A/N: I've relocated from my old blog, hosted by blog.com, since the server was just..awful. I realize I probably should have started off by reposting my old blogs, but that's just boring, and besides, I really wanted to share my Baltic trip. Words cannot express my disgust with blog.com's abysmal host server. You would have expected something better from a domain that calls itself "blog.com." Here I was, fresh from my trip and rarin' to write, and the server DIED on me. It's been down for more than 24 hours now. I then had to spend ages and ages figuring out wordpress and this, and eventually decided to go with this, since wordpress messed up my pictures, making them blurry and changing their colours. Muchas gracias. The problem with blogpost is that I have to sort all of my categories manually, and the dashboard is just really, really hard to navigate. I am sick of all this technical stuff. Anyway, without further ado, I present you with my Copenhagen diary, day 1.
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Back from Copenhagen and northern Poland,
which was another fascinating trip. I distinctly remember booking my Gdansk -
London tickets in Barcelona, looking up the prices, sighing, groaning,
wondering whether I should do the whole of central Europe or not, talking to my
professor and my friends, one of whom was Joanne, who ended up going with me to
Romania.
The time of the flights for this trip were
ridiculous, just like the Romania one from Stansted. The Stansted - Copenhagen
flight was at 0700, while the Gdansk - Luton one was at 0600. I suppose that’s
what you get for flights that cost less than 20 pounds. The Malmo - Gdansk one
was a lot better, 1640, although that didn’t really give me too much time to do
anything that day, and it didn’t help that the flight was unexpectedly delayed
for an hour. It only cost me 9 pounds though! However, when one door closes another
one opens up, and that was certainly the case for my delayed Malmo flight.
But on, and this sweltering London weather
is really getting to me. I miss Gdansk, where it was so cold it woke me up
in the middle of the night, and I breathed out white smoke.
Preparations:
The usual - booking my flights several
weeks in advance, booking my accommodation (hostels as always) a week in
advance, and shaking out an itinerary about 3 days before actually going there,
which is cutting it rather fine, I know, but life has been so hectic recently
that I really can’t help it. And whaddaya know, this has served me very well
for every trip I’ve made so far.
Took the night bus to Liverpool Street, and
then a National Express to Stansted, where I whizzed through security and found
myself on the flight en route to the hometown of Hans Christian Andersen.
First thing to greet me as I stepped out of
customs.
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| Well, this is promising. |
I took the metro to the city centre, which
cost 36 dkk for a single trip, and the tickets can be bought at the vending
machines dotted around the airport and metro. It was raining like mad when I
got there, and the city looked rather grim, but in all fairness, no city looks
good when the weather’s this bad.
A statue of the famous story-wright
himself.
I met a really rude Chinese girl on the
way, who was also looking for the hostel, which had provided extremely vague
directions on their website and made it really difficult for the average new
kid in town to find. I had followed their instructions to no avail, and decided
that I’d just walk along with my GPS. The girl however insisted on telling me
that my GPS was weird and outdated and how much more superior hers was, which
really was not the best thing to say to someone whom you’re trying to ask help
from.
“Well, if yours is so much better, then why
do you need mine? Shut up and let me do my thing, or get lost,” I said to her,
which probably wasn’t really very polite of me, but at that point I was
jetlagged, cold and wet, and not in a tolerable mood. She mumbled something
about her phone being dead *in which case, all the more reason to shut up,
since I’m the one with the science here!* and tagged along at a distance, but I
somehow lost her along the way. It was rather funny when I saw her turn up at
the hostel about two hours after I had arrived.
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| The hostel foyer. As far as hostels go, this one wasn’t really my cup of tea. I know lots of people like hostels with bars and a party scene, but that’s not really my thing. |
I spent the first three hours of Copenhagen
hobnobbing in the hostel foyer with some new friends I’d made, since the
weather was dismally bad, which was just my luck. We lounged about till around
3, then decided that we’d go out, bad weather or not. We walked around the
sopping city centre, and somehow found ourselves in Fristaden Christiania, the
infamous cannabis neighbourhood. It was quite extraordinary. The whole place
reeked of weed, and everyone looked stoned. Even the pigeons.
 |
| “You are now entering the EU.” |
There was a museum of sorts, where the
curators were, unsurprisingly, also high. we overheard them telling some other
tourists about how they grew their own weed.
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| The ‘restaurant.’ |
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| A map of the district |
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| Going down the stairs |
It was a really rather dodgy place,
Christiania, and the rain did not help in the least. I was rather glad when we
left the place. We walked around the city some more, watched some people
kayaking (or trying to, anyway - they kept capsizing, which was hilarious) and,
for some reason, there were loads of jellyfish in the canals. I did not know
that Copenhagen was famous for its jellyfish. Large ones they were, too.
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| The canals with their jellyfish |
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| The Stock Exchange. Note the unusual twisted spire. |
I realise that this entry is somewhat
boring, which is what lots of rain, sleep deprivation and secondhand pot will
do to a person. The hostel provided dinner, which was surprisingly edible, and
went out for a walk around the city again, this time on my own. The city
certainly looks a lot better when it’s not raining.
The hostel was all right, I guess. As I
mentioned before, I’m not really into the party scene, and it was a bit too
boisterous for my liking, but I can see why some people would 'dig' it. I
really liked my hostel in Gdansk, but that of course is another story. This
hostel cost 16 pounds a night, which is the most I’ve paid for any hostel, but
since it’s northern Europe, I suppose I couldn’t really have expected otherwise. They have a
free walking tour every morning at 10:45, which is led by an
enthusiastic-looking, energetic man, and I would have gone, if not for the fact
that I had that bus to catch at 12 the next day. One thing I did not like about
the hostel was that their reception is their bar - so there’s always a
perpetual queue of people lining up there, a mixture of weary backpackers and
drunk football fans. I had to wait about half an hour before I could check in,
and later on, when I wanted a mojito, I had to wait for ages as well. I thought
it was a rather poor arrangement.
All in all, unusual place, Copenhagen.
Certainly not what I was expecting. More soon.
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