i started the day by depositing my bag in the Copenhagen central train station. immediately upon that, i headed out for yet another day of non-stop walking.
i started by doing a tour of Vesterbro. Vesterbro is the old worker’s quarters for the city and starts just outside the central train station, which made it a logical place to start. the free guide i had suggested starting outside Tivoli Gardens, so that’s what i did. Tivoli Gardens is well known because it contains one of the oldest amusement parks in the world (1843). from there you walk to the central station and along a slightly seedy street lined with sex shops and wandered by a few notorious-looking individuals. after awhile, however, you pass out of this mess and get to a nicer area of the city. for example, there is a building with a mural covering one entire wall (a wall without windows, that is) and on a sunny day, as it was, it looks as if it is another building entirely.
anyway, also along the Vesterbro walk i passed a miniature model of Copenhagen circa 1600, i think. the walk eventually leads one down a series of streets lined with old Townhouses, originally built to house the workers of the nearby Carlsberg brewery, which is where the walk ends, incidentally. the Carlsberg brewery has a very beautiful, elaborate gateway that is supported on the backs of four (drunken-looking) elephants. it is also on the other side of this gate that the next walking tour starts, which leads one through Frederiksberg.
Frederiksberg is an independent municipality within the area of Copenhagen. originally, Frederiksberg was built as a country village a short distance outside of Copenhagen in order to provide a nice setting for the Royal Family’s summer residence. now, Copenhagen has grown to such an extent that it entirely engulfs Frederiksberg on all sides, but Frederiksberg maintains its independent government.
the walk starts in the garden called Sondermarken. after walking through this wooded park which is not a formal garden as one would expect since it borders the Frederiksberg palace – the aforementioned summer residence, you pass statues of famous Danes and eventually you reach the palace. the palace is separated from the park by a large road, which carries volumes of people to the Copenhagen zoo, located next to the palace. after contemplating entering the zoo and spending what little of the rest of my time in Copenhagen there was there, i opted instead to pass in between the zoo and the palace into the formal gardens of Frederiksberg Have, located behind the palace. Frederiksberg Have is understandably better maintained and is full of people on hot, sunny days – like the one i had.
on the other side of the park at the main entrance to the park (and former site of the main gate to the palace lands if one is coming from inner Copenhagen), there is a church. the church itself is nothing terribly spectacular but behind the church is a sizeable graveyard which includes the grave of Carl Theodor Dreyer, so i inevitably had to pay my respect.
the walk from there takes you through some beautiful old buildings, including some long-established pubs (late 1700’s) and beautiful residential buildings that line a massive boulevard which used to serve as the royal road (and which leads one from Copenhagen to the former main gate to Frederiksberg Have).
eventually, one is led back to the lakes which surround the inner city and the beginning of the next walk (and the last one i took) through Norrebro. my hostel happened to be in Norrebro, so i was already slightly familiar with the area. Norrebro is the multi-culti part of Copenhagen featuring markets run by immigrants of many varied nationalities. the architecture in the area is not really inspiring either and the main site of interest is a graveyard, which was the goal of my walk in this section.
after stopping through my hostel to use their services one last time, i went to the graveyard. the graveyard, Assistens Kirkegard, was originally created as a place to bury the poor from the rapidly overcrowding (and hence, overcrowding graveyards) of the inner city but became a place of respect as the city expanded that direction and people of note requested to be buried there. it is there that one can see, for example, the graves of Hans Christian Anderson (he of Little Mermaid fame) or Soren Kierkegaard, the great philosopher. it is also very large and well-tended so it provides a nice respite from the noise and heat of the city that surrounds it, which is why many people can be found reading books on its benches today.
from the graveyard, i more or less headed back into the central city to catch my train to Berlin. on the way to the train station i wanted to buy some groceries for dinner and i had only about 15 minutes to spare. I ended up buying some very expensive groceries in the train station because my time was running short…
my train was scheduled to depart at 15:40ish and I would have a 20 minute layover in Hamburg…
until my Copenhagen to Hamburg train was delayed by 20 minutes. when I heard this, i frantically went upstairs to change my Hamburg to Berlin ticket to a later train, since i figured i would be arriving in Hamburg late and therefore miss my scheduled train. i even got some money back on the ticket.
and then i got on the train, which crossed over from Denmark to Deutchland via a ferry, which was cool because there was a seagull that skirted the boat for a majority of time hovering only a few feet over peoples heads, expecting food. and i arrived in Hamburg on schedule and found out that i could indeed make my initially scheduled train using my new ticket. so i had got a refund from the office in Copenhagen only to catch the same train in the end. it was a good way to end the day, more or less. arriving in Berlin, i went straight to my hostel and fell asleep.
Posted by iain at September 5, 2005 01:52 PM