Bonjour

I am full of ennui. I am not sure that I can post. But I must.

We got to paris yesterday and I have loved our time here so far. First of all the train ride was absolutely gorgeous, particularly coming out of amsterdam. All of the open fields with the long irrigation canals and wind mills was just so beautiful.

For a New Yorker, Paris makes more sense than the other cities we have thus far seen. So we navigated the metro with limited issue. One of our wedding presents was my father in laws marriott rewards points and that scored us a hotel room on the champs élysées. Since we got here we have noticed that we stand out as not exactly blending in (can’t typically afford a 1000 euro a night room) but we are ending this honeymoon in style!

We went to the Paris opera and place du Concorde last night as well as walked up to (not up) the arc de triumph before grabbing dinner (avec a bottle of wine) and then hitting the hay.

We woke up pretty early to hit tag pavement hard. Grabbed some breakfast (free buffet at the hotel, and yes I had 3 croissants, but only one was chocolate thank you very much, and yes I ate about half a Brie as well) then wandered down the champs élysées to the louvre. It was a little rainy but it wasn’t dampening our spirits. We found the apple store and the most intimidating chocolate store I have ever seen.

We then went to the pont des arts. It’s a bridge on which you can put a lock and then throw the key into the seine. The sentiment is that your love should last as long as it takes to find the key. If you’ve seen the color of the seine you know you will enter find it.

As a wedding present, my best friend gave us an engraved lock with our wedding date and names to lock on the pont des arts, so we made good on it today. The funny part is we took a video of us dropping the key together into the river. We should have looked over the edge first to notice the road extended about a foot beyond the wall so we dropped the key onto the bridge.

If our love lasts as long as it took to find the key, it will last for 12 seconds.

But we rebranded the key and lobbed it into the river. It was terribly romantic, huge shout outto the best friend for a great gift!

Next we went to notre dame. I went as a child on my last Paris trip and boy did I not appreciate it then. The place is enormous! Also just absolutely gorgeous. We arrived about ten minutes to 1 so sat until we could hear the bells. Spoiler alert, they’re beautiful. We then wandered the cathedral for a short while only to find that it was dumping rain outside.

We tried to open the umbrellas and just endure the rain, but within 10 feet had to (in a moment of religious symbolism) seek refuge within the church.

Afterwards we wandered the southern bank a little, grabbed food and had our first snooty encounter (the pizza guy told me to please just speak English, yeah now I know you speak it don’t mind if I do) and then went to the muse d’orsay. We are a little kunsted out at this point in our journey, but technically we are in France so now it is arte. Museum is gorgeous as I remembered and I have a million times greater appreciation for the architecture now.

Lastly we went to the Eiffel Tower. Now the husband has a bit an issue with heights and really didn’t want to go up (he did the needle in Berlin for me) an it was late and I didn’t feel the need so we just took about a million pictures. The sky had opened up and the sun was setting and we were at the Eiffel Tower in the most romantic city in the world. I’ve been a happy boy all day.

We went to a creperie for dinner and shared a bottle of wine, ugh this is my life right now. No ennui in these moments.

The husband can tell you I’m trying to use my limited French to the best of my ability. It’s actually done me quite well in general, but I also clearly am trying to gauge quickly what language would be best in most situations. When we walked in the front door tonight the doorman said good evening to us and I had a moment of messing up both languages by saying thank you in French and then good morning in english. It would have been nice if I had gotten it right in at least one language. I’ll blame it on the cote du Rhone.

Well I must go to bed now. I am going out to Versailles in the morning to see how my relatives lived. I foresee a lot of ennui in the coming days. Geez I wish I owned more black. My bright wardrobe along with my dazzling smile make me stick out like a sore thumb here.

Amsterdam, simply nailing it

I’m coming at you live from my last night in amsterdam. Amsterdam, nails, it. Like someone clearly decided to give this city a hammer and a carpenter belt awhile ago, and the city took off and started nailing it.

But quick rewind, I have much to catch up on. Our departure from Berlin was not without hitch. As I had previously mentioned we had a pretty early morning flight out of Germany and were doing the trains to get there. We managed to take an early morning subway to the station where we would catch the train to the airport.

