Copenhagen
Saturday, September 10, 2005
After getting up at 8am, having breakfast and cleaning our room (you have to do your own in the Swedish HI hotels – they reckon it’s so they can keep prices down) we headed to the train station to get back to Copenhagen. We arrived at about 12pm, and headed to the same tourist office that we went to last time… and unfortunately got the same prick of a guy. When he asked what we were looking for I said that we normally pay around €60, and he laughed and said ‘that dog aint gonna bark’ and that they didn’t have anything under €120. How incredibly rude – it didn’t say anywhere that it was a hotel booking service only, it just said ‘accommodation’. Never mind, he gave us a map with some hostels marked on it, and told us to go walking… We headed to one that we knew was only a few months old. When we first got there we were told that there was no space (there are 1072 beds there!) and that he didn’t know if any other hostels had space either. Disappointed we started to turn away, when he said to wait a second while he checked the emails for cancellations, and discovered that there were beds after all. Yay! Anyway, we got up to our room and what a weird place that was! Apart from the 2 single beds that we claimed, the beds were folded up against the wall. The only other furniture in the room was 2 tiny desks (attached to the wall) with 2 little stools each. It was very barren, and like the rest of the hostel, was completely devoid of any character. It was, however, a bed for the night that was safe and clean, which is all that we really ask.
Strangely, it was only 1pm or so by this stage so we decided to go out. I almost felt like I had jet lag or that we had crossed a time zone or something. We don’t usually arrive in cities so early in the day (and we had just spent 4 days sleeping in very late!). We decided to go out to the Little Mermaid Statue, as this is the only thing I really knew about Copenhagen – Hans Christian Anderson lived there and there are statues around of him and his characters.
Anyway, we began our walk, accidentally walking in a circle at one stage due to us looking too much at what we were seeing, rather than where we were going, and ended up finding that there were a whole lot of Navy Frigates lined up at the port along the way, with an open day. With Maarten being so interested in every sort of boat there is, and of course being a boy (so therefore being interested in war ships!) we got in the long queue to wait our turn. Once on the boat it was actually quite interesting – I was amazed how clean everything was! Not a speck of dust anywhere, not a single scratch on the paintwork. Anyway, we got on 3 different kinds of war boats (all of which we think were nuclear), all kind of the same but different, as they say. We then headed off again, towards the Little Mermaid Statue… and when we finally found it we were shocked to see how tiny it is! We’re used to seeing statues 20 metres high etc… this one was the size of a real person! Maarty was a little disappointed, as we had walked for quite some time – I was just glad that we had come across the Navy display as it made the trip feel a little more worth it.
After hanging out at the hostel for a couple of hours we headed back out into the expensive world that is Copenhagen, to find some dinner, eventually settling for KFC after not being able to find a supermarket! It also had the added benefit of being right beside the town square which had a free concert about to start. We stayed for a while, before deciding that the band wasn’t worth listening to, and went back to the hostel with the intention of returning later on, as there where three bands playing and presumably the later ones where the better ones. We came back all wrapped up warm, but this band wasn’t any better and there was enough teeny boppers to sink a ship, so we went back to get some sleep. By this time our dorm had filled up, and we were greeted by 4 other people getting back at the same time as us. We all got ourselves sorted and ready for bed. We had just finished getting ready when just outside our window was a flash of light and a very loud bang! For some unknown reason there was a fireworks display right outside our window. We’re not even sure if it was for the public or not as no one on the street seemed to be paying much attention, and it was all pretty random and didn’t seem to be choreographed in any way but they were quite big and went for a wee while, and it was a lovely way to end the day.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
