Scandinavia (2021): From Thuringia to the North Cape and back
Inhalt/Content
Copenhagen – Back in Denmark
Coming back to Denmark felt like we were back in a familiar place. The landscape became flatter, left and right were houses made of red bricks and on the signs we could read this language, which is so similar to German. We reached Copenhagen in the late afternoon. Our accommodation was an AirBnB in the eastern part of the city. We unloaded our things from the car and used the evening hours to walk a bit along the beach. We noticed how incredibly many beach volleyball fields were built there. It was already dark when we walked a little way out onto a jetty. Suddenly a young man overtook us. He ran to the end of the jetty, undressed and the next moment jumped into the water completely naked. Shortly after, he reappeared and climbed back onto the jetty. Maybe it was a dare, but he seemed to have been there alone.
The next morning we jumped on two rental bikes and first of all cycled to Vor Frelsers Kirke, a church with an interesting steeple. A stairway wound in a circle around the tower, which could be climbed. Unfortunately, that was nothing for Kevin with his fear of heights, but I climbed to the top and had a great view over the city, which we now wanted to explore further. Of course, Nyhavn was not to be missed on this tour of discovery. Among other things, the house of Hans Christian Anderson was there, but this was only marked by a pedestrian stopper that belonged to the shop on the ground floor. But once again a rainbow spread out before our eyes, which gave a great picture with the prominent canal in the foreground. Next, we walked along the harbor to the famous statue of the little mermaid. If there weren’t so many people in front of it, you could have easily overlooked her, so inconspicuous as she seemed. However, since we were also tourists, we also stood in front of the statue for a selfie. There were also tourist boats that swam back and forth behind the statue. However, we wondered how useful it was to see this statue from the water, since not only did it look quite small, but it was also built with its back to the water. So even if you spotted them from the ship, it was only from behind. I would guess that this is a clear case of tourist rip-off.
Our next stop was supposed to be the botanical garden. We passed the Natural History Museum. In front of the museum were posters and banners advertising an interesting dinosaur exhibit. We got curious and so we spontaneously decided to go to the museum. The exhibition was indeed very interesting. The highlight was of course the skeleton of a T-Rex. However, what was also pretty cool was the fact that you could also get into the Zoological Museum for free with the same ticket. So you get two museums for the price of one. But first we went to the botanical garden. Unfortunately, a heavy rain shower caught us here, which is why we didn’t stay outside long, but quickly went to the palm house and the butterfly house.
Even though we’d done and seen so much that day, we still had a few good hours left. Kevin first ate an original Danish hot dog (I would have loved to try one too, but had a bit of stomach trouble that day so I had to pass) before continuing on to a tour of anime and nerd shops. We have already done tours like this in a number of cities. Kevin had marked a number of shops on the map and led us from one shop to the next. A chain with something with Pharaoh in the name seemed to be very widespread. But after the tour we were really exhausted, so we took the bus back to our accommodation.
Danmarks Tekniske Museum
Since we had ticked off the most important sights of Copenhagen on the first day, we drove out of the city to Helsingør the next day. After a short look at the harbor (among other things, there was a huge fish made of plastic and garbage), we went to the Technical Museum of Denmark (Danmarks Tekniske Museum). The museum itself consisted of two large halls filled with machines, cars and even airplanes. Some of them were even accessible. But there was also an interesting exhibition on renewable energies. Of course, there were quite a few families with children in the museum, but there were also a few older people who were interested in looking at old racing cars. Unfortunately, most of the signs were only in Danish, so we must have missed some information. Still, the museum was a nice pastime.
Back in Copenhagen we first went to a Japanese restaurant for ramen before continuing to the Zoological Museum. We still had the ticket from yesterday and we wanted to redeem it now. The zoological museum was very similar to the natural history museum from the day before, but instead of dinosaur skeletons there were stuffed animals and there was a geological section with all kinds of rocks. Back at the accommodation I went for a run along the beach and had to realize that there was probably a run here on the same day, because the route markings were just being removed. It’s a shame, if I had known earlier, I would have loved to have taken part. Nevertheless, I had a nice round where I could sniff some sea air again.
