The most famous place in Copenhagen

To continue from the previous post, I just walked around in Copenhagen after leaving the Torvehallerne food hall.

Kongens Nytorv (The King's New Square)

a wider angle; the square is huge!

I didn't notice this on the first day, but on Monday morning when I passed the square again, I noticed these two gentlemen sitting outside the building, and decided to take a photo of them. :P

Then I came across Nyhavn. I say “came across” because I had totally forgotten that this place was in Copenhagen. The tourist maps that I had found did not have this as one of the main attractions. I had seen photos of Nyhavn before, but never knew its name (it's the name of the street). But the buildings are distinctive enough that once I saw them, I knew that I had reached a famous place. :P

recognize this postcard view?

I had to get a selfie...with a selfie stick

I’m not that good at selfies, and was lazy to try too hard, so I only took a few at some really nice-looking locations.

this advertisement for fried chicken burger really ruined the façade of Nyhavn...

looking back at the square from a bridge along the canal (Nyhavn starts at the end of that big square)

After that I proceeded to the Amalienborg Castle. I reached there about half an hour before noon, so I didn't have too long to wait before the changing of guards.

managed to snap a guard marching

big big courtyard...

here the security had put us behind this invisible "line" to watch the changing of guards

here we go!

the previous guard at his post, and the new ones lined up

more coming...

...and through the archway

there were some "staring contest" moments. I had no idea what was going on

Sometimes there were two rows of guards on both sides. Since they are all dressed the same, I don’t really know which ones are new guards or old guards. At one point, a group of smaller guards came out, and from their voices when they shouted, I think they were women. After that the guards sort of marched to every little “guardhouse” where they made an “exchange”. I have some parts caught on video (I captured a number of videos), but I do feel it was slightly boring at times. The courtyard was so big too, so when the guards marched off to the other side first, I had no idea what was going on until I finally saw them coming back and changing guards at some “guardhouses” nearer to me.

Some people left before the end of the whole thing… I’m not even sure whether it was “the end” when I left.

Ninja sambal

I tapao-ed char mee suah for breakfast this morning. I took out the box (the transparent rectangular microwaveable box), opened it, then looked back in the plastic bag for the sambal. No sambal. I guess they forgot it. I happened to have some sambal in the fridge, so I used that. When I had almost finished eating, I saw that the bottom of the transparent box was reddish. Did they mark it red with a marker pen? I lifted the box to see the bottom, and...the sealed packet of sambal was stuck to the bottom of the box, right inside the slightly raised groove under the box.

I guess the sambal was a ninja master in training…very well hidden indeed. (and think about those movies where some giant might lift up the box under which our hero is hiding…and the hero stays hidden because they are using their hands and feet to keep themselves “glued” to the sides of the box…)

Introducing the smorrebrod, Danish sandwich

After the last post about reaching Copenhagen, let’s start some sightseeing!

There was this theatre near my hostel; I would see it upon coming out to the main road. It’s not really a tourist destination, but I like its colour scheme.

below are the train tracks; going to the right, the tracks lead right up to the train station. I was standing somewhere at the end of one of the "bridges" going over the train tracks

I tried to get a selfie when I got to the other side of the theatre, but I guess it was too big and I was standing too close :P But I got the colour scheme into a photo with me! Haha...

I took more photos when I came back to the hostel that night, from the other end of the theatre (I didn't walk the whole day till night...I did come back to the hostel in the afternoon to check in and rest a bit :P )

again, the train tracks are between me and the theatre

Update: Later I found another photo of the theatre, taken from the same angle as the first one, but with better colours since it was taken at sunset (around 6pm). And as I said, this theatre is all about the colours, so here's the photo!

Since I had just arrived in the early morning, I went to a recommended bakery nearby to get my breakfast (think Danish pastries!)

nice-looking road on the way to the bakery

Skt. Peders Bageri (St. Peter's Bakery)

I remember buying two pastries and a hot chocolate. The buns looked awfully good as well, even the sausage buns. I didn’t buy one the first day, but I did buy one on Monday morning to take to the airport.

I didn’t take photos of the pastries that I bought, except this one on Monday, because it looked sooo good. And it tasted extremely good too…unsurprisingly it was the best of all the ones I tried.