It was about 510am and thee was nothing open (including information stands) and very few people around. We could understand the schedules and maps to know that the trains were not operating correctly.

When working in a time frame and under the stress of travel there is nothing quite like standing in a train station where they make an announcement where you can’t understand a word they say but do manage to catch your destination being mentioned in said message.

We got so lucky. A message was made for maybe the third time and a couple came up to us and said “the train isn’t coming. For whatever reason it’s cancelled so you need to take a taxi to the airport, but we are going there too if you want to split the fare”

Turns out the guy in the couple was from Long Island and is now a tour guide in Berlin. Super friendly and gave us a bit of a history lesson en route to the airport. For those who haven’t been, the Berlin airports are the worst. It’s a reflection of the Cold War, there’s still a west and east Berlin airport, neither is very big since the city was technically half the size.

We flew out of the east Berlin airport. I felt like I was in the Soviet Union. It was a little terrifying. No waiting areas just places to line up. We were also flying a pretty budget airline so the whole thing felt like a history lesson of what life might have been like in the day.

Then we landed in amsterdam. One complaint I have about our trip so far is that no one ever seems to refer to train stations by their proper name. Example, all our directions to our amsterdam apt told us to take a train into center station. Nice, perfect, we can do that.

But there are 3 center stations. There is amsterdam central, there is ullbrect central, and one other. And as one would suppose each appears to be centrally located. We deduced enough to figure out amsterdam central was for us, but we have had this problem in each city so far. Not to be this guy but I’m gonna be, in NYC we call it pen station or grand central, and that’s why the getting lost falls on the tourist in those situations.

But then, the moment we stepped off the train, we were in amsterdam, and amsterdam was busy nailing it.

Sunny day, the buildings are fantastic, the canals are all picturesque, we were in love immediately. The city is so romantic looking and it also feels like a fantasy land because all the buildings are drunk and leaning left right and forward all over the place. And they’re all gorgeous and so well kept!

Gosh the past few days have been great we really enjoyed our time here. We pretty much did all the things. I loved the Van Gogh museum, seeing his work live is really incredible, though by far the busiest museum place we have been yet and I didn’t like that.

We went to the Anne frank house which was so well done. In all honesty I expected it to be sadder then it was, and it was sad, but the whole house has been kept well and they transformed it perfectly to a museum. What struck me most actually was how dark it was. They obviously had to black out the windows and that darkness really envelops you.

Yesterday we ran into our first real hiccup. We bought tickets the day before for our train to Paris. They charge you 15 euros for a person to purchase your tickets so the guy we were dealing with told us just to go to one of the computers right next to him and buy them ourselves. No problem, we get technology, save us 20 dollars please.

First time we tried we got an error screen after we passed purchase, second time all was fine but the printer was broken. So ended up getting them from the person anyway.

Fast forward, oh error screen but it still bought tickets so we’ve been charged twice. Great. Only way to fix it is by calling? Well we are American and don’t have phones that work. So we will go in. Get all the way to the station, wait for our number get up and she can cancel the tickets for a 50% charge or we have to call. No online options.

So we found a pay phone and almost got charged 39 dollars to place a call to America.

All very stressful, and it gets complicated from here on out but suffice to say wed fixed it. We think we’ve been cheated up of 2 dollars, but naturally there comes a point where you just have to take the bullet.

After that we didn’t do much yesterday, it honestly really stressed us and then we got on a money rampage both regarding this whole mess up and the price tag of our trip. So we took it easy, took a canal tour and then called it a night.

But, we stopped at a burger joint on our way home (for the New Yorkers it’s like the Amsterdam bareburger) and it turns out we were there on a Netherlands holiday, st martens day. Children make these adorable lanterns and then go to places of business and sing songs for candy. It wads adorable! The kids also get really into their lanterns! It was a moment when I was completely in love with the city because it was adorable and also just the workers who were playing around with the kids as they came in as well as the customers always letting the children cut in line.

