Clayton Aus and About: Copenhagen

I am seriously soooo behind on my blogs. You can't blame me though. There is so much to do when you are living in another country. At least I always come back to my blog and post something again. Some of the people in my program posted 3 or 4 times and haven't written anything since October 2011. Okay, now that that admission is out of the way, we can move on to the blog. I went to Copenhagen over Easter weekend. It was awesome. As you can see from the map, Copenhagen is in Denmark which touches Germany at its Northern most tip. Copenhagen, however, is located on an island to the far East. In order to get there you basically can use a bus or a train BUT that bus or train will have to board a ferry and travel across the Baltic in order to arrive at Copenhagen. I used a bus to get there but can you, just for a second, imagine being on a train as that train boards a ferry and then proceeds to travel out to sea? Engineering marvel. My friends and I decided to use a hostel called Danhostel. I highly recommend it. It is close to the train station and the main square which is the meeting spot for many tours and pub crawls. It is also a very tall tower so, if you get lucky, you can get an amazing view of the city like I did. All for around 25€ per person per night. Oh yeah, and the hostel is clean and offers a breakfast buffet in the morning. SIDE NOTE/TIP: If you ever stay at a hostel or hotel with a breakfast buffet eat what you want and then stash something in your backpack for later so that you have a snack while you are exploring in the city. It is a great way to stave off hunger and save some money. The weather in Copenhagen is crazy. It was raining when we arrived, it snowed the next morning, that turned into clear skies but was still very windy, and then, when we left Copenhagen, it was not windy and sunny. Crazy weather but it is an amazing city and Denmark consistently has the happiest people in the world.

View from the hostel room. This is what 25€ will get you.

Our first full day in Copenhagen we took the SANDEMAN's New Europe free tour. New Europe is this company that operates in touristy cities in Europe. They conduct things like pub crawls, free tours (but you should tip the tour guide at the end), and paid tours. Our tour guide was awesome. His name was Filip. That's right. Filip with an "F" and one "L". He was very enthusiastic and knowledgeable. He told us many interesting things about Copenhagen. Only about 5 million people in the world speak Danish which is why almost everyone in Copenhagen can speak English. Denmark had the lowest Jewish mortality rate during WWII. 96% of its Jewish population was saved because brave sailors gathered the Jews and sailed them across the sea to Sweden where they were safe. I was in awe when I heard that. You go Danes! Filip said that that was one of the reasons the Danes are so happy. He said they take care of each other and have a sense of family in their country. They stick together.

We got to see the most photographed place in Copenhagen. The famous New Harbor which is lined with colorful buildings and has a canal filled with ships. Little known fact. The ships in that canal do not leave the canal. There is no way for them to do so. The bridges are too low and the ships are too tall.

The creator of The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Anderson, also lived and worked in Copenhagen so there is a Little Mermaid monument in his honor. It is very simple. It is just a mermaid sitting on a rock on the shore. Simple but cool.

The currency in Denmark is the Krone. A single Krone is worth much less than the Euro or the dollar so everything seems very expensive in Denmark. You are like "Oh my gosh! I just spent 100 Kroner!" But that is really only about 17 dollars so don't freak out if you go to Denmark. Even after conversion though, things are still pretty expensive in Copenhagen so watch your spending.

Copenhagen is also home to the amusement park Tivoli. A certain Walt Disney went there way back when and was then inspired to create his own now famous amusement parks.

Denmark is also the home of LEGO! LEGO got it's name from the two words "le" and "got" in Danish. It means "play well". In Latin, "le got" means "I put together" so LEGO is basically the perfect word for these little plastic bricks. The LEGO factory is not located in Copenhagen so we didn't get to see it but our tour guide Filip told us something very interesting about LEGO. Per unit, LEGO produces the most tires of any company in the world. I know I know, if we were talking per weight, it would lose horribly but it produces the most single tires in the world. That is pretty interesting!

All in all, Copenhagen was pretty darn cool. Just think. Without Denmark, we would not have LEGO, Disneyland, or The Little Mermaid. I shudder to think. The weather was crazy but even that could not dull the beauty and richness of the city. If you can, I highly recommend visiting.