Day 7 - Copenhagen

Day 7
- Quotes of the day
- Net café for breakfast
- Motorboating to lunch
- Finding the route(r)
- Tivoli Gardens and Wagamama

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —

But if the arrow is straight
And the point is slick,
It can pierce through dust no matter how thick.

The internet has been down for a day, and while we think the problem is with the router, we can’t find it. So, off on bike to an internet café, which turns out to be near the Info center at one of the corners of Tivoli Gardens. (Note: yesterday’s posting was from the net café). Check mail, and see that our exchangers have sent a note, they are very unhappy because it turns out to be foggy and cold at the beach (they spent the first 4 days in E-ville) and they thought this was going to be “sunny” California. We do try and warn people, and somehow they didn’t get the message (nor did their research, to at least find Twain’s quote).

While we greatly wish they were happy, there is nothing we can do about the weather. Send them an apology and realize at least they have a choice of locations and can use either place. After much discussion, we also come to conclusion that part of exchanging is making the best of wherever you are; there are plenty of ways to get the most out of an experience (and plenty of ways to decide it isn’t working out, like having to sleep in separate bedrooms). Having said that, it is tough when your expectations aren’t met, no amount of logic is gonna change your mind.

Our neighbors had promised to take us sailing, it turns out we are going on their motorboat! Weather is glorious, warm and sunny, gentle breezes. Nice tour of areas we hadn’t seen from the boat tour earlier, and then to lunch at a dockside café north of town. DB has the small shrimp (local specialty, not too much flavor), Helle the salmon (a plate of lox), Jergen the potato and bacon open faced sandwich with a salad, and THB orders the mussels mid frites. Oops, that is only on the dinner menu (and here I had been mighty proud of having been able to read the specials board, since I can’t tell lunch from dinner in Danish, that didn’t help me all that much). So I order the cockerels. A chicken salad arrives, so I guess cockerels must not be some sort of small shellfish, but a fowl that has breasts. Two beers, a soft drink, total $125. We get the impression that the wait staff are the summer fill-ins, food takes a long time to come and my first beer that arrived is apple cider (Jergen goes to find waiter and this time he arrives with a bottle of beer – I had ordered a draft, oh for two, this one does not go back)..

Back on the boat for a tour south of town, past where we went on the city boat tour, closer to where we did our recreational bike ride. Lots of interesting sights, and we end up docking for a mid-afternoon water and trail mix snack. The dock is a set of steps in front of a recently completed condo complex with what appears to be only one occupied unit. We are docked in the midst of what had been a huge building boom of now primarily unsold places (thousands of unsold places!). Even Denmark got caught up in the cheap money and building frenzy! It will be years before these places are occupied, even by renters. Plus we hear there are no metro or water ferry routes here yet, and they also appear to have no street retail. Must be pretty lonely for the few that have moved in.

Back to our house and Jergen helps us find the router. Remember what it took to turn on the hose behind the house? The router is behind a very heavy unused door, several board games, an ironing board, and a few drying racks. We just didn’t follow the wires leading from the attic to the closet. Turn it off, wait a few minutes, and we’re back on-line. Now we can access e-mail, we see that exchangers have sent a reply that the router does go out periodically and give us the location (just enter the closet and look down to the right…..they forgot to mention the removing of lots of piled up camouflage). This is the sort of thing you try and remember to put in your exchange instruction sheet, the things that only happen occasionally that yet somehow always happen when someone else is living in your place (and you aren’t there to tell them what to do).

Then to dinner, we take our first bus ride, picks us up right in front and in about 10 minutes drops us off right outside Tivoli Gardens, We pay $17 each to enter, this is a mini-Disneyland near the heart of downtown, occupies a large city block right across from the train station. Start strolling around, many families with kids of all ages. Head for Wagamama, the Japanese noodle place we first found in London many years ago (and revisited at another branch in Wimbledon last year). There’s a line, and as we enter maitre denise stamps our hands so we can re-enter the park. It turns out you can get in from the street (not all restaurants have a street entrance; many are only reached by paying the entry fee, we had been told at the entrance that you needed to pay to get in to access all the restaurants).

We order noodle stir-fry, ramen, wine and beer. Wagamama works on runner system, wait staff takes orders and checks in on you and handles money, someone else brings each item as kitchen pops it out. We’re enjoying the food, it is very good, when our waiter returns and notices I have the wrong beer. Three times in less than 8 hours, THB clearly has been cursed by the beer gods. He rushes of to get right one, and then we chat him up.

He’s very friendly turns out he is from Malmo and takes the train every day to and from Sweden. His comment “We Swedes take the jobs in Denmark, and the Danes take all our apartments.” Cheaper to live across the water, and the Danes need immigrant labor for service jobs (is this sounding familiar?). He doesn’t need a work permit, they have an open system.

Dinner is $75 without the entry fee. We pay in combination of euros and Visa, they also take dollars, yen, and all the Scandinavian kroners. After dinner, we stroll around the park and see that they are setting up for three or four different concerts to be going on later. We hear that the light show (parade down Main Street equivalent?) is really good, however in this northern region it doesn’t start til after 11pm, too late for us.

We decide to walk home, takes about 45 minutes and we are within a few hundred meters when it starts to rain lightly. Make it without getting too wet!