagen. This time I went with Preston and Jem, and their friend Meridith. We left Thursday night so when we got there it was pretty late and not much to do. We checked into our hostel around 11 and just walked around a bit. We helped some girl fix her bike, so that was nice of us :) The weather wasn’t too bad for me, just t-shirt and sweater, but Jem was freezing a lot of the time (she’s from Australia).

The second day was spent walking around the city, checking out all the sights. From our hostel we first went to the Radhus (town hall). Along the way we ran into the Hans Christian Anderson statue (famous writer, wrote little mermaid…ect).

We then headed north towards Chirstiansborg castle. This is now the Danish Parliament. It didn’t look too nice from the outside with all the construction around it and we didn’t bother going inside.

Christianborg castle

The next stop was to Nyhavn Canal, which is a nice little harbor thing with some places to eat and it had a mini x-mas market. Along the way we went by the Royal Theatre as well as some nice x-mas displays infront of stores and hotels.

There was also a nice outdoor skating rink, but it wasn’t ready for use yet, too bad. We eventually got to Nyhavn and looked around a little bit. H.C. Anderson used to live here as well (building 67).

The next stop was to Amalienborg castle to watch the changing of the guards (they leave Rosenborg castle at 11:30 and get here at 12. It was pretty similar to changing of the guards everywhere else. I think the royal family lives here.

Across the castle was Frederikskirke Church. It’s nicknamed the marble church because of the dome.

Just north of this church was Gefion Fountain and the little Mermaid. As everyone says, the little mermaid isn’t too spectacular, but still one of those things you have to see. It was donated to the city after the Carlsberg beer guy saw the Little Mermaid play. The statue originally had feet instead of a fish tail, but that was later changed. Also, the head and an arm were stole before but they were replaced.

The next stop was the Round Tower. There is an observatory ontop of it, and it has a good view of the city, but being poor travelers, we didn’t want to spend money to go to the top.

As we were walking around, we found a Candy factory and got to take a look at them making a bunch of hard candies (and a few samples to try). It was pretty neat. The think the Danes really like sweet things as there are a lot of candy stores.

We then went to Rosenborg Castle but it was closed and the armed guards stop us from going any further (the barracks are right beside it). The crown jewels are stored here.

For a little snack we ate some æbleskiver by the Nyhavn canal. It was basically a pastry/dumpling thing made with apples and served with jam and sugar.

The main highlight of the evening was a visit to Tivoli. It’s basically a small theme park and gardens and stuff in the middle of the city, but during Christmas time is all decorated. It was really nice there and very Christmas-y. Europeans seem to embrace the Christmas spirit a lot more then North Americans.

We walk around till it was about to close and went to call it a night.

On Saturday we took the train to Helsingor to see Kronborg Castle. At the trainstation we found some good Wienerbrod stænger (a.k.a. danish). Danish are actually form Denmark, who knew? :)

Here’s the castle. It’s famous for being the location in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It was also important to the Danes back in the day since they could control trade into Europe from there and charge a tax to get in.

This is also the first castle I’ve seen with a moat (2 of them actually)

We first went to the casemates to see where the soldiers would stay. It was pretty well designed with lots of curved ramps for horses to move as well as easier to defend (since it’s curved, attackers have a smaller field of vision).

There’s also a statue of Holgar the Dane. Legend goes that if Denmark is ever in danger, he will awaken to defend the country (although a Viking warrior might not fair so well against modern weapons).

The castle itself was pretty cool. It was nice to see a more medieval castle and not the usual glamorous ones.

As I stated earlier, this castle inspired the setting for Hamlet. There have been a lot of plays and stuff staged here.

The cool thing with Helsingor is that Sweden is so close (the town of Helsingborg)

We took a ferry there, only took 20 minutes.

Sweden didn’t seem too different from Denmark. The language is pretty similar and everything was more or less the same. I did’t want to exchange any money there, so I didn’t get any Swedish Kronors. Some stereotypes seemed somewhat true, while others did not. There were a lot of blonde haired people there, but I didn’t see any IKEA’s (wasn’t in the city long, and probably had to go out of city centre) and it was impossible to find any Swedish meatballs (thought they’d be everywhere).

In Helsingborg we went up Karnan tower. It was a watch tower for the town or something like that.

After walking around for a bit we took the ferry back home. It was getting dark and the sky looked really nice.

When we got back we went for dinner, and being low on cash, found a cheap all you can eat pizza and salad place (not very Danish).
Everyone was fairly tired when we got home so we rested in the hostel for a little while. Preston, Jem and I played a bunch of speed (card game). It was fun but Jem was too good and slaughtered us, she didn’t fair too well 2 on 1 thought :) OWNED!

Since the girls are HUGE Harry Potter fans, we got tickets to see the new movie. It was my first movie in Europe and just as expensive as in Switzerland. The nice thing was there was no intermission in the movie (as it’s very common in Europe) but the seats weren’t stadium style, but it was stuff good. Also, no superman trailer, that sucked. The movie itself was pretty good, but having not read the book, I have nothing to compare it to.

We walked around a bit and headed home for the night.

On our last day we went to a town called Roskilde. It was about 30 minutes west of Copenhagen by train and was a nice small town.

The reason we went there was to see the Viking Ship Museum. This town was an important port town during the time and it had a very interesting defense strategy. There were 3 currents that flowed into town, so they submerged boats to block off 2 of them leaving 1 line free. This line had many turns so it was difficult to navigate, therefore, buying time for the town to gather the soldiers. They had a system of fires on various hills to alert the town of any danger. 5 ships that were used in the blockade where discovered a couple years back and became the centerpiece of the Viking exhibit.

There was a place to dress like a Viking so we figured we might as well do it. Preston took all the cool stuff so I had to wear some little kid’s tunic and it looked sorta like a dress :( it sucked.

We went back to Copenhagen and walked by the Guinness world records. It was too expensive to get in, but at least we could see how tall the tallest guy was (not so much taller then me)

Afterwards we went for some lunch. I tried to find stuff as Danish as possible, so I got Weinerbrod and smorrebrot (Danish and open-face sandwich).

Here’s a funky church (has a cool tower thing).

The last stop was to Christiania. This was like an anarchist neighborhood, exempt from the city laws and stuff like that. There’s a lot of weed usage there and the people live in houses that they built themselves. It was interesting since it was so different then the rest of town.

When that was all done we headed to the airport for the flight home. We flew on SAS, but they didn’t have anything special. Was a pretty short flight as well.

Well, that’s about it, don’t think I’m gonna go anywhere till Dima comes, so peace out for now.

Free Meat

Cool, found free meat at the grocery store.Not much for eating but good for soups and stuff, so that's cool :)

Halloween

Hi everyone,

Well, this weekend we had a halloween party. I didn't know what to go as and didn't want to spend any money on it, so took me a while to come up with something. Then I started talking to frungy about her getting an ipod and it all clicked. I got a fridge box from the Polish and a bunch of supplies from work and poof, it was done....