Copenhagen

Day 3: Copenhagen Sightseeing: Our sightseeing tour includes Copenhagen's famous sights like the Geffion Fountain, the Royal Palace and the Little Mermaid. Perhaps a visit to the Carlsberg Brewery this morning. (Breakfast is included)

Hotel: Belaegningen Youth Hostel

Breakfast: 8:00, Bus departs: 8:30

I woke up very early this morning, 6:30, and decided I should take a shower as there were only 2 showers for all the girls in the building (the hostel had us spread out into 3 different buildings). At 8:30 we left for the city and started with a driving tour of the city to orient ourselves. The city seemed much nicer this morning, between the sun shining and not being lost, I almost liked Copenhagen. On the driving tour we were shown Tivoli, Christianborg Palace, the National Museum, Radhuspladsen, Nyhaven, Amalienborg Palace (photo stop), Rosenborg Palace, Geffion Fountain (photo stop), the Little Mermaid (photo stop) and had a drop off at Tivoli for those who were not going on the tour of Carlsberg Brewery. I was excited to see the Little Mermaid, but not nearly as excited as Jilly, it was like a pilgrimage to her, and that made it even more exciting.

We had an 11:00 reservation for Carlsberg Brewery, and did the self guided tour. I don't think I learned much about making beer, but the tour included 2 free beers, which made it a good deal. First I had a Semper Ardens Abbey Ale, which was awful, and decided to cut my losses and get a Fanta after that. Though I did try someone's Winter Something, which was a little better, but I really just don't like beer and a tour of Carlsberg Brewery wasn't going to change that. We left a little before 1:00 and were dropped off at Tivoli for our free day.

A bunch of us headed over to the Church of Our Savior (AKA the inside out church) for a view of the city. On my last tour I missed one or two sites with views of the cities and I regretted it, I didn't want to make the same mistake again. Che warned us that it might be closed, but fortunately for us it was open. The stairs up were rough, all those days I spent on the stair master didn't seem to make it any easier, but the view was great and worth the stairs. Right after leaving it started to rain, and where do you think my umbrella was? At the hostel, so I ended up spending 40 Dkr on an umbrella. But I did trade the umbrella with Kevin for most of a danish, cutting some of my loss. Eventually we found a place to eat lunch - McDonalds, it was raining on and off and it was quick and easy. Leah D. was confused when she ordered the cheeseburger meal and it came with 2 cheeseburgers, instead of one. Apparently in Australia a cheeseburger meal only comes with 1 cheeseburger, well I saved her by buying one of the cheeseburgers off of her. But I was apparently the only person in our little group that was used to getting 2 cheeseburgers with there cheeseburger meal, see McDonalds can be a cultural experience!

After eating lunch we headed down Stroget for shopping, then to Nyhaven and back to Magasin (department store) to look at the legos, they apparently have the largest collection of legos in Copenhagen outside of Lego Land - I expected it to be a bigger collection. I bought a lego police man to add to my collection, one more thing to check off my list of things to get/do. In Magasin we found a little Hans Christian Andersen museum where we watched a little video about his life. Then it was time to head to the all you can eat pizza place most people were meeting at at 6pm. For 66 Dkr you got all you can eat pizza and salad. Then we went to an Australian bar to kill time until our 8:30 pick up. Unfortunately we never made it to Tivoli, since it rained on and off all day, and it was a bit pricey to enter Tivoli (and more to go on a ride) it didn't seem to be worth it. We had a good time at the bar, and I got to know people a bit better, so far everyone seemed cool and the group was starting to gel.

We were picked up at Tivoli at 8:30 and were back at the hostel by 8:50. I hung out in the hallway for a bit talking to Samar, Danny, and Skye, then met Karl in the TV room for a glass of wine. On the way back to my room I got on the internet for a bit, so I could let everyone know that all was well and finally got to bed at 11. Overall Copenhagen wasn't as bad as I thought it was the first day, but for some reason I still didn't love Copenhagen, something about it just didn't grab me.

My neat orderly world

Right now I'm reading the book One Year Off, a review will come shortly. I was reading the part about Rome and how the hotel keeper was letting them park thier van in front of the hotel for the night. What surprised me was, who is the hotel keeper to say they can park on the street? Where are the police? If you let people park wherever they want and let the hotel keepers manage the parking there will be chaos!

I've been to Rome (Egypt and Russia too) and it seems people park wherever they want. All of a sudden it hit me that maybe the Romans are right and the NYers are the crazy ones. We have "organized" parking, 80 street signs for one block. Everyone's paranoid about where you can park and for how long. Parking is stressful in NYC and expensive if you misread the sign. And then you get the people who live there who decide they don't want "x" vehicle in front of their building and lobby to change the parking rules. You can't win in NYC, it's a horror show. We've made it nearly impossible to have a car in NYC, and in some ways it's a good thing. But, for people who need to park it's a nightmare. But not labor the point of parking in large cities my point is that we do so many things to make things orderly that we make them un-orderly. We have a nice orderly system, but it's got a million holes in it that it's hard to call it a system, the same could be said for taxes and medical insurance and everything else we do to make life orderly. The chaos is astounding!

My experiences traveling have made me so much more aware of the chaos we create by trying to make things simple, and fair. Would the world be a better place if we let the guy who owns the business decide who can park in the spot in front of the business? Maybe or maybe not, but it would be a lot easier to determine where you could park, just ask the guy inside...