Today we went for it. We knew it wads our last day so the touring was on. We listed every last thing we wanted to see and do and we did it. We went to the homo monument which is dedicated to anyone who has ever been persecuted for their sexuality (you can’t imagine how much it means to us that an entire city would dedicate a monument to our community) went to a couple churches, the Auschwitz memorial, botanical gardens and then

The Heineken experience. Really well done I have to say. I learned about how the beer is made (anyone aware the yeast colony they use is the original one from the 1860s!?) as well as the history of the company. We were given a beer tasting lesson which gave me a greater understanding and appreciation for the variance in beer, and the then with your entrance fee you also get two beers (on top of the tastings we’d already done)

Tonight, we did the red light district. Figured we had to right? Now there arête d light districts all over, so ewe have occasionally passed by windows with prostitutes (there’s legal prostitution and they stand in windows to sell themselves) and so I didn’t think there was much more to see.

I was wrong

It is seedy to be sure, but also incredibly safe and a tad touristy. There are grandmas walking down the street aghast, families walking with giggle fits, as well as clients for these members of the oldest profession.

And then we went to the sex museum. It was more kitschy then anything, I’m not a prude so I thought it was a tad strange to see some of the stuff, but it wasn’t really shocking exactly (painting myself in a corner here?) I don’t know. The husband and I honestly thought that as a museum we were going to learn something but it was more like a 5 story sex store.

We left the red light district soon after, because it was making us feel dirty and we have been romanticizing the city and wanted our last night to be equally romantic. We wandered into a random corridor of the city right on a canal and grabbed some dinner before we wandered the rest of the way home to start packing.

I am beyond excited that tomorrow I am going to be in Paris, but we are really sad to be leaving Amsterdam. We both agree that we could completely see ourselves living here. We love it that much, and have even had a couple conversations about coming back to visit as well as coming on a pseudo permanent basis.

I’d go more into my love for this city, but I am tired. I have loved my time here, it’s why I haven’t been updating, and if am sorry to go. We are taking a train tomorrow to Paris, which I’m super excited about. It is supposed to be a nice day and I’m excited to see some of the French and belgian countryside before we enter the worlds most romantic city.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Hey everybody. I have been putting off updating just because Germany has had so many diversions. For the record, I love Berlin. I wish I could explain it in a profound way that made sense, but I’ve just felt at home since I landed here.

Couple of thoughts. First of all, I don’t mean this to be disrespectful, but Berlin has a lot of memorials to things it has done wrong. It makes for a very heavy experience when visiting. Our first Davin each city we really just wander around to get acclimated to the new culture and get an idea for things we would like to take more time to really visit.

Our first day here, almost immediately came across the holocaust memorial. Obviously it’s not an upper. But the thing is not only are their memorials overwhelming to see (the holocaust memorial has a stone slab to represent each page of exterminated people from the nazi journals and the visual is shocking) the artistry of hue heir execution is innovative and really powerful. It sets a mood.

Both the husband and I have had several moments since we got here where we said we just felt like we wanted to cry.

Our first day we went to an interactive museum about east Germany that was meant to give picture of life on the other side of the wall. Really (for lack of a better word) a fun way to learn about this chapter.

Second day we got to check point Charlie and a good stretch of huge Berlin Wall. It’s the one area of the city where the barrier can still really be seen. And at this point in the wall is also an outdoor museum called the Topography of Terrors and is the old headquarters of the Gestapo and SS. It was actually terrifying and standing there gave me shivers down my spine and we both felt compelled to leave pretty quickly.

Our hotel is technically in the eastern section of the city, and even though the wall came down over 20 years ago, you can still see serious evidence of its affect on the city. We went up the needle I today and saw the whole city and it was even more obvious from 335 meters.

But it hasn’t been all sad stories of struggle, the city also has a lot of beauty to it, and feels very accessible. I took a step outside my own person shell and ate…wurst! I felt it would be wrong to leave Germany without having a bratwurst of sorts so I went for it. I’m also pretty sure by this point I’ve had all the beer. Literally all of it.

Today we went to the Jewish museum, and it is One of our favorite museums we have ever been to. It’s pretty new, and really uniquely designed. It had two room that had such great impact. One was the room of the holocaust which is a concrete unheated room that is only lit by natural sunlight that has been fantastically designed to make you feel outrageously alone and unsafe.

