Because nothing I do ever makes much sense, I woke up early my last day in Copenhagen and went on the free walking tour (I was determined to understand this city before I left...DETERMINED)
I walked the block to town hall from the hostel, grabbed myself a cup of tea from 7-11 (these are all over Copenhagen. Not a Starbucks in sight, but a million and a half 7-11s) and stood on the steps, watching weddings, waiting for the tour guide, and hoping for a warm sunny day...because I was left pantsless after a slight tearing incident left my only pair of jeans a little less decent for public wear...The weather gods did not oblige.
Danish weather is a strange beast. Over the course of a three hour walking tour (Yes, Gilligan, I said a three hour tour) we had freezing rain, umbrella slaughtering wind, blazingly warm sun, we lacked snow--much to my pantsless/closed-shoeless/sleeveless delight-- but otherwise, Denmark really covered all the weather bases
But I digress.
The walking tour was lead by a Norwegian girl named Aurora. She was super cool and really knew her ish, but what was the main lesson of the tour? Copenhagen is very flammable.
I know you come here for tales, not history (that's what Wikipedia's for, right?) but I'm going to drop some fun factoids on you anyway...Sorry for making you learn.
So, like many cities, Copenhagen had a great fire. It was started late one night when a kid knocked over a candle in the restaurant his parents owned, or so the story goes. Generally, even in days of yore when firemen had to walk 10 miles uphill both ways in the snow to get anywhere, a 1-candle fire in a relatively built up part of town right near the water doesn't do much, but this fire burned down more than half of the city...How could that happen?
Well, the city gate was between the fire and the canal and, as this fire happened at night, the gate was locked. In order to open the city gate, they people of the city needed the permission of the king who was, at this time, asleep at the palace. The firemen discussed and, I imagine, did a lot of "But *I* woke the king from his beauty sleep LAST time"ing before deciding that the king really shouldn't be disturbed and it could wait until morning. Well, morning came, the city was 50% destroyed, the king woke up, opened the gate, they smothered the remaining embers and that was that...
SERIOUSLY? They didn't think that the king would be more pissed off that his city was DESTROYED than that they woke him up? I like sleep as much as the next guy, but that's insane.
70 years later, the flammable folks of Denmark have ANOTHER GREAT FIRE, this one starts on a naval base almost exactly where the last fire stopped and spreads to destroy the OTHER half of the original medieval city. Copenhagen just can't catch a break
Flash forward to 1992, a good year for Denmark, they had just won the Eurocup and were feeling pretty good about themselves. They wanted to celebrate the strength of Denmark as a nation, and what better place to do that than at the one building that was spared from not one but TWO great fires! And how did they choose to celebrate? Fireworks...Fail...Copenhagen weather being what it is, the wind picked up and threw off the path of the fireworks, sending them straight into the palace and, you guessed it! Burning it to the ground.
Flash forward to the end of the tour when I ask Aurora what is going on in the city at night that I should check out. Apparently, it's Sankt Hans! A festival to celebrate midsummer in which they...light bonfires and burn witches (or these days, dolls of witches)...Haven't the Danes learned their lesson about lighting large fires in the city center?
Anyway, the tour ended, I bought the guide a beer over lunch, and went about my way.
Now, the one thing that anyone knows about Copenhagen is that there's a statue of the little mermaid there and anyone who's anyone knows that if you don't come back from Copenhagen with a picture of the mermaid, you probably haven't actually been to Copenhagen, with that in mind, I looked at a map to see how far she was from the endpoint of the tour...The answer: REALLY FAR...One thing you may not know about Copenhagen is that is is home to the second oldest amusement park in the world, Tivoli...so I located that on the map...Not really far...And then the downpour came...
I had a tough decision to make: I could either walk really far, in the freezing rain, to a statue of a mermaid, see it, and walk back, probably still in the rain...OR I could go to the theme park, ride roller coasters in the rain, get completely soaked through, grab dinner, and then walk three blocks to the hostel and pass out...
The choice was clear: Mermaids could suck it! I was going to Tivoli!!
I went on all the rides, wandered the park, watched kids use round tables as a log-rolling game, saw a pantomime show where people got fish-slapped, saw a big-band show on the mainstage, watched them burn witch dolls on the pond and got yelled at for my inappropriate footwear.
It was the right decision even though now I've apparently probably never actually been to Copenhagen....Oops...Worth it...
Next stop: Lugano (again? Yeah, I know, backtracking isn't usually my thing, but I couldn't resist spending my birthday with friends...)
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