april 2004, københavn (copenhagen)

april 18

in april, we decided to take a quick holiday in denmark, to introduce anna and jana to the closest part of my danish family. we also touristed around copenhagen a bit, and just relaxed as much as one can, when constantly moving around to see stuff. we paid something like €150 per person with lufthansa, for the flight. what we really needed, but what didn't exist at the time, was this site.

we started by taking a walk down strøget, the pedestrian street at the center of copenhagen. it is somewhat touristy, but this early in the year it was manageable. strøget ends in kongens nytorv, and off to the right of this is nyhavn, the new harbour. this is now a misnomer, but at the time it was correct. it was built around 300 years ago, iirc, by some swedish war prisoners, and took three years to dig out. now many of the boat cruises run out of here, and we took a harbour tour. from the boat, we saw the little mermaid, as well as various other things, including the black diamond, a new library/concert centre, christiansborg, the danish government castle, and børsen, the old stock exchange.

on the way home, we went through a park called frederiksberg have, where we found a tree full of great blue herons. they apparently escaped from the zoo, and settled here, right across the street. no attempt to recapture them has since been made, as they seem to thrive.

the same evening, we met my sister and her boyfriend, jesper. jana models a teapot warmer with style.

april 19

the next day we investigated another corner of frederiksberg have, and found a tree full of pacifiers. apparently it has become a local tradition to wean your small child off their pacifier by bringing them here, where they can get moral support by seeing how many other small children have made it too. pacifiers anonymous.

we also made close acquaintances with a blue heron, which a regular visitor to the park was training to seesaw. i have a movie of it, but it is too large to put here. jana played around on the playground, but was a bit tired at that point.

next stop was rosenborg, which was built by king christian IV as a small summer residence. unfortunately i seem to have managed to take no pictures of the castle itself, but here it is. we took the metro, the new, unmanned subway line. here is a picture of jana and anna sitting a couple of rows behind the front of the train. they must have done a lot of research into what might make people uncomfortable in an unmanned train, because the whole experience was totally interesting, and we never felt unsafe. the train accelerates and brakes quite gently, and there is lots of light everywhere, inside the train and in the tunnels.

at the castle, we paid a visit to see the crown jewels. we also saw a picture of a danish king, brandishing some of the crown jewels. all the way up the staircase, there were these weird paintings of horses which must have been done by someone who didn't have the faintest idea how a horse functions. i suppose that wasn't general knowledge until muybridge, but really! finally, a ship of ivory, truly beautiful.

our last tourist destination was vor frelsers kirke, our saviour's church. it has a three meter high gold jesus at the top, and an outside spiral staircase to the top. it is quite a walk, with several hundred steps, and several quite narrow passages. large people probably ought to avoid this tower. still, it is a beautiful church, and has a great view of downtown copenhagen. the church lies in christianshavn, which is situated on armager, an island just off the coast of mainland copenhagen.

incidentally, this trip was the last trip which i photographed with the nikon coolpix 990. after this i bought a sony dsc-f828 to replace it.