As I mentioned in the last post I spent most of my week studying for my Optimization and Survival Finnish exams that took place on Thursday and Friday. After the exam on Friday I came home and packed my bag for my trip to Copenhagen, Denmark with my Dutch floormate, Roos.
We caught the usual overnight bus from Oulu to Helsinki and arrived at Helsinki Airport at 5:30am, giving us enough time to freshen up before our 7:30am flight. After the hour and a half plane ride and taking into account the one hour time difference, we arrived at Copenhagen Airport at about 8am. We caught the metro out of the airport to Kongens Nytorv station, and walked about 10 minutes to our hostel called Copenhagen Downtown Hostel. Although our checkin wasn’t until 2pm, we were able to rent a locker and keep both our bags away while we walked around the city in the morning. We stopped by a nice cafe for breakfast and mapped out the rest of our day.
We started off by visiting Christiansborg Palace, including the horses at the Royal Stables, and the Old Stock Exchange. We then made our way to the infamous Nyhavn, the harbour by the row of colourful houses. This is one of the most iconic views of Denmark and I can definitely understand why. It was extremely picturesque even despite the bit of rain that hit us while we were there.
After waiting under shelter for the rain to pass, we walked past the Skuespilhuset Playhouse and Opera House and went to Papiroeen. Known in English as “Paper Island” this building by the water, which by the way is so clean that even the Prince of Denmark swims in the canals every year, is a bustling market full of food vendors of all types of cuisine. After making a couple rounds we finally picked a location and enjoyed a fantastic meal. To attempt to work off the meal we walked to Amalienborg Palace, which is actually home to the royal Danish family, and the Marble Church.
Finally, we went back to our hostel to get our luggage and check into our rooms. After taking a small break and meeting some of our new roommates, we stepped back out to grab dinner and check out Tivoli Gardens. Created by King Christian VIII in 1843 as a way to distract citizens from politics, Tivoli Gardens is actually the second oldest operating amusement park in the world. We ended the night back at the hostel where a Halloween party was taking place. We were actually quite pleased with our hostel - it’s definitely the nicest one I’ve been in so far.
The next morning we had a relaxing start to the day. We grabbed breakfast, and also stopped by the University of Copenhagen and Sct. Petri Kirke church on the way to Rundetårn (aka Rundetaarn). The tower was built in 1642 by Christian IV as an astronomical observatory. We walked up to the top of the tower, stopping at the two art and history exhibitions along the way, for an aerial view of the city. Fun fact about Christian IV: sometimes called the “builder-king”, Christian IV was responsible for the construction of many of Denmark’s most iconic buildings which can be identified by the symbol of the number 4 inside a C.
After the tower we walked through Kongen’s Have (King’s Garden) to see Rosenberg Castle, and then went to Botanisk Have (Botanical Garden) before heading back to the hostel for a half hour break. Our hostel had twice daily free walking tours, one that went around the city centre and one that went to famous sites along the way to Freetown Christiania. We caught the latter at about 3:45pm. Our tour guide was a really nice person who was originally from Australia, but moved to Copenhagen and settled down there. On the tour we stopped by the Mermaid and His Seven Sons, the Old Stock Exchange, and Little Amsterdam. Unfortunately by the time we reached Christiania the rain had set in and we figured it wouldn’t be much fun walking around in the dark, cold, weather. So instead we grabbed dinner and went back to the hostel since we had an early start the next day.
Monday morning we left the hostel early to catch a bus to Malmö, Sweden. After a half hour bus delay and about an hour spent at border control we finally arrived to Malmö at around 9:30am. Again we stopped to get breakfast and plan out our day. We spent the first half of the day walking around the city to see some of the famous sites including Malmö Saluhall (food market) and the Knotted Gun. We had booked a free walking tour at 1:30pm so we spent until then taking a look at the shops in the city. In our walking tour we covered some other highlights of Malmö including Stortorget (Market Square), Lilla torg (Little Square), Gustav Adolfs Torg, Malmöhus (castle), Slottsmöllan (castle mill), the Turning Torso, and Sankt Petri Kyrka (St. Peter’s Church). We ended the day with some more window shopping and dinner, before catching a late night bus back to Copenhagen.
The next morning, we checked out of our hostel and took a train to Freetown Christiania to take a look in better weather. In 1617, King Christian IV established military barracks and ramparts in Christianshavn which were used during the wars that took place with Sweden. After the wars, the barracks were abandoned between 1967 and 1971, leaving only a few watchmen to guard the then unused area. In September of 1971, people living in the surrounding areas broke down the fence and began using the area as a playground for their children. It didn’t take long for many homeless people and “squatters” to move in. And thus, Freetown Christiania was born. In the following years the community faced some challenges, including the government trying to remove them from the property, murders, and hard drugs. The residents actually employed a really interesting way of solving the problem of hard drugs. In 1979, after 10 deaths caused by hard drugs took place the previous year, residents patrolled “The Arc of Peace”, the building where hard drugs were being sold and consumed, for 40 days. They gave an ultimatum to anyone involved with drugs to either give them up or leave Christiania for good. Believe it or not this actually worked and they were able to force out all the “pushers”. Today, Freetown is a pretty safe place and is the fourth most popular tourist attraction in Copenhagen.
After walking around Freetown we took a train back to the airport where we caught our flight back to Helsinki and the usual bus back to Oulu. Sadly we arrived at Oulu on one of the coldest days we’ve had here yet at about -13 with a decent amount of snow.
I’m now back in Oulu catching up on the schoolwork I missed, attending weekend band rehearsals, and trying to complete some upcoming assignments to be in a better position when I go on my next two trips to Sweden, Poland, and the Czech Republic. More on that in the next couple posts!
As always thank you, or tak (Danish for thank you), or tack (Swedish for thank you) for reading!
-Pallavi