Tag: Copenhagen

Copenhagen’s Unique Tivoli Gardens

Tivoli’s Chinese pagoda and a roller coaster loop that turns people on their heads.

On the Vietnam Airlines flight to Denmark, I sat next to a Swedish man returning to Stockholm via Copenhagen from a business trip to Vietnam. We got into a rambling conversation ranging from his involvement with a startup business that recycles discarded pieces of synthetic fabrics that are cut away in the production of garments to life in Vietnam, the decline of the United States in the hands of malevolent fascists, to things to do in Copenhagen.

The company he works for has been created around some useful ideas, a reminder to me that there are literally thousands of niches in our mass consumption, growth-is-always-good global economy for businesses with ideas that make life on earth a bit less wasteful and a bit more sustainable.

But his thoughts on things to see in Copenhagen were of more immediate value to me. Among other places, he recommended I visit Tivoli which, as I understood his brief description, not entirely accurately as it turned out, was a beautiful space enclosing an amusement park.

No rides for me. I’m headed for a table and an icy cocktail in a tall glass.

On my second day in Copenhagen I set out around 7:00 am and walked over to Tivoli Gardens only to find the place would not open until 11:00, and when it did, I would need a ticket costing around $23 to go in. I returned late afternoon on my third day, and after buying my ticket and entering the Gardens, I discovered that Tivoli is indeed a beautiful place which features far more than an amusement park that requires a fee to enter. In addition to more than two dozen amusement rides inside the park (each of which requires the purchase of another ticket), Tivoli Gardens also has: a wide variety of restaurants and eateries within, ranging from several restaurants with Michelin stars to a food court serving different kinds of street foods; replicas of a Chinese pagoda (that looks more Japanese to me) and a Moorish palace; regular music, theatre and dance performances, as well as events for kids; and a very pricey five star hotel on the grounds if you are interested in spending a night or two.

When you’ve had enough walking, there’s plenty of places for a drink or a meal.

A ticket to enter the park, plus a few rides, and then drinks and dinner, an outing to Tivoli can turn into an expensive day in no time, especially for a family. Though there are various ticket deals varied to what people want to do during their visits. And there is an annual pass ticket for locals who are likely to visit Tivoli several times during the year.

The five-star Nimb Hotel is inside the Moorish palace.

As for me I spent a couple of hours walking around on a beautifully sunny and warm early June afternoon soaking in the sights and the ambience. I came across a gathering of people watching a broadcast on a huge outdoor screen. I stopped to listen to the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen, a 40ish woman named Sisse Marie Welling of the Green Left party, talking with a hot shot from Michelin about Copenhagen’s efforts to turn itself into the foodie capital of Europe. Sure. Why not?

While the city’s goal did little to inspire, it did get me thinking about having a proper dinner at one of the many restaurants in Tivoli Gardens. After spending some time reading restaurant reviews, I ended up in a place called Paafuglen that serves Danish cuisine. I did the works: an aperitif, first course of seasonal white asparagus in a creamy sauce, a main of baked haddock with new potatoes and washed down with a bottle of piss elegant sparkling water, ice cream for dessert, and finally coffee. It was a delicious, memorable dinner, the service was impeccable, and it was not cheap.

Tivoli Gardens, a unique, delightful place that was absolutely worth the price of admission.

The Daily Commute, Copenhagen

The people in this photo are commuting to work first thing in the morning. Copenhagen is definitely a bike-friendly city. There were people biking everywhere I went in the city, almost entirely on public bike paths. Some people were out for exercise and recreation, but it seemed to me that for most, bicycles provided basic transportation – from home to workplace and back, for shopping, going out on the town and more.

In looking around for information about biking in Europe and Copenhagen in particular, I ran across the Copenhagenize Index (https://copenhagenizeindex.eu/) that, according to its website “is an evidence-based benchmark tracking to what extent the world’s cities have progressed in making cycling safe, convenient, and mainstream.” If you are interested, the organization’s 2025 index report is available for download as a pdf.

The report ranks the world’s top 30 cities for bicycling; Copenhagen is number two. Three of the top 30 cities are in Canada, none in the United States. Portland and Minneapolis are ranked 35 and 44, respectively.

Several days ago Sean Duffy, the Trump-licking moron wasting space as Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, complained that bike lanes are some sort of DEI initiative. When the index ranking the stupidest countries ever is published, no question where the United States will place.

Copenhagen’s Iconic Nyhavn Canal

The iconic – or cliche – it’s your choice – photo of Copenhagen invariably shows a row colorful buildings along the Nyhavn. I had always assumed that Nyhvan was a Copenhagen neighborhood featuring a lot of colorful architecture. As usual, on this trip, I did not do enough homework about the places I would visit before showing up at the scene. In fact Nyhvan is a canal commissioned by the Danish King Christian V and completed in 1675. The Nyhvan let ships unload trade goods and fish in Kongens Nytrov (Kings Square), an area at the end of the canal also developed by Christian V, who did a great deal to expand Copenhagen during his reign. In any event, it is only the roughly 300m waterfront of the Nyhvan Canal that is lined with colored buildings and this appears to be the only place such buildings are to be found in Copenhagen.

