The Cost of a Danish Pastry

Well I guess there are a few ways to describe Denmark.  I think the most appropriate is the “coin slot” of Europe.  Everything here costs.  Everything!  This is unfortunate for the budget conscious traveler as it makes Denmark a hard nut to crack.  I took the approach of just having a good time while trying to minimize the damage.  Hopefully I don’t achieve financial ruin.

So to the start of my adventure.  My journey began with a nice long car ride up around the top of the Netherlands and Germany before I entered Denmark.  I stopped for the night at a neat little hostel in the smallish city of Odense.  It was here I found out my first three things about Denmark.   It is expensive as sin, everybody speaks english and absolutely nothing happens on a Sunday.  So needless to say, this Sunday night was not much of an experience.  I was up early the next day eager to complete my drive to Copenhagen.  The trip was full of exciting firsts.  Most notable were the following:

1)      I was lapped by my first hearse on the motorway, and I was doing 130!

2)      I crossed the longest bridge I have ever seen.  It was 15km long!

3)      I paid $40 for my one way crossing of the bridge!

This is just a portion of the bridge.  Apparently it is the third largest suspension bridge in the world and a fair bit larger than the Golden Gate bridge.  It was Denmarks largest ever construction project.

Arriving early into Copenhagen, I picked up a room at the cheapest inner city hostel I could find.  This was a good move because everybody was here, making it a fun kinda place.  From here I walked the town exploring the sights.

The local canals

They let you have fun here at the pool.
Impressions of Copenhagen?  Well it is like someone dialed in blonde hair, blue eyes and hit the grow button a few too many times.  The people here are huge!  With the way they dress it is like being in a designer city full of one million Sven lookalikes, it is just that surreal.  This is the first place I have ever been where I am the average height.  Far out.  Another observation is that the general populous is very well behaved here.  You would not expect to see anyone stealing, shouting or even tending to an inappropriate itch in public.  Though they do tend to litter which is odd.

Hiring a bike, I managed to traverse the city and see a whole heap of public sights.  I also managed to get my butt handed to me by a heap of 6 foot women cyclists.  I take solace in the fact that they are more like urban yeti’s than women and what man wouldn’t get done by a yeti?

Teeing up with another fellow backpacker the next day, I travelled in the little red rocket to a local deer sanctuary just north of the city.  All fed up with city living, we took the opportunity to go a little off the beaten track in search of hoards of deer.  Well it didn’t take long before we were up to our eyeballs in deer.  It was really cool and had I been in hunting mode it would have been criminal how many you could have bagged.  We joked that it would have been a good idea to knock a few over because it would have gone someways to solving our issues regarding the expense of food.

Sneaky deer

There were way more bucks to see than we thought.  There was also an albino one.

That night we took to the streets with a six pack of beer (because it is legal here to drink in public) and wondered around talking to the locals.  When we ran out of beer we bought more.  It was awesome.  They charge you an upfront recycling fee for your beer cans though of 20 cents per can.  When you return the can, you get your 20 cents.  This meant the bums here were in the money if they collected cans.  We were approached by some of the most well mannered bums I have ever seen for the “donation” of our cans.  Hilarious.

Having our fill of beer and random stuff we walked back to the hostel only to get a little lost along the way.  As fate would have it we took the wrong street back and ended up in a red light district of sorts.  It was here we soon came to see there are many ladies of the night in Copenhagen.  You shouldn’t make eye contact with them either otherwise you are in for some haranguing!  I had 3 African women literally jump on me for just saying hi back to them, which I can’t help but do since it’s quite Australian to say g’day to someone if they say it to you.  I had all sorts of offers coming left right and centre and seeing their aggressive fashion, I thought it a good idea to break free and high tail it.  Funny stuff.

The following day I took to leaving Copenhagen for the Lake District in the hope of a bit of kayaking.  Unfortunately the weather set in and I was forced to hold up in a hostel at Arhus.  Arhus is Denmark’s second largest city and not as chic as Copenhagen.  Talking to some others at the hostel I managed to meet up with a lady called Amily who told me about a sculptures by the sea exhibition that was happening just nearby.  This is the same exhibition as back in Australia.  It was apparently brought to Denmark by the crown prince who has married an Aussie gal and hence got to know about it.  So trading my wheels for directions, the next morning we both set of to see the sculptures.

Amily and some sculptures hidden in the parklands

After running around the sculptures having a good old time I said goodbye to Amily and hopped in the car for my drive back to the Netherlands.  Wasn’t the drive fun too!  3 hours of standstill traffic in Hamburg as the whole city came to a gridlock leaving you nowhere to go.  Impressions of Hamburg….I’m never going there again!  So 10 or so hours later I was in the Netherlands, exhausted but happy for a fun time in Denmark.  I really think I would like to go back that way to visit Sweden, Norway and Iceland.  I will just have to save a bit of money to afford it first!

But now I am packing up my gear, selling the car back to my cousin and boarding a bus to London to connect with my flight to Santiago.  I am sooooo looking forward to South America, from all accounts when talking to other travelers it is my kinda place.  Beer, food, adventure sports and beer.  Hell yeah!