Day 4: 7/25/24

Day 4: 7/25/24. Copenhagen still. Thursday, I think.

Unlike some VBT trips, the pre-trip extension had no planned activities, so we will had to plan our own. Today was Tivoli Gardens, the National Museum, and City Hall in the morning and the Danish Resistance Museum in the afternoon.

All the morning destinations were within a block of the hotel. On the way to the National Museum, we saw a coffee bike. (Sorry, lady, I wasn't really interested in taking your picture.)

The official name of the museum is Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The Carlsberg name comes from the brewery. Mr. Carlsberg donated his art collection to the city on the condition that they find the land and construct the building. The building itself is impressive and the city is committed to maintaining it to make it "future-proof.

This was the atrium immediately inside the museum.

Here's another view.

Much of the collection was sculpture. One of the first pieces we saw was a Rodin original of The Thinker. Apparently Rodin made many copies of this sculpture in many different sizes.

The signage on the display pointed out his attention to the definition of the back muscles.

That's my goal.

These drawings are a nice example of "work in progress".

I liked this piece and all the others in the room because they were on top of the nicest plywood I've ever seen. Then I remembered that Danish furniture is a thing.

There was a wing of (looted?) Egyptian artifacts. This was the staircase to the wing.

This room was part of a different wing, probably the newer one.

Our next stop was Tivoli Gardens. It claims to be the oldest amusement park and the inspiration for DisneyLand.

Allegedly, it was built to help the Danish get used to the idea of a global community. So there were the usual stereotyped villages.

Ironically, we ended up eating lunch at an Italian restaurant.

There were the usual assortment of rollercoasters, ferris wheels, swings, and spinning rides.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at City Hall.

It is a grand building, but we missed the tour.

This is the main hall. People hold weddings here.

Our afternoon activity was a visit to the Danish Resistance Museum. It would have been a very long walk and we had spent too much time on our feet the day before, so we decided to make it an adventure on the Copenhagen metro.

The Copenhagen metro is world class: fast, efficient, and clean. At both ends of our trip. we descended down two flights of escalators, bought our tickets from a vending machine (about $3.50 each way to travel four stops), and rode in autonomous cars.

Like the Airtrain at JFK and a number of other airports, passengers are protected from the train by sliding class doors and the cars stopped at exactly the right place so the station doors lined up with the subway doors.

On the return trip, the front row of the first car was unoccupied, so I went up to watch. The train was easily going 65 kilometers/hour (40 mph), maybe faster.

No trash. No rats. No grafitti. Little green lights said how close the car was to the station.

Some kids got on the station before ours, so I moved so they could sit up front without having to sit next to some creepy old man.

The Danish Holocaust Museum was in a round building that might have been a old WWII bunker but it wasn't.

The museum itself was two flights underground. It was an interesting combination of static displays behind glass (like the first picture) and videos with audio tracks of actors playing the parts of individuals pivotal to the war effort. We carried little remotes that played the audio tracks. They worked, most of the time.

It was a powerful display, not exactly light entertainment.

My take-away was that the Danish did the best they could under the circumstances: some collaborated with the Nazis, some worked underground and paid for it with their lives. Ultimately, there was enough critical mass behind the resistance effort that when the Allies pushed the Nazis back, the Danish resistance helped clean up the mess. At least that is the story line presented by the museum. Nazi sympathizes were executed. Women who dated Nazi soldiers had their heads shaved.

When we got back to the hotel, Walter and I got bags of ice for our foot and knee, respectively, before going out for dinner.

The front desk recommended a place nearby called Pincho Nation, a hip little tapas place where everything was on an app: ordering, paying, notification that the food was ready. It was fun but it was windy, we were outside, and we weren't in a Mediterranean country, so they provided us with blankets.

All during dinner there was a sound like a train or a motorcycle gang. Turns out there was a bar with live "music" nearby. We wandered over to take a look after dinner and there was a small yard packed with people and a three-piece band playing very loud punk music.

When we were there, there was an identifiable beat, two or three chords with special effects, and a lot of screaming into the mic. There were about a dozen men in front of the stage "dancing" (I guess). It was another valuable cultural experience.

Some random observations: everything in Denmark is very orderly (except maybe the last venue). People follow traffic rules. Nobody Jay-walks. The wait for their light to change. (I got reprimanded for ignoring a bicycle red light.) Cyclists are safe in bike lanes because cars stay out and don't make right turns in front of bike lanes. There are traffic lights for cars, for bikes, and for pedestrians.