Scandi and Russia - Getting to Copenhagen

Here is the start of my travelogue for my Scandi and Russia tour. I will try to sprinkle in some posts about other stuff since this was a 33 day trip.


Day 1: Depart the Europe. This evening I depart from JFK airport at 8:30pm on a British Airways flight bound for London, England.

I did some last minute packing today (well most of my packing), found out I had too much stuff and had to dump some of it, who needs jeans anyway?

I got to the airport early, and everything ran smoothly, so I ended up sitting around for a while waiting for the flight. On the flight I end up sitting next to a little bit of a strange guy... at one point I hit the button on the screen, and he opened my tray table for me. I still don't get it, but he must of thought I didn't know how to open the tray table. He also seemed to have missed the airplane etiquette lesson, he was leaning onto me to look out the window when we were landing. Otherwise the flight was fine. I watched Casanova and some of Walk the Line, got about 3 hours of sleep and got to eat my dinner and breakfast, which were pretty good.

Day 2: Arrive Copenhagen: After checking into your youth hotel, the remainder of the day is at leisure. Join your Tour Manager and fellow travelers for an important meeting at 6pm followed by an included dinner. (Dinner included)
Hotel: Belaegningen Youth Hostel

The plane landed in London around 8:25am (local time) and then I walked for what felt like forever to my connecting flight to Copenhagen at 9:55am. This flight had no entertainment and the lunch they served wasn't very good, so I only ate the fruit. I managed to doze off for most of this flight, which was good since there wasn't anything else to do and I needed sleep if I was going to make it through the day. When I got off the plane I got my passport stamped (yea!) and was on my way. I followed the directions I had, which were NOT to the hostel. I had to ask a random person on the street how to get where I was supposed to be. Fortunately, English is widely spoken in Copenhagen and I was sent to a bus that would take me to Central Station, naturally it started raining once I realized I was lost. I wanted to sit on my suitcase and cry at my predicament, but realized that wasn't going to get my anywhere. At Central Station I decided I had had enough with finding my way around on mass transit and took a cab. I finally got to the hostel at 3:45 and was the first one to check into my room. The hostel seemed nice enough, with 2 bunk beds, but only 2 showers for the girls in the building, the mornings would be interesting.

After settling in I headed over to the TV room and found a bunch of people from the tour. I introduced myself and was promptly asked how old I was, and was asked if I was from America, it was a little bit of a strange introduction to the group. I grabbed a chair, had a seat and everyone else introduced themselves. At the time I don't think I really retained anyone's names, but I now know I met Chris, Jacqui, Ben, Lis, Jilly, Nancy, Renae, Ted, and a couple of other people. Most people were from Australia, a couple from Canada, one from South Africa and they thought there was another American. I would have preferred more Americans, but you can't have it all.

After a little while I headed back to my room to get myself together for our 6:00 meeting and dinner. At my room I met my roomies, Kellie, Wendy and Stephanie. At the meeting Che introduced himself, Andy (the driver) and Dion (our Super Cook), and took us over to dinner - Tacos. After dinner we had a pre-tour meeting. Che told us that it was different up here (Scandinavia), and the function of the tour manager was more organizational. He also told us that it would get colder, that there was usually hot water, and after we visit the cities we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, he didn't really paint the nicest picture, but it wasn't anything I wasn't expecting. Then he collected our information and sent us on our way. Some of us hung out for a bit getting to know each other, then I sent a quick email home and was in bed a little after 10.

Hofbrauhaus

I've actually been to 3 Hofbrauhauses - Munich, Las Vegas and Pittsburgh. They're all a little different, though I've had very different experiences at each. Munich is my favorite.

How can you not love the Hofbrauhaus in Munich? The place has real live German's in it, what's not to like? But I also like that the place is hundreds of years old and although it attracts lots of tourists, it's still a place that locals go to. I'm sure the Hofbrauhaus people hate this, but I also like the painted ceilings. In the 1930's when the Nazi's were coming and in power they often used the Hofbrauhaus and they painted the ceilings with swastikas. After the war they tried to paint over them, but the red kept bleeding through. They ended up painting designs around them. What I like about this is that it's there if you look, but it's not so apparent that you feel its presence when you're there. The ceiling was recreated at the Las Vegas restaurant, but not at the one in Pittsburgh, which was a disappointment to me. But in Munich, the food was good, the beer was good and the atmosphere fun and energetic.

I've been to the Las Vegas restaurant twice, but I've always gone for lunch with my family. It's not terribly lively there at lunch time, but it's a good place for a big group. The food is good, but I LOVE the pretzels there. I guess I should get my butt there one day for dinner. My brother-in-law who is more of a foody then I am and has been there more recently didn't seem terribly impressed with the food the last time he was there.

Pittsburgh, I've only been there once but enjoyed it. It's a large restaurant and it has a quiet room incase you want the food and not the band. It also has a patio/beirgarten, there was a gravely flooring here so leave the cute heels at home. I thougth the food was good not great, but the band was good. The pretzels were not the same as the ones in Las Vegas or Munich and weren't as good. My biggest disappointment was in the design. From the outside it has the HB look, but inside it doesn't have the contoured ceilings or the designs on them. It felt like they cut a lot of corner and made it more like a "Western" beer hall instead of it's older German sister.