Leaving the train station to begin the enjoyable part of my day, I found that even after a night of sleep, the streets near the station remained confusingly or not at all marked.  I finally determined where I was when I noticed the skeleton frames of amusement park rides towering around a large brick building—Tivoli, the amusement park for which Copenhagen is known.  I peeked at it a bit through a gate—the horrifyingly tall rides look a bit like construction equipment until you see the cage of people being hurled around, all of it old, giving off a steampunk air of venerability, unlike Six Flags, which gleams new paint and advanced technology.  I didn’t really have any interest in the place—possibly an active disinterest—but the notes I’d taken from Rick Steves led me to believe that Rodin’s Thinking Man resided in a garden there, and after having endured impressionist after impressionist at the Musée d'Orsay several years ago hoping he would be there, I certainly didn’t want to miss him. 

A shot of Tivoli through its fence

Passing Tivoli, I came across a gate into a garden by a large and impressive building.  The garden looked free, so in I went.  Immediately I was taken with a copper goblin statue, appearing to chase something from his pedestal, hand outstretched to grasp his quarry.  He was delightfully demonic.  His pedestal sat on a lawn surrounded by a wide border of flowers growing together pell-mell, rich pink foxglove prominent among them.  Naturally, I went camera-mad. 

Trold der Lugter Kristenblod
 Niels Hansen-Jacobsen

 





Moving around the goblin to photograph him from every possible angle, I noticed a statue in the middle of the garden.  A huge, hunched, seated figure, green oxidized bronze like the goblin.  I went nearer, excited.  There he was, the Thinker, by Auguste Rodin, outside of the amusement park after all (I must take Rick Steves notes more carefully!) and free in the middle of a public garden.  He, too, was surrounded by foxglove, his pedestal placed before the pillared gable at the center of the impressive building attached to the garden.  No disappointment was he, either, as compared to reproductions and photographs I’d seen—massive, he towered over me, an impressive presence above the wildflowers.

The Thinker, Copenhagen
Auguste Rodin

Now, of course, this is not quite the original Thinker.  The statue with that honor is in the Rodin Museum in Paris, but, as any bronze version was cast based on a plaster figure which Rodin made, it could be argued that none of the bronze versions are “original” in the way that the painting of the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper are—I’m quite happy to consider Copenhagen’s Thinker as original as any other version I might have seen. 

The garden was comfortable and pleasant, with benches and several more less-arresting statues, so I stayed awhile, watching tourist families and locals with babies in strollers come through.  I found a toy dinosaur lying on his side on one of the low hedges bordering the flower plantings—a souvenir I did not take with me, hoping that the original owner, disconsolate without their T. rex, might return for it.  

T. rex on a hedge

Foxglove behind the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Leaving the garden eventually, I wandered around the front of the building (I rarely manage to come at anything from the right direction), examining and photographing statues along the way.  It turned out to be the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, an art museum which had made it into my Rick Steves notes without a ticket price.  I decided to save it until I knew more about the cost, and headed on my way towards the Rådhuspladsen, which was free.

Walking along the boulevard towards the Rådhus, I found double wooden doors leading into a courtyard containing the Rådhusets Gårdhaveanlæg, the Town Hall’s garden.  Some sort of special roses—pink, and past their prime, resembling wads of expensive tissue paper—grew in a hedge around a high fountain sprayed by a statue of a bear, sitting upright, mouth wide open as though waiting for a fish to jump in. 

Courtyard of the Rådhus

I spent so much time in the courtyard that by the time I left it to see the Rådhus itself, it was closing.  I consoled myself by watching a child climb on the odd bronze gargoyles spaced in a semicircle before the front doors and by visiting the famous larger-than-life statue of Hans Christian Andersen around the corner, his knees rubbed shiny by visitors climbing up to sit on his lap. 

