Bill Bryson Syndrome in Copenhagen

Something I should mention as I describe my travels: I have Bill Bryson Syndrome.  In his many brilliant travelogues, Bryson, an avid walker from his years living in England, writes that, upon arriving in a new city, he will look over his maps, find that his destination doesn’t seem to be that far from his hotel, and decide to walk to it.  Inevitably, he finds himself wandering miles further than he’d planned, often along highways or other less-than-pedestrian-friendly routes.  I have the same problem.  I walk quite a bit in my everyday life, and I like how much of an area walking it allows me to see—I don’t feel like I’ve really been to a city until I’ve walked in it.  I try to balance this urge with a little good sense, but no matter how much I try I find myself in similarly ridiculous predicaments to Mr. Bryson’s, and my second day in Copenhagen turned out to be one of those occasions. 

I had an excellent plan.  Over coffee and croissant at a café, I planned out a day of activities beginning nearby, looping around the city, and returning to the hostel to retrieve my luggage and catch a train.  I thought it was a good plan, with plenty of places to rest built into the day.  On my map, the distances looked small and doable.  Walking, I reasoned, I would get to see more of the city and get an idea of what I wanted to do when I returned at the end of the month.

Sitting here safely at home, Google Maps has helped me to calculate that my planned route and final return to the hostel totaled nearly seven miles, and that doesn’t include any of the wandering in parks, wrong turns, or meanders through buildings that were intended to be part of my day.  It was also going to be unseasonably hot.  But, that day, blissfully ignorant of all of this, armed with my map and my plan, I paid for my coffee and headed out across the cobbled plaza towards my first destination. 

I walked a more direct route than I had the day before to get to the Rådhus, passing a huge department store with displays of amber jewelry in the windows.  This time when I walked through the Rådhus doors, no guards shooed me back out—instead, they let me enter the spacious, sunny stone room along with a few other early tourists. 

Interior of the Rådhus, Copenhagen

            

The building was gorgeous—high, bright windows, tiled mosaics, statues of famous Danes like Niels Bohr and Hans Christian Andersen, art by Thorvaldsen, and murals abounded.  It was airy and largely empty, though, even of informative plaques.  I found the few guards seemed content to let people wander most of the place, smiling and nodding encouragingly as I turned down hallways and examined office doors.  A group, seemingly a future wedding party, was being shown around, possibly planning to rent the place.  I did find one open stairwell which led to more offices in which I was not welcome—as a man rushed in to tell me to leave, but not before I’d had a look around and enjoyed an aerial view of Thorvaldsen’s Jason in the back hall.

Jason, by Thorvaldsen

Gammeltorv

Having wandered my fill, I made my way from the Rådhusplads to Gammeltorv, a square full of restaurants and produce stands with a beautiful fountain decorated with monstrous fish spraying in the center.  The city was beginning to be busy now as it got closer to midday, and I felt a little self-conscious as I circled the plaza, squinting at my map and then peering up at walls looking for street names of the roads that spoked off in different directions.  After a couple of circuits, and a few darts along the diameter, I found the street that I thought would lead to the Vor Frue Kirche, which Rick Steves claimed had an impressive organ and some more Thorvaldsen art. 

I found the church readily enough, and stepped gladly into its cool white foyer.  Heavy wooden doors, presumably leading to the sanctuary, were shut.  A few tourists milled about the hallway, speculating on why it was closed, but a sign directed visitors to ascend some wooden stairs off to the left.  I jogged up the three flights, and found myself in an empty wooden balcony.  It seemed like an area in which artifacts might be displayed or a view might be had, but the place was deserted and view-less.  Puzzled and disappointed, I returned to ground level and left, having seen nothing of interest. 

My next church was rather disappointing as well.  I returned to Sankt Petri to see the interior, hoping for great things after its beautiful yard and wall marked with venerable graves.  But the inside was white and modern, with only a few rooster decorations and a very shiny chandelier alleviating the tedium.  I left quickly. 

A rooster at Sankt Petri

My next stop was planned to ease my sore feet—I found the public library and sat at a table, enjoying the free (though slow) wifi.  The building itself was disappointingly modern, but the rest was welcome.  I saw someone, probably a library patron rather than a tourist, carrying a reusable tote that said “Recycle or die.”  The message seemed comically threatening until I thought about it, and then it just seemed chilling.  I ceased my efforts to snap a clear photo of him, chastened. 

Leaving the library, I followed the crowded roads to Rosenborg Have, the large public park around the royal summerhouse now open to tourists.  I planned to have a leisurely stroll in the park, see the outside of the castle, and decide whether I thought it might be worth an indoor visit with a ticket later in my trip.  I planned to leave the park by an exit nearer to my next destination, too, to avoid some road travel. 