The other was the garden of exile. As we understand exile was to mean safety for those fleeing oppression. So it’s a warm inviting garden. But the garden is built completely square and on a tilt so walking through it is so disorienting it actually makes you feel sick.

The rest of the museum was really devoted to the preservation of life of Jewish people over the last couple millennia. If you google the museum you will see the building is a very unique shape, and so you wander it rather like a maze, with an actual beginning and end (historic timeline) but it’s all about how Jewish life remained constant through all the changes European Jews have experienced.

As one would expect the museum did touch on the holocaust in its main exhibit, but only a little. It was much more devoted to telling the story of life for Jews from 1918-1933 and what progressively worse challenges they faced, and then how they rebuilt after the end of the war.

The was an art gallery of the faces of those involved in the trials against the nazis in the decades that followed that was really captivating where you could listen to the testimony of people almost 20 years after the holocaust as well as defendants shirking off the blame.

As I just took several paragraphs to describe one museum, you can tell it left an impression.

After we went to a chocolate shop to get more chocolate (I finished our previous supply for breakfast) and then wandered a bit towards the reichstag which we passed our first day (weather was fantastic today)

Right in front of the Brandenburg gate is the American embassy, which we snapped a quick photo of. There was a political demonstration protesting the us and it’s presence in the Middle East happening which was unnervingly fascinating. I told the husband as we soon after left that it is interesting to feel like your being protested against in another country.

We stopped for a nice dinner right by the concert house (my favorite square in huge city, even though it’s where a couple of gypsies confused me into giving them 5 euros my first day here) and ate as I watched the Berlin tree get strung with Christmas lights!!! Anyone who knows me knows I loved it.

It’s fairly early now, but we have a 740 am flight to amsterdam in the morning, and prefer to use our money on beer and Food rather than taxi fare, so have to leave pretty early.

Just so there full transparency, ways that Berlin is NOT nailing it. Their subway system. Beyond the fact that it literally makes NO SENE at ALL it also won’t always allow you to pay for a ticket. We’ve run into this several times and have gotten such non impressed reactions from our complaints. No station has an attendant, you actually are on an honor system to pay (though there are disguised people who can catch you if you don’t) and the machine sometimes is equipped for card, and some will only accept the exact change for your ticket.

Other thing, ATMs! We literally scoured the city looking for an ATM from our sister bank in order to avoid fees, we ended up walking over an hour to find one and it wasn’t there, only to FORTUNATELY stumble upon one shortly after. Tensions ran high at this moment.

Otherwise, Berlin, you’re nailing it.

Also, it’s come to my attention that evidently my posts have a lot of typos. I suggest dealing with this. As I said I’m more writing this for me to have a chronicle of my journey and I’m writing on an iPad which I find quite tricky. My writing voice is quirky alrealdy so just consider it an additional quirk.

So next time I’ll be updating from the Netherlands, or holland, or Dutch town, whatever they wanna be called 🙂

From Copenhagen to Berlin

Last day in Copenhagen and we finally got sunshine! Spoiler alert, the city is much nicer when it’s bright, sunny and a little warmer.

We woke up and packed up the apartment, complete with a bit of cleaning and headed out the door. We weren’t exactly sure how much time we really would have today so wanted to make the most of it. First we returned to the kings garden and the rosenborg palace.

We passed it our first day here,but you have to pay for a ticket and they’re only open from 11-2 (random!) and it was 130 when we passed before so vowed to return. We were so glad that we did. First of all, this museum slash palace has got it together. When we got our ticket the gave us the password for the wifi so that we could take a guided tour through the palace on our cell phones

It was perfect, it went room by room depending on how quickly we were walking and was one of our favorite stops hands down. It was the palace of Christian IV back in the 1600s and served as a royal residence until the early 19th century. It has never stopped functioning as a residence protected by the military and is impeccably kept.

It’s not huge, but it is packed and really gave a picture of the Danish Renaissance. It also made me realize how much I was meant to live in a castle. I look good I castles. I look good in front of castles. I’ve always been meant to have one.

The weirdest part of the castle is either the mirror room. This comes from Versailles. The king had a room right next to his bed chambers and it was for his use with mistresses. All of the surfaces are mirrored, including the ground. Dirty dirty king.

