Hi All,
This is a really really really nice place. People are nice. Town is nice. Air is fresh and clean BUT everything is just so expensive which is frustrating.
I didn´t sleep well at the hotel as the hookers below seemed to spend their nights yelling across the street from their designated corner to each other so needed a big breakfast to get going each day. Breakfast buffet. Big mistake hotel. It was so big that we had enough left over to stuff into our pockets to make it all fit :-) Our stash each day was at least two big ham and cheese sandwiches and two danishes of course.
Next day. We went for a visit to the Australian embassy and explained our problem with having to send our passport to Australia to get our Russian and Chinese visas. The lovely staff member actually helped and rang both embassies. We could have got our visas processed but would have needed to stay in Denmark for another couple of weeks. Unfortunately would cost too much to stay that long.
Spent the rest of the day exploring the city and walked out to the hippy comunity of cristiania.
Next day. Day trip out to Fredriksborg Palace. We were going to look inside the palace museum but found that the grounds and formal gardens were so nice that we spent the morning wandering around, exploring and chasing nut collecting red squirrels that we were well satisfied. The castle was quite nice from the outside. Not many around so we virutally had the gardens to ourself for lunch. Somehow a bird managed to hit the target on Vanessas leg during that time even thought there was no overhanging branches or birds in sight. Must have been a stealth bomber.
Decided to stay an extra day for the cultural festival. 9Oct. Bought a card for the festival that gave access to lots of different events. We chose to go to the zoo for a night feeding for a start. Jumped on the bus as indicated on the program for a 10 min ride and about 1hr later we arrived at the end of the bus route. We had gone in the wrong direction so it was another 30min to get to the zoo. I was really annoyed at this point as we were going to miss the polar bear feeding but we managed to get there just in time. A bit of a laugh as the older of the two bears pushed a frozen blue container with the feed into the water and followed it in with a big belly flop. It repeated the process a few times.
Caught the bus back into town. The place was packed and drinking on the streets seems to be alright not that we could afford to buy alcohol in Scandinavia. Stopped to watch an acrobatic girl stacking boxes then sitting on the top of the stack about 10m high before falling off but had a safety rope and harness so no damage done. We headed off to a fair dinkum ukulele playing eskimo singer. Luckily she gave up on it after two songs as it went out of tune and replaced it a guitar. She was a great singer and we enjoyed her folk songs as did the predominantly eskimo crowd. It was heading towards midnight and we were going to see a circus act but we arrived about 2 minutes late and it was full so went back to the hotel. We actually did a bit more in the evening and it was fun.
This is a little out of order. We decided to book our tickets to Amsterdam on the bus. Previous internet research had shown a price spike for the 10 Oct but we didn´t understand why. We had exhausted our options so decided to take the 16hr bus trip. Yuck. Went to book it but the bus was all booked up for a couple of days. What the? Danish school holidays started on the 10Oct. Bugger. The penny drops. What now? the train. No sleepers and the seat prices were expensive. We decided to book seats and not sleep for the 16hr train trip!
We spend our last day at the National museum. Very well put together. One of the best I have seen. Spent rest of day exploring Copenhagen. There is so much to find in this city. Picked up some food and our bags from hotel then waited in train station for a couple of hours before getting the train. train seats were not comfortable but we initially were in a 6 seat carriage compartment with 1 other person but by midnight this had become full. Luckily two went and slept in the bike area and the other two left in Germany so Vanessa and I could sleep on the seats. Bonus. Damn. Had a passport check in Germany. One confused train change due to track works. Confused as we didn´t know what was going on. I asked the leaving train conductor where the next train was to be caught and he responded he didn´t know as this was a german train and that was a dutch train. Thanks mate. The dutch station people took control and got us onto the next train and 1hr later we were in Amsterdam,Holland.
Bye,
David and Vanessa