But in general, I can’t say that the pastries tasted better than elsewhere.. I feel that those in Malaysia are on par, and those in France were better, especially the croissants.

The bakery is tiny, so there are only a few seats inside, and as you can see in the photo above, some tables set up outside. On the first day, I managed to get a spot inside, just one spot left beside a Taiwanese girl/lady/probably around my age who was also visiting Copenhagen alone (she said she was on a business trip from the US - to Berlin! - and this was a short visit for the weekend before she went back). But on Monday, I sat at one of the tables outside because it was full inside.

I remember hearing a number of French tourists here and there in Copenhagen. One couple even asked me to take a photo of them at Nyhavn (using very fluent English, so I did not try to speak French with them :P )

pretty flowers somewhere

Torvehallerne, a food hall

I would come back here a few more times later to find food.

smorrebrod, a Danish open sandwich

I didn’t know it then, but this smorrebrod shop was a franchise. I saw the same shop later at the Tivoli Food Hall.

salads, it seems?

lots of yummy-looking seafood!

I came back here for my lunch (or was it more like tea because it was quite late? Anyway, who cares…) After a lot of thought, I opted for two omelettes (yes, they call it that…there’s egg in the base, I guess), and a smorrebrod (must try it!)

one with prawn, the other with salmon

There was another salmon-like thing that looked like a misshapen quiche, but with thin (maybe crispy) skin, unlike a quiche’s thicker crust. But I passed on it because it was more expensive. (these were already expensive). I tried to find it again another day, but unfortunately it seemed to have been the day’s special and I did not see it again…

The prawn and salmon omelettes were quite good (they heated it for me). The smorrebrod, on the other hand, was not good at all… Maybe I was wrong to choose the fishcake. The fishcake was mushy…unlike the ones in Malaysia which are at least slightly springy. There are lots of other stalls selling “whole” fishcakes (not sliced like the one on this bread), but I didn't dare try those any more…I suspect the fishcakes there are all mushy.

The smorrebrod bread was hard, as expected (they say it’s rye bread). I think I could have accepted it if the topping had tasted better. I was disappointed that I didn’t choose beef instead (I was hesitating between that and the fishcake)

a stall selling whole fishcakes

some interesting "flu shots" with turmeric and ginger

chocolates!

outside

On the left is the building that I took a photo of before, when approaching Torvehallerne (hard to call it a building…more like a glass house? :P ) There is an exit at the end (and a few on the sides) I remember that I walked all the way to the end, went out, went into the building on the right (the one with the octopus tentacle on it) through the back, and came out here.

Then I must show you this item that I saw in multiple public toilets in Denmark, and also in my hostel’s toilets.  Guess what it is?

I had already seen this when I went to my hostel in the morning. I couldn’t figure what it was for until I saw how my roommates used it in our room. It is a rubbish bin. The clip is like a huge clothespeg that holds the plastic bag shut, so we open the clip to open the rubbish bin. When the rubbish bin is full, they just slide the plastic bag out (without even opening it), and replace it with a new one. (This last sentence is my own expectation; I didn’t see anyone doing it :P )

(A little digression here…this public toilet was outside the food hall, and it was free. And clean! In Germany, most public toilets charge an admission fee, up to 1 or 2 euros!)

just another pretty road

After visiting the food hall in the morning (without eating anything, since I had just had pastries at the bakery), I actually went sightseeing all morning before coming back here to eat again. I will share those photos in the next Copenhagen posts! (let's stop with the food for a while... :P )

The bus, the ferry, and the hostel

I’m glad that the Kuching trip made me resume posting about my Berlin trip from last year. But I’m not sure how long my momentum will last before I become lazy again, so let me post about the more “important” destinations first… for example Denmark.

We had a three-day weekend thanks to a public holiday in Berlin. I took advantage of that weekend to visit Copenhagen, and Malmö nearby.

I took the overnight bus to Copenhagen, to have more time for sightseeing. (I didn’t dare to take the overnight bus back though…I didn’t want to have to work immediately upon arriving back in Berlin!)

the bus goes all the way to Arlanda airport in Stockholm

a double-decker bus similar to the one I would be taking

The bus would take a ferry midway along the journey. I didn’t expect that we would be asked to get off the bus… (I can’t remember taking Penang’s ferry any more, but I guess we were probably also not allowed to stay in our vehicles?)