There’s also a trick chair in the Room outside the mirrored room which had trick arms that would lock the sitter in place. Water would then pour on the persons lap making him look as though he wet himself and basically a whoopsie couchen was under the seat making it seem you farted when you stood up. At first we thought it was a torcher device, then after we read up on it realized we weren’t too far off the mark.

With admission we also got to go into the royal treasury. It included the Crown Jewels from the time period. When you get over the fact hat you actually are entering a vault these jewels are stunning. There were three different crowns and I graciously asked the husband to buy me only 1. He said no, and thus our honeymoon took a dark turn.

After rosenborg we went to the national gallery, a free art museum. Art. Just for fun the Danish word for art is “kunst” and we saw a lot of kunst.

The building is brilliant but clearly going through some pretty major renovations, cause you have to enter through a makeshift entrance on the side that looks more like the door to a construction sites office. Butt eh museum was great.

It of course included Danish art from 1000-2013, as well as some other European collections but our favorite part was the Danish art of 1930-2013. So much kunst. It included both really provocative things that both unsettled and inspired us (husband found a particular exhibit he wants to buy for the apartment) as well as the masterbratory nonsense we love to make fun of.

Best piece of kunst: a clear box with nothing in it.

It also had some videos, one in particular that was the most terrifying thing we had ever seen.

But the coolest thing about this museum is that the whole contemporary section is built on to the original building in a fascinating way. The original building is a grand stone mammoth of architecture, and the addition is a speak, white, Scandinavian building with minimal flourishes, and it’s connected by several walkways that is entirely covered and surrounded by a hug glass outer shell. The picture I have just drawn May or May not make sense to you but use your imaginations.

After we walked through the botanical gardens which was another completely accidental find. We wished we had had more time to look around, to me it felt like we had fallen into the world of Alice in wonderland, but before she fell through the rabbit hole.

We went back to the apartment, grabbed our stuff and headed to the train station and thus have ended up at the airport where I sit now.

Traveling makes us anxious so we are here much earlier than we need to be, but we are even more so intimidated by international travel. The funny thing is that traveling between countries here seems to be as mundane and ordinary as traveling between states. When we went to Sweden yesterday there was no point where we ended a passport or any kind of identification.

Furthermore, I love getting to an airport and not having to take my shoes off.

Well that’s all for now, I’m going to go venture and find us a couple beers before our flight, so hopefully within the next hour or so we will be safe and sound in Germany!

Today I was the Swedish Chef!!!

I never thought this would actually happen, but I went to Sweden today! I made a little bit of a mistake when I booked all of our travel for honeymoon. In Europe most all of the clocks (at least that I have seen) are set to 24 hour times instead of am and pm. By consequence the flight times might say 18:30 or 9:45 depending on if it’s an afternoon/evening flight or morning.

Our flight to berlin is a little different though. It is just at 740 pm. I overlooked this, so we have an extra day in Copenhagen. We decided to take this time to take the train out to mall Sweden.

For starters, the trains are so incredibly smooth out here. It makes for a pleasant travel experience. The husband and I were also super proud that we were able to get to the train station, buy tickets and get all the way there without any help!

Interestingly, our train would make all of its announcements in Danish and then in English (a common this in Denmark we hVe found). We then took a four minute long bridge into another country. The minute we appeared in Sweden the English went away entirely. We discovered there is practically no English usage in Malmo, and the language is even harder to decipher than Danish.

We got off the train with pretty much no plan, so just started to wander around. There really wasn’t a whole lot for us to do, the city is pretty industrial just hiding behind the fact that all the buildings are pretty old. We did wander through a pretty expansive park and came across a huge modern library we were pretty fond of, as well as a wind mill right in the middle of town.

On our walk back we came across an old looking cathedral that kind of stumped us. It was huge and clearly catholic, but made out of what looked like red brick. The inside was traditional except that the walls seemed finished and were all painted pure white. Inside it looked like it was built around the middle of the last century, the outside looked maybe 50 years older, but the cathedral is actually the original one from the 13th century.

Sweden you’re so crazy.

We felt at this point that we’d had pretty much accomplished what there was to do it was also pretty cold and very rainy today, so we headed to the train to head back from whence we came.

