Sunrise

Today was busy and amazing and so incredibly long!!!!

We first went to Christiania, which my guide book described as a "hippie trippy mini Seattle." Uh. Not quite that. I don't know if the people in that guide book have ever been to Seattle. Strike 3, guide book, strike 3. Quickly approaching the status of "The Book" from Egypt that was wrong about EVERYTHING. Christiania was set up in the 60's and is seriously just a bunch of self governing hippies living there. It reminded me of an overgrown campground, but with concrete buildings in it. There was graffiti everywhere, lots of bizarre art work, and lots of hippies. It had a playground, cafes, houses, special Christiania bikes, people with dreds and piercings, and lots of weed paraphernalia. It was really quite and very peaceful. There did seem to be a lot of tourists there though and lots of signs saying no pictures allowed. It must be weird living in a place that's described as a "social experiment" that is now kind of a tourist attraction. You could really easily tell who lived there and who didn't. Anyway, after getting a feel for the vibe of the place, there's not that much to do so we went on with our day. Oh - and as you leave Christiania under one of the gate ways, the gate says "Now Entering the EU" which I found really funny.

We walked to Nyhavn, that super cute, picture perfect harbor area and got lunch at one of the outside cafes. I tried smorrebrod, which was one of my goals for Copenhagen. Smorrebrod just means an open faced sandwich, and it's pretty much the only food that is really considered "Danish". Most smorrebrods have at least something on them that I don't like - seafood, pate, mushrooms, horseradish, egg, etc. But, I found one that had a chicken salad with a creamy dressing on it and a piece of bacon. You're supposed to eat smorrebrod with a Danish beer, so I got myself a Carlsberg beer to go with it. I absolutely love sitting in cafes outside in Europe in the sun and people watching and having interesting culinary experiences.

Then we had to get our souvenir shopping out of the way which was a really frustrating thing this time around. There is a shop that sells gorgeous porcelain and ceramics, but a single plate costs upwards of 80 euros. The tourist plate shops all were terrible and obsessed with the Little Mermaid. I got a recommendation to look for plates at a cheap store, but the plates there were awful and didn't remind me of Copenhagen at all. I ended up dragging Laura in circles and finally getting a tourist shop plate that I liked better than anything else I saw. Still - not quite the traditional ceramics I was looking for. Ugh. Sometimes this collection drives me crazy. Oh well, at least I only have one plate left to get!

Then we walked to the Carlsberg Brewery. We could have taken a bus but I wanted to save our precious expensive bus tickets. We ended getting stuck under an overpass we needed to be on and we showed up late to find Jan patiently waiting for us there. My guidebook said you could do a free, self guided tour of the brewery. WRONG AGAIN! 4 times!! This stupid book! I am going to write them a letter when I get home...unless I find out that it was like a 2007 version and I was just using it because the library didn't have anything more current...Anyway, Jan had never been to the brewery before and for the $10 entrance fee you got 2 free beer tickets, and we walked over an hour there so we had to do it. The brewery turned out to be pretty cool, very informative with lots of history about the Carlsberg beer dynasty in Denmark. This visitor's center has the Guinness Book of World Records' largest collection of unopened beer bottles with over 19,000 beers from the past 100 years or so! It is CRAZY! The end of tour was my favorite part. They had an exhibit on how to enjoy beer with all of your senses and tons of great quotes about beer on the wall. They had 20 different aromas that can be found in beers and a pamphlet with all these aromas listed out. You went around smelling each one and checking off whether you liked it, didn't like it, or were indifferent. Then, all the Carlsberg (and some Tuborg and Jacobsen) beers were listed on the next page with which aromas could be found in each beer. You could kind of rate each beer according to how much you thought you would like it based on the aromas just smelled. Then you use your two free beer coupons to try the beers that match what you like the best. It was such a fun game!!! I really liked both beers that I got and it was fun tasting the beers Laura and Jan got too and trying to decipher the different aromas claimed to be in each. It was really cool, but it just made me even more of a beer snob. That's ok, I like being a beer snob.

