Copenhagen Day 2
Our hotel has breakfast included. There is cheese, coldcuts, soft boiled eggs,
fruit, crackers, several kinds of bread, cereal, and of course, pastries
(should I call them Danish?). Of note is
also a bottle of Gammel
Dansk (Old Dane), an herbaceous alcoholic elixir that all good Danes take a
shot of for breakfast. No wonder they
are so convivial! Unfortunately, the
coffee has nothing good about it except for the caffeine.
After breakfast we walk into town to the Thorvaldsen museum. Thorvaldsen was a very famous 19th
century artist (mostly sculpture), who spent most of his life in Italy carving
marble. He was born about a month before
Beethoven, and like him, a great Romantic, at least, if you go by the way he is
depicted in sculptures and portraits.
The museum is quite nice, easy to go through in 1 -2 hours, with beautiful
frescos on the ceilings, and many many sculptures by the master, either the
originals, or the plaster precursors. He
was prolific. He also collected a lot of
ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian ceramics, coins, and other doodads. Part of the museum is a library room, where
there are pads of paper and a variety of prompts for making drawing. Owen would probably want to spend days
here. One of the great things about this
museum is the relative lack of visitors, and the ability to really get right up
to the sculptures (you could touch them if you wanted to). A lot of the finished art is in Italy, and
there is no way you could get so close, or have so much quiet contemplation
time.
Thorvaldsen
floors
Ceilings
Thorvaldsen
Hector with son
Hermes
Eros and Cerberus
Ganymede
Leda
Greek art
Interior courtyard
Draw!
After the museum we walk past the massive construction site
of the circle metro
line to the Hojbro plads, with its statue of the Bishop Absalon on
horseback wielding an axe. Absalon is
credited with the founding of Copenhagen.
We have a bit of coffee and a snack while talking to a couple on the
table next over who are from Texas. Then
back across the river to the Christianborg palace to view the tapestries.
Old phone booth (now a cafe). Dr. Who would be much happier with this
One of many tour boats (we take one the next day)
Underwater sculpture. The Danes are pretty whimsical
These are on the 2nd floor of the palace, and we
also get to see some of the Royal rooms on the way. There is a lot of bright light, which is
nice, and again, a relative absence of tourists. We see some thrones, a gorgeous two room library with double levels (A literate Royal family!), royal china, beautiful floors (we
have to wear surgical booties to protect the wood), and then the
tapestries. These are about fifteen
years old, and were about ten years in the making. They were presented to the Queen on her 50th
birthday in 1990, but weren’t completed until 2000. They were made in France. Beyond that - - the artists must have been on
some combination of peyote, absinthe and LSD. There are 17 tapestries They are huge; each must be at least 20 square meters. The colors are fantastically bright and clashing, and the allegoric
scenes are often hard to understand. They are supposed to detail the 1000 year history and future of Denmark We
had a silhouette guide to help us label some of the images, but each tapestry
had hundreds of details. They were awe
inspiring, but I don’t know if they were good or bad. Of note, the tapestries are in the
Christianborg palace where the Royals do not live. Is this for the benefit of the public, or so
they don’t have to see them every day?
Note booties
The dishware has one of every major botanical in Scandinavia
ceiling of one of the library rooms
male carytids
Satyrs holding up desk
pianoforte
After Blake's Newton
Lord Nelson bombarding Copenhagen
Viking days. The tree is Yggdrasil
more fires or battles
Something to do with the 20th C.
The future
After the tapestries, we walk back across the river, and up
along the Kobmagergade (you just can’t make these names up!), another crowded
pedestrian shopping street, past the post and telephone museum, and past
Christian IV’s round
tower, which was used for astronomical purposes. It has no stairs; instead a long ramp spirals
its way up the top. They have a bike race up and down it every
year (it used to be a unicycle race). The ramp is wide enough for a horse and
wagon; this was to make it easier to haul heavy telescopes and such to the
tower’s top. The outside of the tower
has a complex rebus in gold and enamel - - I will leave it to you to
investigate what it is and means.