Trying to spend the remainder of our Danish Krones we stopped for a late (and huge) lunch in the vesterbros neighborhood. After wards we were wet and tied enough to head home. But we had something we needed to do.

Laundry.

Oh who would have thought this would end up being such an extravaganza? The apartment we are staying in is party of a complex. If you go out the back staircase there’s a great common area that must be gorgeous and packed during the nice weather months complete with a laundry building.

However, all the signs for how to do the laundry (we had to use a pay card our hostess left us) completely baffled us! After about 10 minutes of trying to figure it out the husband went back upstairs to use the wifi to translate all of the signs in the hope that it would clear things up. We were so lucky a girl walked by that I was able to pull in to help me.

So ladies and gentlemen, the Danish are now under the impression that Americans can’t do laundry. You’re welcome, I feel like a proud ambassador. But stay with me, the story gets better.

After the washing and we had put it through a dry cycle we came to find our clothes not even remotely dry. We don’t know exactly what it was that we did, but our clothes are now laid/hung/strewn about the apartment drying the old fashion way.

Oddly, what a cultural experience we has just trying to do laundry.

Afterwards we went to the store to grab some food stuffs to make ourselves an easy dinner. Hopefully we will get some good packing done tonight because tomorrow the weather is supposed to be really nice and we have quite a few things we wanted to do before our flight to berlin tomorrow night.

So my next post will be from the fourth country I will have set foot in this journey. I’m hoping for smooth sailing and some clear skies I Germany. I frankly think we have dealt with enough cloudiness. While we are more then capable of dealing with it, I’d really like some sunshine.

I will finish this post with two thoughts. One. Yes brudder I realize I messed up and referred to the Danish as the Dutch. My mistake but quite frankly the Dutch have too many names for things. Netherlands, holland, yet they’re Dutch!?

Two, we totally messed up. The ONE thing we had to do when we were in Sweden was get the husband some meat balls. And what did we completely forget!?!?!?!?

And…I am exhausted

We’ll we didn’t intend to walk quite as much as we ended up doing, but then there you go.

I think that our body clocks have officially set to Europe time, because we got a pretty good sleep last night and woke up around 8am, which was nice because it meant we got going with an early enough start to enjoy as much sunlight as possible.

The day started off walking towards the town center by way of coffee. I had an only mostly embarrassing moment when I asked the barista for a Danish and she met my request with confused eyes. Evidently they don’t call them that here. No mind though she guided us to some traditional Danish pastry, though we have no idea what it was called or what was in it. At first I thought fruit but now we think it might have been an egg custard of some sort.

From here we wandered to the Denmark national gallery, a huge free museum in the center of the city. I enjoyed it, though it was a pretty confusing museum that tricked you into accidentally visiting boring exhibits from time to time. We chose to skip the Egyptian and middle eastern exhibits, prefering to get as much Danish history as we could.

It started with a Bronze Age exhibit which was as exciting as one would think. Lots of pots and bowls and axe heads, from time to time a 5 thousand year old coffin with its resident still inside. There was a small medieval section that focused on church relics and then my personal favorite the renaissance section.

The museum is actually in what used to be a palace of sorts and so the rooms in this section were pretty much recreated to look like they would during the times of the absolute monarchy. Husband pointed out how much my interest spiked the minute we walked in.

The best exhibit we saw was actually a retrospective of Denmark from 1600-2000. It went in chronological order showing rooms and displays of lifestyle for all of the classes in this 400 year period. It really was most interesting when we hit the industrial revolution which utterly reshaped Denmark and started its transformation into the socialist nation it is today. The section for the 60s-80s was particuarly interesting to us because American culture was so influential on denmarks development (spoiler, they weren’t particularly happy with us)

The most interesting looking exhibit was a Viking one they had, but there was a charge of 20 dollars per person to get in. We had contemplated getting tickets when we walked into the museum but thought we’d look around first, and by the time we got back there was a huge line, so we opted to move on.

From here we went to the Denmark architecture institute. The husband is really into modern Scandinavian architecture and our host had suggested this as well, so we had some really high hopes for it, plus it was on another island that we hadn’t ventured to yet so thought it would be worth it.

