What an evening!
In typical sponge fashion i felt fine all day, we dropped the boss off at Maria's mother's house and made our way into town. However on the bus ride in out of nowhere i developed chronic stomach ache, which annoyed me greatly as i'd been looking forward to culture night even before i set off on my trip.
One of the perks of culture night is that once you have bought your "ticket" everything else is generally free, this included bus travel. To prove you had bought your ticket you were given a badge (the one Gomez has stolen from me to protect himself with). Flash your badge on public transport and you ride for free until 2am.
Even the bus drivers were getting in on the act, one bus we rode during the night had music playing over his PA system, so we were on the bus with Barry (The Walrus of love) White. Thankfully it was only for one stop.
My stomach calmed down (after numerous bathroom visits and a discussion with Maria about whether we should go home or not) we decided to stay and i enjoyed a meal in a traditional danish restaurant, in a building that had been there since the 1700s.
In a fit of longing for home i almost had the english steak, roasted potatoes with veg and gravy, but was talked round to having "shipmasters stew" was meat and potatoes in a mash with butter ontop, with rye bread and butter and salad. It tasted great and wasn't overly expensive either.
Straight out of the restaurant i got my first indication of how different culture night was from any other evening i'd spent in any other capital city i'd been too. 40-50 people on roller skates (with a police motorbike escort) were blocking one of the busiest junctions in Copenhagen as they conducted their nightime skating route (all 20km of it)
1st stop for us was the Naval Museum, which included life size exibits of boats and submarines, lots of opportunities for me to pose and have my photo taken in different clothes, and a rather drunken band who were singing "New Yorkers can you dance the polka?"
We had planned to see the ruins under christians hall as part of our evenings trip, but the line was huge (it was exceptionally cold) so we decided to come back and see it another day. We went on further to building which was housing the Mensa testing, which happened to be a pub that brewed its own beers. Upstairs we got tested and i came out with a "normal" score of 105. Never really having been called normal before i was quite chuffed with my achievement. Maria scored 125, and it was politely suggested she went downstairs to talk to other members.
We went downstairs, but only to try out some of the "home" brewed beer, which is when i discovered that i can finally drink beer, (as ive never really been able too before without immediate adverse effects) but it became clear that i dont like dark beer.
Final culture stop of the evening was a yoga and tantric meditation class (amusingly situated directly behind the Museum of erotica) after climbing many stairs, only lit by candles we came upon the center and had to remove our shoes.
15-20 minutes later i emerged from the introduction class feeling exceptionally relaxed, but once again hungry, by now it was very cold, finding an italian takeaway i ordered what looked like the spiciest sandwich on the menu and wasn't dissapointed. Least now my mouth and lips were warm even if the majority of me wasn't
We spent 15 minutes in a jazz club near central square before deciding we were both pretty tired, it would be coming on for 1am when we got home, so we caught a free bus ride back to the appartment.
The atmosphere of the whole evening was amazing, street performers and music on most corners, so many people, delicious food smells coming from stalls all over the place and more exibits than you knew what to do with, most definitely the best night of the trip so far