After the brewery, we walked an hour back into the center of town and, having decided earlier to splurge this evening, went to Tivoli Gardens. This is a huge theme park in the middle of the city that is supposed to be the #1 attraction here. It was a little bit expensive but we ended up getting tourist passes that allowed us to do as many rides as we wanted to. To give you an idea, ride tickets cost 25 crowns (about $4). The good rides cost 3 tickets ($12!!!) So after you do 3 good rides, you've paid more than you would for a tourist pass. So we got that tourist pass and hallelujah for there being essentially no lines, because we did so many rides in the next 2 hours it was crazy! All good ones too, of course. Laura even got me to do one like the Tower of Terror where you just drop straight down. I was kind of terrified but figured I would survive. Another great moment was the 2nd time around on the roller coaster Laura and I did monkey faces the whole time so that when the take pictures of all the roller coaster riders our picture would be hilarious. But we didn't know when the camera would go off so we had to do monkey faces for like the whole ride. It was so hard to not laugh or scream or do anything! It was the most challenging monkey face. The picture though, wow, it was hilarious!! Jan didn't get the memo the first time around so we went again (as I said, no line, awesome) and made Jan do a monkey face with us. All three of us monkey facing the camera on a roller coaster is such an incredibly funny sight!!! I did not want to pay $8 for the picture though so that memory is just in my head...Another cool thing was doing the rides as it got darker and darker and seeing the city light up. The views from the tops of the rides were just so good and beautiful!!! After rides we watched a short illumination show with lights, fountains, and music over one of the lakes in the theme park. In all, it was a really fun evening running around like little kids playing in a theme park. And the best part was that I was tall enough for all the rides!! hahah.

After Tivoli we grabbed a quick dinner and then headed to a bar. We were almost to the bar when Jan realized he left his bike at the dinner place! Pretty funny. After that first bar, we got Jan's bike and went to a club with one of Jan's other friends. This club we were warned was "controversial". The bottom level had fake blood dripping from all walls with quasi-creepy statements written in huge silver block letters. It was really bizarre. I don't know how we even got in because everybody there was dressed up and in heels and we looked like.....backpackers who had been wearing the same clothes for a week. I hate clubs and after spending a mandatory $3 on a freaking BAG check I didn't want to drink anything because I didn't want to get even more sick. But we stood around chatting and listening to the music for about an hour (slowest hour everrrr when you're tired and sick and don't like clubs). The weirdest thing happened though. From my seated perch, I saw some old drunk guy kneeling on the ground feeling around (there were a lot of old drunk guys there...it was weird. People that old don't go out and party with the high-heeled young 20 somethings in the States). Anyway he seemed a little frantic, he had obviously lost something more important than a 10 crown coin, and I figured it was a ring. I asked him what he was looking for and I turned out to be right. I saw what I thought was a rink amidst a pile of broken glass behind a stage people were dancing on a little ways away. I pointed it out to him and somehow in that dark club I had found his ring, saw him trying to find it, and helped him find it. I felt like my Eagle Eyes had done an AMAZING job; pretty proud of that feat!!!! He then came up to me and said, "Thanks, losing this would have been a great shame," and slipped it on his ring finger. Uh, yeah, losing your wedding ring on a Thursday night in a creepy club WOULD be a "great shame". Thank goodness for me, you old weirdo!

We finally got out of that club and went to another bar but only for a few minutes, because then the sky was starting to lighten (it was around 2:45 AM). The whole goal of staying up all night tonight was to see an amazing sunrise. When we realized that the metro and busses wouldn't get us to our destination for sunrise watching soon enough, we spontaneously took a cab to this beautiful beach. We had the beach completely to ourselves, it was freezing cold out, but pretty clear and not raining. We sat on a concrete wall looking over the perfectly still water and 20 windmills in the distance. To the right we could see the bridge leading to Sweden and Swedish lights across the water. It was so serene, peaceful, beautiful - it was completely incredible. The stunning rainbow colors lit up the horizon, and it was an amazing sight to see. However, what we didn't take into account was when the actual sun would rise. It takes hours for it to get dark - but we hadn't realized the same would be true about getting light. So after about an hour of sitting there, the sun FINALLY game up in all its glowing orange yellow glory, and a new day had begun. It's hard to imagine fighting and disease and hatred when you're witnessing something so natural and so gorgeous. With ice cold butts we peeled ourselves off the concrete and made the very tired trek back to Jan's flat. In total, we had been outside for about an hour and a half. That's dedication! But, mission accomplished. It was SO worth it!!


Accomplishments:
Found some dude's wedding ring on the ground.
Watched an incredible sunrise.