This museum required a ticket for the exhibit, and to say we felt giped would seem appropriate. For 10 dollars per person we got into a one and a half room exhibit about trying to build houses in Greenland. There were no models or anything but a lot of information on how terrible Greenland is. We were actually really kind of mad about it all. We also totally could have walked into the room without paying, but thought there would be more to see so went and paid only to then realize, no we had seen it all.

But when we walked out the sun was shining for the first time and we were right on the water looking at Copenhagen from the other side, so that was pretty great.

There happened to be this beautiful steeple at we wanted to see and it led us to this gorgeous Protestant church. The steeple spirals up for hundreds of feet, and the church itself was super impressive. We have seen some really great churches already (I love them!) but this ones organ really wins. It is enormous and carved into an incredibly ornate wooden sculpture.

Near by is a famous commune called Christiana. I understand that it popped up in the 60s and since then has existed as a separate entity outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, or the EU. It wreaked of marijuana and looked like the set from hair. It was a lot bigger then either of us expected and we walked through it fairly quickly. I thought it was actually pretty interesting, it’s clearly falling apart because the city has not been taking care of it, only the citizens.

The husband however did NOT like it, and felt both unsafe and insecure. So we turned around and left fairly quickly to go back into the Latin quarter.

Here we went to a modern art museum called the Strand. Once again we had to pay to get in and while it was very interesting, and probably some of the best modern art we have ever see , but there still wasn’t a whole lot to it. But we at least didn’t feel cheated at this one.

From here we wanted to explore some of the neighborhoods ewe hadn’t seen yet. We passed through a very old and very big cemetery where Hans christen Anderson is buried. I’m pretty sure it was the cemetery used in hocus pocus.

From here the sun set and we pretty much got lost as we tried to wonder back to the neighborhood where we are staying. When the sun set it got cold very quickly and some light rain started coming down and realizing that once again we had been walking for over 8 hours straight were getting pretty tired.

We grabbed a quick dinner and then came home. My husband wasted no time to pour me a glass of wine and break off a piece of Danish chocolate we had picked up, and in a moment I felt in heaven 🙂

I need to stretch a bit more, my pour feet and legs are going through so much. If we aren’t careful we are going to start losing weight on this trip.

That’s all for tonight. I need to start looking things up for what we are planning. I’ll leave some surprise for tomorrow in regards to what we are planning, but I will tease by saying we might not stay in the country of Denmark for the whole day…

Hello from Copenhagen!

Ok so I missed a day. Sue me. But don’t this trip is expensive enough. 

So yesterday morning the husband and I got up super early to make our flight out of reykjavik. We ended up really loving all of our time in Iceland. It was beautiful it was small and accessible, it honestly was pretty cheap too.  I can’t say enough. But alas we needed to go (and it was probably the right time for it too) and so we made our way to Denmark. 

We decided it was a good thing we warmed up to europe by way of Iceland. Iceland is actually rally geared towards tourists and so all the signs are double marked, the maps are designed to make things seem small and easy, and there are lots of tours set up to get you around to the important cites. 

Neither the husband nor I honestly knew all that much about Denmark or Copenhagen before we got here. He had just always felt a really strong tie tot eh city and felt like he would love it. We landed and immediately felt a bit a culture shock. A great point about this country is that everyone seems to speak English.  Unlike Iceland though nothing else is in English. So from the moment we stepped off the plane we felt lost and a little overwhelmed. 

We managed enough to buy a train ticket to take us into the center of town where we could walk to the apartment we are renting for the week. However the trains we confusing us because we couldn’t tell what train was going where, where we needed to go, or what stops were the right ones. It turned out to be pretty straight forward and simple, but at the time seemed ridiculously difficult and complex. 

Our apartment is in the vestebro neighborhood which is kind of the artistic underground area. I think it’s a little grungy, we both think it wreaks of Brooklyn. The walk from the train station made us feel like it was kind of seedy, but the longer we’ve been here the more we think that the graffiti and grungy look is all actually intentional and specifically left unaltered. 

