It’s beautiful here in this toy town of a capital city but after the rough edges and graffiti of Berlin, it all seems a little too picture perfect and every brick and colourful plank of its bijou buildings is as well pointed and smooth as a wall of Lego bricks.
Such flawlessness comes at a price and we join the shiny, happy throng at Hummer on Nyhavn’s sunny canalside dock for a comprehensive fleecing. Two modest cocktails, some ‘lobster crisps’ and dainty bowls of albeit very pretty moules frites, set us back over 1000 Danish Kroner and we wonder silently where our next meal is coming from.
There’s discord too, amidst all the ‘hygge’. At the next door table a chronically bored teenage girl pecks at her mobile and seemingly waits for the food on her plate to evaporate while her completely oblivious designer-kagoule-clad parents order dish after overpriced dish in an apparent attempt to fill the gaping void in their relationship with their eye-rolling daughter, consuming the contents of her plate too after she slips away silently to meet her date. Suddenly the balmy temperature on the dock plummets precipitously as the sun, still high in the June sky at 9pm, disappears behind a row of winsome 18th century warehouses. Heaters, fleecy blankets and parkas appear as if from nowhere. Clad only in t shirts, Sabrina and I pay up and run shivering back to our hotel to dress more warmly.
Still, the loveliness of it all is hard to ignore and I begin to wonder the next morning as we stroll out in the sunshine for breakfast at the H.U.G. Bageri (bakery), if there’s actually something wrong with us as we eat delicious croissants, cinnamon rolls, poppyseed and almond danish (all gluten free) and enjoy two of the best cappuccinos I can remember, by Peblinge So canal.
Pedestrianised streets of tiny houses with pocket sized play areas lead down to the water and rows of neatly parked kid carrying cargo bikes await their mop-headed charges. All is pristine, positive and calm and the atmosphere is one of unremitting goodwill and friendliness. Heck, even the cyclists slow down to let you cross their path, instead of the default mode of ‘mow ‘em down’ in the rest of Europe. Have we become too jaded and cynical to appreciate that this apparently is ‘the happiest place on earth’. For real?
Maybe it’s the clean air, but by 10am although it’s only 16 degrees centigrade, we are shedding unwanted outerwear for the walk across the ultra-modern pedestrian and cyclist bridge to the archipelago of Christianshavn. In the far distance the almost cartoon-like horizontal white vapour cloud from the city’s ultra green incinerator with its dry ski slope (a combination of activities only imaginable here), looks simply too good to be true.
Determined to enter into the Copenhagen spirit we sign up for the´Hello Sailor!!’ harbour excursion. Billed as a ‘social sailing concept cruise’, it’s like participating in an excruciating nautical networking event as we join in with a boatload of non-native English speakers of all ages, from a gaggle of well-heeled Mexican and Colombian gap year students to a group of seniors from Austria and Germany. Forced to ‘introduce ourselves one by one ‘to the group’ we then answer a barrage of banal questions about our Copenhagen experience, posed in perfect English by our beaming, blue eyed, bumptious, blonde early twenty-something sea puppy. In between the awkward silences, contrived banter and widespread complaints about the nosebleed price of everything and the incomprehensible public transport system, we do learn some interesting titbits about our host city, especially the love and admiration the locals have for their queen who makes ends meet as a costume designer for the Copenhagen Opera and its praiseworthy practice of reusing and recycling buildings. Christanshavn is a case in point, as it used to be 100% dedicated to the Danish navy and they have repurposed 18th century cannon boat longhouses and torpedo boat construction hangars into ultra modern apartments. As our trip winds down, boatloads of stoned Tuborg-toting ‘pirates’ and other costumed revellers careen past us in an assortment of craft (the city is in the midst of a four day long ‘forsommeren’ early summer party).
This evening we are properly prepared for the sudden drop in temperature but surprised by the sudden drop in prices as we eat dinner at the Food Market stalls on Christianshavn and wind our way back past the glinting gold leafed onion-domed Russian Orthodox church (the Alexander Nevsky), close to our hotel, The Phoenix. Turns out Queen Margrethe lives a few doors down the street, though you wouldn’t know it from the total absence of security or fuss.
Taking the train across the famous Øresund ‘Bridge’ into Sweden the next morning we struggle to reconcile ‘serial killer’ Scandinavia depicted in this and countless other ‘Scandi noir’ stories with Danish happiness and hygge, but as we pull into the ancient town of Lund a few stops up the line from Malmö, with its dark, oppressive buildings and meet up with our friends who are running a small B&B here for visiting academics to the town’s prestigious 1000 year old university, we are staggered by the contrast between these two communities that are separated by this narrow strip of water. Here in Sweden, all is apparently doom and gloom and as I remark sunnily to our friend Anders that I can’t believe the cost of everything in Copenhagen, he darkly remarks how miserable life is here, how badly paid the Swedes are and how he wishes life in Lund could be more upbeat and pricey. Perhaps the tragic Saga Norén, the sad but driven Swedish cop in the ‘Bridge’ is not a bad proxy for the national character after all, while appropriately her chippy, impulsive Copenhagen counterpart, Martin Rohde is her complete opposite.
As if to confuse us further with stereotyping, Anders takes us to lunch at a traditional restaurant with Köttbullar on the menu (Sweden’s National dish and Ikea’s equivalent of the Happy Meal for generations of kids including ours, on Sunday superstore excursions). We can’t resist trying them freshly made (despite missing the little flags on cocktail sticks Ikea artfully spears them with), but immediately wish we could be back on that sunny Copenhagen dock eating those overpriced moules frites!
Köttbullar (Swedish Meatballs) with Lingonberry Jam: Serves 6
4tsp breadcrumbs
¾ cup of water
½ teaspoon salt
1/8th teaspoon pepper
1lb ground beef or pork (or both)
1 egg
Mix the breadcrumbs with a little water, stir in the salt and pepper and set aside for 10 minutes. Work in the meat and the egg, mixing until combined. Roll into balls and fry them in oil until golden brown.
Serve with Lingonberry Jam.
Catching the next train back across the Øresund, we wholeheartedly embrace the hygge on the harbourside.
Love the writing and the final twist in the plot. Must get to Copenhagen soon.
These days CPH is packed with American and Italian tourists. They all talk about the same thing, our outrageous prices. The Metro is a thing of beauty and apparently not a thing to be ruined by anything as vulgar as signs, even the platform numbers are hidden in the floor at the far end of each platform. You might easily get lost, but you can at least appreciate the use of space and materials as you go in totally the wrong direction.