Over time, as ocean-going ships became larger, only smaller ships engaged in local trade came into the canal. By the mid-20th century even this trade had declined and there were no ships visiting Nyhavn. Efforts to revitalize the canal began in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, in addition to traditional buildings of many colors, there are several old sailing vessels moored to the piers along the waterway. The entire Nyhavn canal area serves as a sort of outdoor museum for Copenhagen.

My own Nyhavn colorful buildings cliche photo was taken on a gray, overcast morning; the light was very flat. If I had been paying more attention to content and less to exposure and color in the flat light, I probably would have chosen a group of buildings that did not include a Chinese restaurant. The place seems a little incongruous in a photo that is supposed to be representative of traditional Copenhagen.

I took the photo below with my back to the buildings in the photo above. It shows some of the sailing ships docked in the canal, and gives more sense of the overall look of the Nyhavn area. This was taken on the day after my first visit to Nyhavn. I stopped briefly on my way to another part of Copenhagen to get a photo of the old boats docked along the canal. The morning offered up some hazy sunlight that gives the entire scene a bit of a glow.

US Soft Power Lane, Copenhagen

One of my meandering walks in Copenhagen brought me to this row of American businesses, purveyors of…what exactly?…foods & beverages?…culture?…soft power?…in this case, to people who are understandably rather fed up with the United States. For the record, beside me and the man who is obviously spending time at the gym, there was a KFC.

Airports in Vietnam are infested with Burger King outlets, and if I am not in the mood for a $15 bowl of pho, I can part with my $15 for what is still laughingly called a Whopper with some tasteless fries and a Coke. Or is it a Pepsi at Burger King? Does anyone care?

I don’t know what 7 Elevens are like in the US these days; in Vietnam they are standard convenience stores with small selections of all kinds of packaged foods and beverages, household goods, and personal care products along side of prepared sandwiches, pastries and cakes, and a few prepared items zapped and served hot. The European 7 Elevens I saw on this trip have a more up market appearance and are devoted almost entirely to selling prepared foods – sandwiches, salads, and other small meals prepared and delivered daily for same-day sale. Some foods can be heated. There are rows of soft drinks and juices of all kinds, and beer, wine and booze (at least in some of the shops I saw). There are fresh baked goods, as well as packaged cakes and pastries along with the usual selection of ultra-processed ingredients and too much sugar or salt or both wrapped up as cookies, chips, nachos, biscuits, and “energy” foods, ad nauseam. Much of the fare is labeled “natural.” You can also find toothpaste and toothbrush, batteries, and a very limited selection of other personal care and daily use items.

A little difficult to see in the low resolution online post is a Hard Rock Cafe sign behind the 7 Eleven. Every time I see one, I shake my head wondering how this ridiculous outfit serving up mediocre, absurdly overpriced food and drinks survives.

Even more difficult to see beyond the Hard Rock, there is a green Starbucks sign. While I am ambivalent to cynical about the other three US brands pictured here, I loathe Starbucks. In addition to overpriced bad coffee and various overpriced toxic sugar concoctions passed off as drinks, the company is run by anti-union thugs, and that alone is enough to keep me out of any Starbucks shop anywhere.

In fact, my dislike of this outfit goes back many years. I lived in Nanjing and was a frequent visitor to Shanghai when Starbucks made its first appearance in that city around the year 2000. Shanghai was exploding with growth at the time and newly affluent Chinese were developing a taste for coffee. The city had numerous recently opened coffee shops, good and not so good, some homegrown, some run by overseas entrepreneurs or coffee aficionados. Starbucks arrived on the scene with massive brand awareness, its cachet as premium, imported American coffee, and cash to burn. The company’s shops opened up with bargain basement prices that undercut small shops importing and serving genuine premium coffee. Within a matter of months, Starbucks had decimated most, if not quite all, of Shanghai’s independent coffee shops. Typical of the first casualties of Starbucks’ entry, the young Italian man who served up absolutely brilliant espresso and coffees from his tiny stall in the Shanghai American Center was gone in a matter of weeks after Starbucks opened an outlet in the Center. After wiping out most of the competition, of course, Starbucks’ prices skyrocketed, over the course of a year or two, roughly tripling from what they were when the company first arrived in Shanghai.

I know Starbucks is not the only wealthy, large company that has bullied its way into a new market by undercutting the competition with low, loss-generating prices that small businesses cannot afford to match. That does not mean I have to like Starbucks or consume its mediocre coffee, does it.

Kirkegaard in the Library Garden

Søren Kierkegaard. Words like philosopher and theologian came to mind when I saw this statue in Copenhagen’s beautiful Royal Library Garden. I read the first paragraph of Kierkegaard’s Wikipedia entry. This told me the man was a prolific thinker writing about a wide range of topics – I did not read the lengthy article introducing his works – and is considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher. His was a name my dad dropped from time to time during his years at Harvard in the early 1960s, and that is most likely when I first heard of Kierkegaard.

The Royal Library Garden is a quiet, restful place, and I had been sitting on a bench near Kierkegaard for quite some time when a group of Chinese tourists walked into the area around the statue. They immediately began standing in front of Kierkegaard and posing for photos with hands raised in V salutes. I amused myself wondering how many, if any, of these Chinese had ever heard of Kierkegaard or knew anything of his work. Of course, it is very possible most of them knew more than I did. Be that as it may, I wanted to get a picture of this photo taking, but doing so would have required me to get in the face of some of the group. I was not inclined to do that and remained sitting on my bench.