Copenhagen on your birthday, eh?
2006-12-10   6:01 p.m.

November 14th

I got off the train at malmo at 6:40. it wasn't a very good night's sleep, i was woken up at 3:30 when the train stopped at one station and a drunk person got on and made a lot of noise. I had then been awake and trying to resume sleep since, failing miserably.

When i arrived at Malmo , i had a 10 minute wait and then i was straight onto a train to copenhagen. this train lasted for just over an hour, i got about ten minutes more sleep on this train.

There is a bridge that links Sweden to the island of Zealand (where copenhagen is), this bridge is about 5kilometres long and was quite impressive. The view was cool and the crossing lasted about 6 or seven minutes.

when the train pulled into the station at copenhagen at 8, i made my way immediately to the tourist information centre, i knew where i was staying that night because mum had informed me about a hostel there. The hostel i was aiming for was the largest in Europe and was basically a skyscraper. i would be staying there for two nights.

Outside the train station was a bit rough, immediatelly i was reminded of liverpool, though i am unsure exactly of why this is. I passed a building (which i later found out was a cinema) which was bright pink with pathces of sky blue and lime green. It really stood out amongst the red brick and the greyness of this rundown capital city.

My other observation about the city was that i was amazed by the number of bikes in this place, every road had bikes parked all along it, and most of the roads had entire lanes of bikes going along. Bikes have their own crossings, traffic lights and even their own roads away from the other traffic.

I bought a sandwich and then found the tourist office, it was shut. not open untill 10. The time was now 9, so i decided to make my way back to the station and wait there becuse it was warm.

At the station i was approached by a canadian man with a backpack of similar size to mine. He introduced himself as Patrik, we then walked to the tourist office together.

At the tourist office we both picked up maps of the city, infoprmation on local events and sights, and we booked ourselves into the mega hostel .

I checked into the hostel, it was indeed a hige building, almost a skyscraper. Though it was expensive, costing me 200KR a night, thats 20pounds. We were both in the same dorm on the 5th floor, in the dorm there was a man asleep. Me and patrik unpacked and then headed down to the lounge and planned where to go that day. Patrik didnt have any specific plans , so we decided to spend the day together and keep each other company, after all, it is my birthday.

Our first move was to walk to the mermaid, it was about a kilometre north of the centre and was on the coast. actually it was off the coast by about 50metres, i was therefore unable to place Jim on it for a photo, i had to make do with patrik leaning out towards it with jim whilst i took the photo.

We both took a few photos of the underrated mermaid and left just as a bussload of korean tourists turned up. Next to the mermaid there was a citredel, we walked around the citedel and Patrik told me all about canada. It occured to me that i know absolutely nothing about canada and so almost everything that we talked about was new to me and therefore very interesting. We also talked about each other, our journey's so far and where we would be going next. He was headed for stockholm next, having travelled to Denmark from Poland. He told me that in september he had taken part in the annual pilgramage undertaken by many spanish people from the west coast of spain all the way over to the east coast near barcelona.

On the way baxck to the town we walked past a palace, the guards were really slacked and lazy and it was evident that the queen was not home, this was confirmed by thre lack of flag.

Patrik looked around a museum and castle , i decided to wait outside becuse it was 80kr entry fee and i had already seen something very similar to this in helsinki, i had my eyes set on a more unique museum for later that day.

from the museum we headed into the high street, we then split up for another hour as i went in my museum of choice. it was the Erotica museum, and it was the funniest thing i have seen so far on my visit. There was a history of porn exhibition, which ad relics from the stone and bronze ages. There was also , strange pictures of men and women having sex with monkeys. the strangest thing about this was that it was explained in both danish and english below the pictures. Aparantly it was some sort of ritual in ancheint times.

After the museum, which ended with a cinema (which i walked through rather quickly) i met up with patrik again and we then walked around some shops together. I bought myself an 'our lady peace' cd, i figured that i deserved to buy myself something on my birthday.

We then found the cheapest food we could, a chinese takeaway. we sat on a fountain and ate the food before returning to the hostel.

At the hostel, patrik went to sleep. i decided to stay up for a bit longer; i gave natalie a ring but she couldnt hear anything i was saying, i then phoned home and lawrence hung up on me. this cost me 60KR. I was pretty annoyed at this point and so i went for a walk around copenhagen, ending my birthday by seeing tivoli gardens light up at night, which was pretty amazing.

i was in bed at nine. and asleep soon after.