Sunday, March 29, 2009

I *heart* Kobenhavn

To get rid of my demons I hit the train to Copenhagen, for another grand escape. The city of Copenhagen is absolutely gorgeous. I loved the vibe of a capital city, cars, people, noise and diversity. It's not Bucharest when it comes to traffic and crowd, but at least it's better than Aarhus. I totally enjoyed it and the weather was perfect. I could not stop smiling and enjoying. I left Aarhus on Friday, early morning by train and returned on Saturday evening by bus/ferry. We slept in a good hotel/hostel called Jorgensen in a 12 people room, with some French people, and a good breakfast for only 150 kr/night.

This is definitely a must see European capital. Still Stockholm is better :P.

The little mermaid (someone did a heart graffiti on the stone under the mermaid).

The National Museum (actually the best museum I have ever been in…it's perfect and full of cultural vibes, even if it's mainly Danish culture).

The Merman and his 7 sons (According to a Danish folk legend, Agnete was a young peasant girl who was walking by the shore as a merman emerged from the waves and offered her his hand. Agnete fell in love with him immediately and went to the bottom of the sea with him, where she gave birth to his seven sons. After eight years, however, as she was sitting by the crib of her youngest son, Agnete heard the sound of churchbells ringing from her old village, and she felt homesick. She got permission from the merman to go to church, on the one condition that she would come back to him after mass. But of course, once on land again, Agnete found that she missed the church and her family too much, and she wouldn't return. In Suste Bonnén’s sculpture, the merman and his seven sons are pleading for Agnete to return to them, stretching out their arms towards her).

Christiania (Freetown Christiania is a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 850 residents in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital Copenhagen. Christiania has established semi-legal status as an independent community, but has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its open cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. Since then, measures for normalising the legal status of the community have led to conflicts, and negotiations are ongoing.Among many Christiania residents, the community is known as staden ('the town'), short for fristaden ('the freetown').

Carlsberg factory/museum (I am not a big fun of beer, but I just found my favourite - Carl's Ale - it left a sweet honey taste in my mouth...mmm...delicious...and I found the Carl Jacobsen initially used the swastika as the symbol for Carlsberg in 1908 - this is a symbol of luck in the Viking culture and other cultures, as well as the Jewish star - which he considered the alchemy symbol for beer).