We went up several flights of steps to reach…somewhere. I was quite afraid I would get lost; I just followed everyone, and tried to look out for faces that were on the same bus. (not too easy, because it was a night bus and I wasn’t looking at faces!)

quite a lot of people on the ferry. There were shops, like the one on the left, but they were closed, I guess because it was in the middle of the night!

there were some empty places as well...I ended up resting somewhere similar

on the deck

There was another deck on the opposite side of the ferry. But since it was pitch dark, we couldn’t see anything at all. We couldn’t even see the shore by the time I went out onto the deck. There was quite some wind, making it a bit cool outside, and since there was nothing to see, I didn’t spend too long outside.

We couldn’t feel the motion much…so at first I thought we hadn’t moved yet. After some time, I saw that the location on my phone had moved away from the shore. I took a screenshot when my location was in the middle of the sea…I thought it would be a good souvenir. :P

We reached Copenhagen a few minutes earlier than scheduled. It was just a simple bus stop beside the road. I was a bit worried that I would get off at the wrong place, so I made sure to ask someone that it was Copenhagen. But it was rather hard to catch the bus personnel’s attention…most people seemed to know exactly where they were without asking :(

My first impression of Copenhagen was that the streets were really wide.

taken from the bus

after getting off, and wondering where to go

At first I seemed to have landed in the middle of nowhere…but it turned out that I was near the main train station. As I discovered later, it was the building on the right in the photo below, with the arches, just that I was behind the station, not facing the main entrance. (and probably the streets were empty because it was early…around 7:30am). As it was, I walked beside the train station (between the building on the left and the train station) to get to my hostel, and didn’t come back through this route again (I only came as far as the train station again after that; needed to take the train to Malmö and to the airport!).

my hostel, the Steel House

It was the top-rated hostel in Copenhagen when I searched. I felt it was okay...but everything extra was chargeable.

It was too early to check in when I arrived, so I asked whether I could leave my luggage. I actually only had a backpack, but I planned to leave my clothes and overnight stuff at the hostel if I could, so that I would carry less things around. They told me where the lockers were, but when I went to check them out, they cost money to use, so I just took a quick look around, brushed my teeth in a bathroom, and left for sightseeing. But I’ll first share the photos of the hostel before I get to the sightseeing pics!

they had some itineraries that I planned to look at "later", but later did not come back to them :P

the gym

the pool

Then here is my room, after I checked in:

seriously, no space to sit at all, apart from inside your own pod (bed)

looking back towards the door

We each have a locker, and between the lockers and the door is a rod for hangers. But there were no hangers provided. I asked at the reception whether they provided hangers (maybe they had forgotten to put some in our room? :P ), but they said they didn't. I used my own S-hooks instead...I was the only one who used that rod during my stay.

view from my bed (I got no. 1, a bottom bunk, yay!)

Basically upon entering the room, the first door on the right was the toilet, and the second door was the shower. On the left would be the lockers (that you have seen) and bunks 1+2 followed by 3+4. On the right, after the shower, would be bunks 5+6 that you see in the photo. At the end of the narrow “lane”, the lane splits into a “T-junction” after the bunks, where we have the window facing outside.

You can probably see in the photos that there is a ledge by the window, probably about a foot wide. I guess those with bunks near the window can use them… The disadvantage of my bunk is that it was near the door and I had no business going all the way to the window…there was no place to sit or walk anyway! (the “lane” beside the window is as narrow as the one going in) Probably the "best" bunk would be no. 3 or no. 5 to me...since I don't want the hassle of climbing up, but want to use the window ledge :P (or maybe not...I'm paranoid about losing/forgetting my stuff)

I think this is the smallest hostel I have stayed in…not totally unexpected since Copenhagen is expensive. Now I wonder, are hostels even smaller in Japan, which is notorious for tiny hotels?

This is the head of the bunk: light, two power sockets, and a pocket. The bed wasn't narrow (it's my photo that's narrow); it was quite a normal-sized bed. There was nothing of interest at the foot of the bunk. :P

charges for everything...it's a hostel after all

I had their hot chocolate one morning (not cheap)

free water! Well, it's tap water...you can read the sign on the right about what's great about Danish tap water :P

I'll leave sightseeing for another post, since this is so long already!