The City Series offers brazenly incomplete and idiosyncratic impressions of places I’ve visited.
Before Jill and I went to Copenhagen, my friend Elizabeth told me about the city, which she had visited while on a business trip years earlier.
“It was really clean,” she said, “the subways were nicer than my apartment. And everyone looked like they were walking around in a J Crew catalogue.”
It turns out Elizabeth’s assessment was entirely accurate. Copenhagen is remarkably clean and orderly, and public transportation is terrific. And everyone seems to dress (at least in November) in a way that is simultaneously restrained, functional, but sharp-looking, with muted colors and warm practical well-made coats. The people are friendly and are content to sit in the outdoor sections of cafes, snuggled under the complimentary blanket and warmed by nearby space heaters, consuming smørrebrød and Carlsberg beer and hot chocolate and waffles just about any time of day.
Did I mention how incredibly picturesque the canals are? Or that people ride bikes everywhere? Or that I would move to Copenhagen in a second, I really love this place?
There are many sculptures scattered about the city, and it seems like a disturbing majority of them are some guy sitting on a horse. A lot of them may be the same guy, I think. A lot of art to be seen in both Christiansborg Slot and Rosenborg Slot, however, although that guy and his horse do make many appearances in both.
Periodically you turn a corner and take a side street and find yourself in a square, which makes me completely happy because I love European town squares. American squares are terrible, generally too large and out of proportion with the buildings surrounding it, and too busy with cars and noise. A good European square feels like a discovery when you enter it – and entering by foot is much the point – enveloping you and giving you a pause. Gråbrødretorv is like that, the right size for a public square. A lovely, pleasant, civilized space with numerous restaurants.
One day we took a very nice train ride about twenty or so miles out to Roskilde, one of Denmark’s oldest cities, which developed as the hub of the Viking land and sea trade routes over a thousand years ago. From the 11th century until the middle of the 15th it was the capital of Denmark and was one of the most important trade and culture centers in Scandinavia. Roskilde Cathedral, completed in 1275, is a UNESCO-listed site with a very on-brand restrained Scandinavian design approach to what gothic architecture was about. There is an exhibition of the various stages of development of the cathedral with the scale models built in LEGO pieces, also on brand for Denmark. The building houses 39 tombs of Danish monarchs and whole bunches of their families. Royals are buried above and below the flooring, with ornate sarcophagi scattered about the place like lawn furniture after a summer birthday party.
From the cathedral we walked down the tree-lined path to the Viking museum, where we spent time with an archeologist who told us much of what is known about the Vikings, which turns out to be not much at all. Other than most of what we commonly assume about them is almost entirely wrong. We did see a recovered structure of one of their longest long ships and, well, it was indeed long.
We also took a different train on a different day to a different town, Hillerød, to visit Frederiksborg Slot, which is just your typical castle sitting in the middle of a lake in the middle of a town.
Unfortunately, back in Copenhagen Tivoli Gardens was closed, they were preparing to open for the Christmas season, which we missed by just a few days. But we were headed to Paris so that softened the disappointment. I should mention that on our last day we did go to Christiania, a commune of a little less than a thousand people with an open cannabis trade and a ban on cameras. We did not purchase any of the hash on display at stalls along Pusher Street (I am not making that up) but it was certainly an interesting little walk.