The apartment is lovely. Super minimal with white everywhere (my husband loves that) nice privacy on a quiet street. The girl we are renting from is super nice, we think from her books and other accoutrement she must be an architect, but had very little interaction with her. She gave us the keys and showed us some papers she had written notes for us including nice bars to stop by, important roads to remember for orientation, some events and museums worth seeing, etc.

Almost right after she was out the door.  At this point we took a moment to breathe and collect ourselves. Copenhagen has turned out to be a lot bigger then we expected it to be, and it kind of overwhelmed us when we first got here.  That and the isolation we felt being two non native Danish speakers with little to no concept of where we were going and what we were doing.

after we let that tantrum pass a bit we packed up our stuff and went out the door towards the town center. There’s a Latin quarter which really marks where the oldest parts and more touristy things are so we headed there.  We immediately started tow arm to the city. It has such histoty, you can tell just by how little the streets make sense. We have gotten lost at least a half dozen times in two days. 

most of the restaurants also have outdoor covered patios that are heated and have blankets on each chair. We dugongs this was perfect at one particular place sat down and enjoyed watching all of the people passing by. Now I am determined to try as much local beer as possible and our waitress told me in Denmark its all about carlsberg. And furthermore we were there on a very special holiday, because at 2 minputs to 8 they would release the Christmas beer and that we would hear mad shouting in all the streets as everyone would get their first of the season. 

we were a tad early for that so just got the regular which is excellent as well as some sandwiches to tide us over. It started getting dark not long after so when we wandered for a short while started feeling the exhaustion of our trip catch up to us so slowly walked back home. 

We called it an early night shortly after. We did stop by a grocery store to get some snacks for the apartment and a bottle of wine, headed back and popped in a movie just to relax. Yeah yeah we are in Europe and had a movie night, but three weeks non stop would kill us. 

We finally got some good sleep last night and woke up ready for today. We did all of it. Copenhagen that is. We left the apartment mid morning and just got back and pretty much did not stop walking in between. Very quickly we have started falling in love with it. There is so much charm to this city. It feels so historic while also being incredibly modern. High hitter things we came across include the kings garden which was gorgeous and rig next to one of the many palaces we came across (with a museum we intend to return to)

we wandered to the little mermaid statue, a popular tourist cite we had been warned is slightly underwhelming but we enjoyed as it took us north of the main strips one walks in the historic district. 

My favorite was a cathedral called the round tower. It looks like a medieval castle from the outside and we just happened to wander in and were stunned by the ornate decoration of the inside. I’ve seen a lot of French cathedrals and at let pictures of Italian and the dutch look is a lot different. for 9 kroners we were able to go up the tower which has no steps, just an ascending ramp that wraps around the center of the tower, and see both the bell loft and stand on top to look out over copenhagen. 

Theres a 17th century man made island that is actually a fort we were able to walk around. Fun seeing military forts still in use that are older than the United States. Walked some of the canals and passed by dozens of churches and museums. Eventually we stopped to grab some food and I got the Christmas carlsberg (which tastes amazing and seriously tastes like Christmas!) 

we wandered a little bit more by night just to seethe city lit up. It has a kind of magical feel because the city itself feel incredibly calm. Unlike New York there is a sense of relax to the pace by which everyone is working which is super refreshing and nice to be around. We wandered down a side street to sit outside and get another beer before we thought it was time to call it a night.

got back, posted some pictures, might have a glass of wine or something and head to bed. We want to start exploring some other neighborhoods tomorrow, I just have to look up the museums we have laid out that we want to hit to see what times we need to work around. 

Ill save my thoughts on the Dutch for a few days down the line when I have a bit more exposure, but this much I know: no one else likes bikes the way they do. Every street has a side walk a main road and a biking path (like raised, seperately paved biking path) the bikers have their own stop lights, and I have seen a line over 50 long of bikers waiting at one. There are bikes parked outside of every single building. But they’re not locked. They’re just parked. A few have a special key on the back tire to jam it if someone were to try and ride off with it, but it isn’t the majority. 

We have been told by so many we have to bike the city to really get a sense for it, and we would love to, but are so intimidated by the extreme confidence by which everybody rides. Maybe by day 3 or 4 we will get there…

until tomorrow, much love fro Copenhagen