Copenhagen Episode 2

Well, hello, good evening, and welcome to An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, ‘summer’ 2023 Episode 2. Well, yes, I did put ironic quotation marks around Summer. You know how I moaned about it being like a November day yesterday. Well, at least I could sketch in it. Today wasn’t so windy, but it drizzled for almost all of the day. Which is all a rather long winded way of me apologising for the fact that I only have the one sketch to share with you today. In all honesty in most of the places I went today my sketchbook would have been soaked and unusable in about 10 minutes if I’d tried to sketch out in the open.

Right then – good day or bad day? Well, see what you think. I started it off with some foolishness. Now, it works like this. Nobody gets everything. I have a better than average memory for facts, and the answers to quiz questions. On the reverse of that particular coin though, I can be extremely absent minded. I never remember where I put things, even if I just put them down five minutes ago. So When I packed to go out this morning I gave the room the quick once over, made sure there was nothing lying around and headed off to the Metro. It was while I was on the Metro that I found that I’d left my guidebook and map behind. – Well – I thought – if that’s the most foolish thing I do today, then that’s not too bad. Still, it did leave me with a wee bit of a problem. Now, today was one of those days which as much as it tooketh away from me, it was prepared to giveth as well. I was aiming for Radhuspladsen station, because I knew it was a short walk from there to the Copenhagen Museum. I thought to myself that maybe I could find a large city map outside the station and photograph it and then use that. Nope. What they did have though was free (!) city maps and metro maps which also came with a handy small guide book.

Yes, I did use the word free. I must take back my comment from yesterday that only the pissoirs are free in Copenhagen. So with a happy heart and a wet bonce I walked along to the Copenhagen Museum. As I approached the ticket office I noticed it was 95 Kroner – cheaper than the National Museum, I thought. I took out my 100 DK note, only to be told by the lady behind the counter, “Put yer money away, son. This is free Wednesday.” Yes, if any other members of the International Cheapskates Union happen to be reading, I had by accident managed to visit the museum on a day it was buckshee. The lady pulled me down from cloud nine, though, by saying, “But although you do not pay on a Wednesday, there is something important we have to ask that you do.” -Listen love – I answered in my head – if that means you want a good review on Trip Advisor my integrity is certainly for sale, and the price is a lot cheaper than you might think.- “I am sorry to say,” the continued,” that on Free Wednesday you must wear an orange sticker. Prominently, Where we can see it.” I nearly put it on my forehead, but I bet they get enough of that sort of thing as it is.

I liked the Copenhagen Museum. Yeah, of course I’m going to say that because it was freemans. But I did enjoy it as well. I was struck by the way that Copenhagen had to go through some of the terrible things that my own home city, London town had to go through. About 50 years after London’s 1665 outbreak they had a terrible outbreak of plague, followed not that long after by their own Great Fire. Having been late with those, though, they were in on  the ground floor with a devastating outbreak of colour at the start of the 19^th century. As city museums go it’s one of the better ones I’ve been to – although the Museum of London is better IMHO. One criticism I would make is that they make it hard for the sketcher in the way that there are no benches or seats. It was just too difficult for me to sit on the floor and sketch anything, and standing up and sketching was never going to work for me today.

Which brings me to a question that I would like to ask the good burghers of Copenhagen. What have you got against public benches? Now, okay, the rain did work against outdoor sketching today, but even so I passed many lovely places yesterday and today which I would love to have sketched had there been a handy bench nearby. But there never was. I’d like to meet a member of the Copenhagen Urban Sketchers ( if such a group exists) and ask them how they manage.

I’ve used the Copenhagen Metro a lot today. I can’t remember which station it was where I was amused by a printed notice. It was giving general information about the Metro, but one of the things it said was, and I’m paraphrasing here, our metro is so fast and efficient, we don’t need a timetable, so don’t look for one please. The notice has a point. The trains seem to whip through at 2 minute intervals. I’ve never had time to sit down in a Copenhagen Metro station before my train arrives. Mind you, that’s just as well, because they don’t have any benches, like a lot of the rest of Copenhagen. One thing I like about Copenhagen is that where they have those public notices about local rules and regulations, a lot of them say what you can do, not what you can’t. However, on the Metro they tell you what you can’t do as well, and one of them is loiter in the station. So I made a quick outline of the sketch you see but had to finish it off back of the apartment with the aid of a couple of photos. Oh, one thing I didn’t mention yesterday was that in my genuinely knackered state on Monday evening, on the way to Vestamagr I thought the first three stations were all called Udgang. Then I realised it was Danish for exit.