We cross a busy commercial street, Norre Voldgade, and make
our way to the food market (torvehallerne).
At 2:30 we have a two hour food tour of the city. We have time to wander through the market
before the tour, and there is lots of fresh fish, bread, meat, cheese,
vegetables, etc., as well as many specialty stores and little take away
restaurants with tacos, Thai, sushi, coffee, and more. On the other side of the food hall are a
small flea market, and then an elementary school/ high school complex. School has just started, and there are a bunch
of kids outside for their recess.
Our guide is a young woman who studied Danish
literature. She actually spent some
months in the states in a small museum in Nebraska, because they need someone
to translate ‘old’ Danish manuscripts.
Old Danish is not that old - - only 150-200 years ago; the language has
shifted a lot over the century - - she said it was easier to read Chaucer than Old
Danish! Anyway, she is a vigorous
proponent of locally grown, organic food, and we have a lot of samples in the
market.
This, by the way, is the first new market to open up in
Copenhagen for years, which is undersupplied with this kind of thing; the last
market closed in the 1950’s. A lot of
people had to be re-educated about the type of produce and foods available for
purchase, since everything was pricier than what you would find in a
supermarket.
I don’t remember all the different stops we have in the
market, but we have some special rye crackers with cheese, aquavit, licorice (I
go back to the licorice store to buy some more of my new addiction, habanero
licorice). From the market we walk to
one of the oldest candy companies
in Copenhagen (and purveyors to the Royal Family!), and sample some fresh made
orange hard candy. Watch the movie on
their website.
After the candy we walk through a craft fair (much like a
craft fair anywhere), and go to a hotdog stand (polsevogen) near the round
tower. Sausage stands might not have
originated in Denmark, but they were incredibly popular at the turn of the 19th
century. A lot of factory workers would
get several meals a day at these stands, and often they were the place where
you could get the days’ news. There were
hundreds of them in Copenhagen. Over the
last few decades they have been disappearing, but now there is a concerted
effort to keep a few running. Our stand
had all natural, organic sausages. You
could get one in a baguette like roll, on a bun, or just the sausage only with
mustard, a scoop of boiled mashed roots (turnips and potatoes) and beets. There were also several kinds of sausage –
regular, extra spicy, even goat. The Danes
raise a lot of pigs, but it is almost all for export, and the cheap pork they
eat is from Poland. Go figure.
From the hotdog stand we walk to the botanic gardens where
we have some honey made from hives on site.
The Danes are doing what they can to prevent the extinction of the
honeybee. They are also doing what they
can to be carbon neutral, as well as exporting their knowhow about windmills, etc.,
but I don’t know what they will do if the sea levels rise significantly. I don’t think they can protect the city, and
Denmark is pretty flat. It least it will
reduce the risk of Copenhagen burning down.
We head back to the market for some local beer, and then our
guide helps us narrow in on some places to eat for dinner. We walk back across the gardens to the
Rosenborg Palace (supposed to be the most picaresque), but it’s close to 5 pm,
and they are closing. We’ll have to see
it next time.
The food market is right next to one of the main bus and
subway stations, Norreport, but the transit map is confusing, so we walk to our
hotel, crossing through the Orstedparken, past a brightly colored movie
theater, train lines, and past the planetarium.
Orstedparken. It was more crowded than this
Movie theater
Planaterium
For dinner, using our guide’s help, we go up Vesterbrogade
to a restaurant called Madklubben. This restaurant has very unpretentious décor
and wait staff, but the food is great. I
have fresh pea soup (really fresh peas, they were for sale all over town), and
fish, the boys have lamb, and I don’t remember what Cindy ordered. We have a combination plate of three
desserts, which is eaten to the last spoonful.
The waitress wanted to know which one we like the best, and I replied
“whichever one I was eating at the time”.
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