The front of the Rådhus 

H. C. Andersen
Henry Luckow-Nielson

The attraction of the H.C. Andersen statue faded after he was engulfed in a swarm of other tourists.  I left the square, heading towards a nearby church I had listed in my notes.  Along the way, I passed a shop with a rather incongruous window—“Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi” emblazoned in white letters over an elaborate Pippi Longstocking playset, complete with horse.  While Pippi is certainly surreal, and might at a stretch be fantasy, I have trouble casting her as horror or sci-fi.  Intrigued, I went inside.  It was a costume and gaming shop, with a startling life-size statue of Batman at the foot of a staircase decorated with giant furry spiders clinging to the rail.  I looked around awhile, amused, but the Pippi incongruity was never clarified. 

When I left, I managed to meander my way through the maze of dubiously-marked small streets to my original goal, the church Sankt Peders.  This late, the building itself was closed, but the yard around it, dotted with graves and statuary, was peaceful.  The church’s motif seemed to involve roosters—they were depicted in several places.  I spent some time resting on benches and gazing at the huge old trees that grew there, before moving on. 

Grave in the wall around Sankt Peders

A fellow holding a rooster

I no longer had a particular destination in mind, but, wandering through increasingly busy streets, I came upon the Rundetårn, a huge astronomy tower now open to the public for climbing.  I gleefully paid my 20kroner, dividing that to dollars in my head and deciding it wasn’t as expensive as it sounded, and headed up the ramp that wrapped around the hollow core of the tower all the way to the top, easing the trip heavy astronomical equipment had to make to get to the observation platform. 

The ramp floor was brick, the walls and ceiling a white tunnel arching overhead, interrupted at intervals by barred windows looking down on the ever-further-below city.  Partway up there was a small museum with cases full of Tycho Brahe’s possessions and instruments used in the tower.  Further up yet, a giant mouse-hole-like opening showed the hollow core of the tower, Denmark’s navigational point zero, now covered over at that level with a plexi-glass disk suspended around a metal pole.  Brave visitors could crawl through the hole and stand on that clear platform, twenty-five meters above the ground. 

Rundetårn

I waited in a loose line of tourists, reading a harrowing leaflet about a choirboy from the 1880s who had fallen down the tower’s core and been trapped at the bottom, relatively uninjured, for a day before he was discovered.  Having survived the sky boxes at the Sears Tower in Chicago, I thought the platform in a dim shaft wouldn’t be too bad, but when my turn came I found myself so dizzy I could scarcely put a foot on it.  I scrambled back out of the mouse-hole and made my way up the ramp to the observation platform. 

My foot on Denmark's Point Zero

Below, Copenhagen was stunning.  Red and green rooftops, brick buildings of many shapes and sizes, distant windmills by the sea.  I saw hydrangeas growing on roofs, ships in the harbor, clocks on high towers now beneath my feet, construction tarps covering the old buildings Europe seeks to keep alive rather than demolishing to replace.  My first height climbed of the trip; my reward Copenhagen a vast yet tiny model beneath my feet.

 

A satisfactory number of pictures taken, I descended by the ramp I had climbed.  Back at ground level, I found myself a beef sausage from a cart for dinner, which I ate under a huge tree that grew along the side of the Rundetårn.  I wanted to see the city’s botanic garden, which my map showed was near the tower, so I headed that way next, but found that it had closed almost as early as the Rådhus and Sankt Peders.  Instead, I finished my day with a visit to the vast nearby Ørstedsparken, full of classical bronze statues and city wildlife.  I rested there and read some Agatha Christie before finally deciding to make my way back to the hostel and bed. 

Ørstedsparken

 

I found I had wandered far in my sightseeing, and, having failed to learn anything about the city’s public transit that day, had to walk the whole way back.  I passed and played on some unidentified ruins in Jarmers Plad, and examined the footwear of the city’s many cyclists—evidently high heels are good cycling shoes.  Finally back at the hostel and exhausted, it was still a struggle to make myself go inside—though it was after 9:30, it was still as light as day, and there were roses to photograph in the hostel yard.  Finally, I dragged myself inside and slept. 

Jarmers Plad Ruins

High-heeled cyclist, center