Well, lighter of heart and not of wallet, my next plan was to go to the Rosenborg, a park and a rather lovely Palace. The Palace houses the Royal Museum. Now, I may be wrong, but of all the Kingdoms of Europe (as opposed to Principalities or Grand Duchies) I’ve been to Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, so only Norway is left. As I approached the ticket office , I though to myself  - I wonder if it’s Free Wednesday here as well? The answer is no. No, in fact it was ‘You can’t come in because we’re fully booked Wednesday’ as it turned out. Oh well. This meant I was still leading 2-1 in the providence providing stakes.

My handy free guide pointed me in the direction of the Round Tower. The Round Tower is in a rather commercialised pedestrians only area. It is actually a 17^th century tower, built as an observatory, to continue the astronomical work of Tycho Brahe. What do we know about Tycho Brahe? He lost his nose in a duel and replaced it with one made of brass, and painted flesh colour. Coming back to the Round Tower, this was built by King Christian IV. I say he built it, although I somehow doubt he was actually manning the cement mixer. I did consider going in, but frankly my legs were still aching from yesterday. My stomach was rumbling as well. I looked around me, and with a metaphorical hey presto, providence provided a Chinese restaurant. Well, I expect it was there all the time, and hadn’t just materialised but I hadn’t noticed it. One noodle box and a hundred yards later a saw a souvenir shop.

Let me tell you about my patch blanket. For Christmas 2019 my daughter Jess gave me a blanket, to which she’d stitched patches from all the different countries and cities I’ve visited on these sketching expeditions. If you’re of a certain age you’ll know the sort of thing I mean – often shield shaped, embroidered and bearing either the country’s flag or a design embodying a particular city or tourist attraction. Now, my first trip after Jess bought me the blanket was to Reykjavik. I did actually manage to buy an Icelandic flag but couldn’t find anywhere selling a Reykjavik patch anywhere. Which was possibly my first inkling that souvenir patches have gone very much out of fashion. Covid intervened after Iceland, and it wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that I made my next expedition, to Edinburgh. One souvenir shop, ladies and gentlemen, that sold patches. That’s all I could find. And the patches it sold weren’t a – argh, terrible pun coming up – weren’t a patch on the old fashioned ones you can buy on Ebay. Warsaw in 2022 – not a sausage. Back to Ebay. In Riga at Easter I did find a shop that sold Latvian flag patches. Right, so having set the scene, I went into the souvenir shop today, fully expecting nothing, only to find some rather nice ones. Yes please, thank you very much. Providence was running away with it, 4 – 1.

Okay then. If I say the name Christiania to you, what comes into your head? If you’re a quizzer, quite possibly Norway. For Oslo used to be called Christiania. However, there is a Christiania in Copenhagen and it has something of a reputation. It is supposedly in the top 5 tourist attractions of Copenhagen. Basically, it started as squatters occupying a deserted military base in Christianshavn. It’s become a community which, whether the authorities admit it or not, has acted semi autonomously since despite all efforts to close it down. It’s possibly so popular because of the open trading in cannabis in stalls, despite the fact that it’s illegal in Denmark. So yes, I popped down to see what all the fuss was about, and yes, I did pass stalls openly selling cannabis, and no, I didn’t buy any. It’s an interesting place to walk through, but I couldn’t supress a cynical thought that someone, somewhere is exploiting it all to rake in the cash.

Oh, I didn’t mention that I rode the S train earlier. In common with a number of big European cities, Copenhagen has a local train network running in tandem with the Metro. It’s like the S Bahns in Berlin and Vienna and the Pendletag (love that name) in Stockholm. The S Trains run on platforms longer and rather older looking than the Metro. The trains are new, bright red and rather swish. The Metro looks pristine. The S Train doesn’t, and both the carriages I rode in had been graffitied.

Did I mention Hans Christian Andersen yet? No? Well, time’s getting on, so I think we’ll save that for tomorrow. Godnat.