"willingly I came to denmark" hamlet: i, ii

So, I’m writing this on the flight to Iceland, where we’ll spend our last few days abroad. Our time in Copenhagen was a lot of fun and as an added bonus, we have a friend from college, Søren, who is from there and was able to meet up with us for a couple hours each day. It was great catching up with him, and also a treat to have a local with us who could give us the lowdown on what we were seeing.

The day we arrived, Søren came and picked us up and took us North to Elsinore, also known as the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There is a castle there, quite beautiful, but what is funny is that they have to take very careful pains to indicate that there was no such man as Hamlet; the play is what we call “fiction.” Apparently they have a problem with people thinking he was real, which to me would be the same as thinking that just because a book is set in a real place, say, London, that the characters must be real too, like, say, Harry Potter.



At any rate, they do have an exhibit that talks about the story of Hamlet, its origins, and its literary impact, which I enjoyed. With that out of the way, they are able to move on to real history, which is abundant in this place. We climbed up to the roof of the tower and had a nice long look around the shoreline. It was a beautiful, if windy, place. According Søren, constant wind is basically a characteristic feature of Denmark.

After the castle, we hopped in the car and took a nice leisurely drive back to town.

Oh, did I mention that Søren has, uh, the SWEETEST ride in all of Copenhagen??



We stopped for a bite to eat in the town of Elsinore, where V. surprised Søren by being the first non-Danish person he’d met who enjoyed red herring smørrebroød (an open faced sandwich). Then we made our way back into town. V. and I took a nice stroll through the Copenhagen city center and got a feel for the place, had a little ice cream (there is an ice cream stand on every block in Copenhagen) and then called it a night.

Yesterday, we got up early, hopped on a train to the north end of town and made our way back across the city on foot. We started out up by the Little Mermaid sculpture, which is pretty and all, but it’s also pretty small, and pretty crowded with tourists. About 30 seconds there was enough time to snap a picture and to decide I’d had my fill of Texans.



From there we headed down through the city fortifications, past St. Alban’s church, and down to the Queen’s palace.


(Image courtesy V.’s excellent photography skilz. Click on image to make larger.)

Down through some smaller streets, and then we climbed up the Round Tower, which is the only tower of its kind in Europe. It’s got a spiral ramp instead of stairs, and at the top there’s a great view of the city.



A little more strolling through the city led us to a pretty good Turkish restaurant for some lunch. Afterwards, we headed down to the docks for a canal tour. The tour took us through many of the small canals that run through various neighborhoods, out into the harbor to see a number of new buildings. They brought us around to see the Little Mermaid, and at that point you get to see the absurd crowds gathered around taking pictures of this sculpture.



Dinner that night with Søren at an Asian place called Wagamami. Very delicious food, and Søren explained to us that if we leave tips in Denmark, we’re getting taken for a ride. We had a nice stroll over the bridge into Christianshavn. By the way, pretty much everything in Copenhagen was invented by King Christian IV and therefore everything is named after him. Christianshavn is not to be confused with Christiana, a totally different part of town.

After we parted ways with Søren, V. and I popped into the very well lit “Erotic Museum.” Seriously, its huge neon sign can be seen from 7 blocks away. It was kind of fun and some of the history of erotic literature and legend in Copenhagen was interesting, but somehow I felt like it was lacking. I guess I just expect a lot out of erotic museums…

That rounded out the Copenhagen portion of our trip.

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The rest of this entry is written after landing in Reykjavik, after my computer’s battery died on the plane. Reykjavik is a really, really interesting city. In a way it feels very European, but in another sense, it’s kind of the opposite, because everything here is so new. Nearly all the buildings sprang up in the last century, and many of them in the latter half of it.

One of the things Reykjavik has a lot of is public pools. We headed over to one near us after arriving today, and boy was it great! They use geothermal heat to keep the pools temperate. Also, there are these “hot pots” which are like Jacuzzis, sort of, except without jets and, again, geothermally heated. And they are so clean!! They tell people they have to shower before getting into the pool, and everyone does it. As a result, they don’t use so much chlorine in the pool as they do in the US, and it’s so nice to come out not smelling like chemicals.

Right now it is midnight and it is still dusk. I don’t think it’s going to get much darker than this. Very, very strange. I’m pretty sure I won’t have any trouble sleeping tonight, though.