Don't get me wrong, Copenhagen was beautiful. It was also one of the first cities on my initial draft of my Eurotrip just because it represents my Danish heritage (25% represent!). Unfortunately, my visit to Copenhagen aligned with my brief stint with traveler's disenchantment. To be fair, my entrance to the city was marked by a horrible experience with my hostel roommates in Berlin, and then the stark hostel in Denmark that didn't provide much for the solo traveler. Despite this shift in mood, I manage to pull through, thanks to a lot of moral support from good friends who are usually on gchat or bbm. AND I stopped staying in hostels (more to come on this in my next post on London).
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| That first car contains the Queen! |
It took me until Copenhagen to realize that traveling alone is, well, lonely. It's actually incredibly difficult to experience amazing things everyday and not have a way to share it with people effectively. Sure, this blog helps, but it is SO much more satisfactory to have someone there with you to laugh at or stand in awe of the events and monuments you come across. This is why my highlights of the trip so far, beyond just my favorite cities, have to be when I met up with someone. The whirlwind Paris adventure with Gabby, the nightmarish art show with Katie and seeing British Parliament with Melissa, to only name a few.
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| The Danes love their bikes. |
Looking past my mental instability, Copenhagen was nice. I managed to force myself to go to Christianborg Slot (burned down twice by the way, crazy Danes), the Danish Art and Design Museum, to visit the Little Mermaid Statue, and managed to see the Queen. Yes, the Queen. It was one of those "why is everyone standing outside watching the guards march around?" moments that ended with a car procession and a waving monarch. So I'd say it was overall quite successful.
Another thing that is little known about Copenhagen (at least I didn't know about it until the Alternative Pub Crawl in Berlin) is that there is a section of Copenhagen that has tried to separate itself from Denmark. This section is known as Christiania. Christiania declared itself a separate State is only three main rules to follow: no violence, no hard drugs and another one that I cannot remember and Wikipedia isn't helping me find... (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania). It used to have an open cannibis trade, but that was ended in the early 2000s. What it is now is pretty much the remains of what was a successful hippie commune that squatted a former military center. Crazy, right? Another rule in Christiania? No photos. Which is why I only have a picture of me underneath the official entrance as proof that I was there. This visit was a great way to continue the alternative tour of Berlin, but also contributed to the weird feeling I got from both of these cities.
Another thing that is little known about Copenhagen (at least I didn't know about it until the Alternative Pub Crawl in Berlin) is that there is a section of Copenhagen that has tried to separate itself from Denmark. This section is known as Christiania. Christiania declared itself a separate State is only three main rules to follow: no violence, no hard drugs and another one that I cannot remember and Wikipedia isn't helping me find... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania). It used to have an open cannibis trade, but that was ended in the early 2000s. What it is now is pretty much the remains of what was a successful hippie commune that squatted a former military center. Crazy, right? Another rule in Christiania? No photos. Which is why I only have a picture of me underneath the official entrance as proof that I was there. This visit was a great way to continue the alternative tour of Berlin, but also contributed to the weird feeling I got from both of these cities. 
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