My first trip to Copenhagen was a short stay. I got off my plane, went through the airport, went down to the train station, waited there for a little while, then got on the train and went to Sweden.
The End.
Okay, my second trip was still short but was a little longer and more memorable than that first visit. We left Sweden a day before our flight back to Bulgaria so that we could spend a day in Copenhagen and get together with a family friend of my buddy’s. After meeting up with him we went and got lunch and then he showed us around the city a bit. As we were walking we caught glimpse of some sort of protest occurring down the street and decided to go see what it was all about. As we attempted to catch up with the protestors we could see them waving Danish flags, and we were stopped up for a while as some guys shouting and wearing haz-mat outfits were turned away from the protest. As they retreated to find another way around they continued to shout out something over and over and flipped off the flag waving protestors. Now I don’t speak the language so I couldn’t be positive what side I was on at first, but I had a feeling I would not get along very well with the flag wavers. It is sad but typically true that unless it is a national holiday or a time of war or other tragedy, large groups of people waving the flag of their nation are typically doing so in a manner of “our nation is great as long as we don’t let other people in to ruin it”. My opinion was confirmed that this was indeed an anti-immigration rally and the counter protestors were shouting something along the lines of “go to hell you racist assholes”. I was happy to see that most of the onlookers I observed seemed to be in agreement with this latter camp and the nationalist group seemed to be in the minority. That warmed my heart a bit after the cooling it had taken upon seeing this group in the first place.
After we parted ways with our local guide we boarded a boat to take the canal tour. The tour was cool but there were a couple of downsides. One of which was that the main section of the boat was covered in the winter, which would be a plus, except for the fact that the windows were so fogged up/dirty that you really couldn’t see very well out of them, so I ended up going to the back of the boat with my buddy where it was cold and wet but where we could get a great view of everything. The weather didn’t bother me as much as the fact that it was a little hard to hear the guide from back there. He was loud enough that I caught most of what he said but there were definitely a few parts that I missed. Fortunately, one part that I did hear was when he was talking about the Danish army. I missed during what time period it was, but the water in Denmark was not drinkable so the army was provided with beer instead. What was their daily ration of beer? ELEVEN LITERS. I’m not sure how strong the beer was but it definitely sounds like the Danish army was smashed most of the time during this period.
Unfortunately I can’t really comment on the food in Copenhagen as I had a burger and some Chinese food while there, but the place we went for lunch was really cool. It was a former bookstore that had been converted into a really homey feeling restaurant. All the walls were still lined with shelves full of books and it had a really great atmosphere.
My last two stories worth mentioning were both interesting happenings with our hotel. The first one occurred while we were up in our hotel room. I was working on the design for this very blog and my friend was taking a nap and my other friend went into the bathroom to take a shower. I heard the water start to run and a couple minutes later I heard a “glug, glug, glug” and then heard my buddy start to laugh. I had no idea what was going on but it was pretty hilarious sounding and the “glug, glug, glug” continued the rest of the time he was in the shower. He finally finished showering and came out into the room with a towel around his waste and told us that unbeknownst to him at the time, the “glug, glug, glug” was apparently water from the shower backing up and coming out of the drain in the floor, soaking his pants. We later discovered that the problem was more something to do with the toilet, which despite only being peed in by any of us and flushing fine the first few times we used it, had apparently become clogged. I guess one of us had some pretty solid pee. Ouch. Fortunately we were able to change rooms.
The other interesting thing that happened at the hotel was when my buddy and I went down to use the game room. We went to the foosball table first but it was a bad setup so we decided to play some pool instead. We had to get the balls from reception. We brought them back down and played three games of pool. Three excruciatingly long games of pool. So many great things about the setup here. Let’s start with where you start every game of pool. The rack. There was a chunk broken out of the rack which made a tight rack pretty much impossible leading to some pretty terrible breaks. The other thing that led to terrible breaks was the fact that the cues did not have rounded felt tips but instead had a little piece of rubber stuck on the end. They did provide chalk, which I thought was pretty hilarious as there was nothing to use the chalk on. The table was ripped up in several spots and the spots that weren’t ripped were still incredibly mistreated leading to lots of really slow and crooked shots. The final quirk of the table which I could have forgiven had other elements been better was that there was a hole in the bottom of the table so if you made a shot on the left side of the table as the ball rolled down to the tables end to be gathered up, it would fall through the bottom of the table and land on the floor. I can’t say for sure that it was the worst table that I have ever played on (I have played on some pretty bad ones in my day), but it might have been number one. It definitely at least made the top three.
Copenhagen, I hope I get a chance to know you better one day.