Rosenborg was beautiful and busy.  Locals strolled around the lawns, sat on benches by fountains, fed ducks, and sunbathed.  Tourists crowded near the gates to the small palace, joining the line for tickets and admission.  I strolled through, people-watching, admiring the greening bronze statuary, and enjoying the trees.  I found a huge labyrinthine garden full of lavender and roses, presided over by a statue of a queen, with a nice view of the palace over a hedge.  Heading away from the crowds and toward the corner of the park at which I planned to exit, I found a huge spreading tree that I climbed and rested in for awhile. 

Rosenborg

Leaving the park, I had to walk along more streets to get on the right path to Kastellat Park and the obligatory Little Mermaid statue all Copenhagen visitors must see.  The stretch on the map looked short, though a maze of streets meant I couldn’t walk a direct path.  I headed briskly past houses, apartments, and various statues for what seemed a very long time (Google Maps says two miles), and felt thoroughly relieved to finally arrive at a corner with a gate surrounded by greenery to plunge through, getting off of the hot and shadeless roads. 

Not having planned to visit Kastellat except as a path to the Little Mermaid, I didn’t know much about it.  My map showed a simple circuit of paths through it that I thought would be easy to follow, and at first that seemed to be correct.  A broad gravel path ran along what looked to be a man-made moat dividing me from a hill on the top of which there was another path, and some windmills.  A hobbit-hole-like door opened into the side of the hill.  I followed the path on my side of the moat a ways, peering at the paths on my map to try to locate myself. 

By sheer luck—my map was little help—I got further into the park.   The moat become more river-like and, to my delight, had swans swimming on it followed by their very own ugly ducklings, which they have apparently decided to raise themselves rather than depositing them, cuckoo-like, into ducks’ nests.  A bridge crossed the river to big gates into the hill opposite, which surrounded a fortified little town.  It seemed Kastellat was a military base open to the public. 

I crossed the bridge and went a little way into the fortification, climbing to the path at the top of the hill for a view.  I could see a church steeple from there, and I decided it must be one of the churches marked on my map, hopefully Kastellskirken, which was halfway into the park.  Leaving the fortification, I walked to the church, hoping to get my bearings more firmly. 

St. Albans, Kastellat Park

It wasn’t Kastellskirken.  The church was St. Alban’s, which looked on my map to be hardly a few steps from the gate by which I had entered the park.  I began to wonder whether I had time to make it to the Little Mermaid even if I could find it.  I was further disheartened by the fact that my feet were starting to ache enormously.  Nevertheless, I pressed on a ways.  Past the church I found a large fountain surrounded by tourists.  I enjoyed its cool spray as I walked past.  I just kept going away from the church and the way I’d entered the park, eventually coming across a garden area with flowerbeds, statues, and a view of the harbor.   It was thronged with tourists, which seemed to be a good sign, as did the appearance of vendors selling Little Mermaid statuettes.  I kept going, and suddenly, a knot of people down by the rocky shore told me I was there.  I scrambled down the bank, and there she was, the Little Mermaid hunched on her rock, gazing out to sea, her lower limbs something between legs and fins.  I joined the crowd to get the requisite number of pictures (eighteen). 

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen

Having only a hazy idea of how I’d gotten there in the first place, retracing my steps was a challenge, and I decided to leave the park by a closer exit to be back among city streets that were reliably marked on my map.  Walking against the crowds, I found a way out, and headed towards a conglomeration of palaces which I thought I could take a glance at before finding the botanic garden.  They were slightly disappointing from the outside, though—low, sprawling buildings with a dome and rather fewer statues than the parks all had.  They were also lacking trees, and the sun was baking by that point.  I kept going, pushing through crowds at Nyhavn, happening across an unexplained bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt at the head of a row of ornamental trees planted on a large median in a road, and along a bicycle-thronged street.  I passed an entrance to Rosenborg, which is next to the botanic garden, and decided to cut through there for a rest—my feet were screaming. 

In Rosenborg, I sat under a tree.  Having heard for years about all the topless sunbathing that goes on in Europe, I watched the many sunbathers in the park closely.  None of the women were topless, but many of them were wearing bikinis.  Or were they?  Looking more closely, I realized some of the women were, in fact, actually just in their underwear.  Matching underwear—black bras with black panties and such—but underwear, not a swimsuit.  I started playing Guess Which-Bikini or Brassiere?  One woman had simply pulled her dress over her head and laid down on the grass.  Brassiere.  Another girl was wearing jean shorts and a lacy thing, clearly also a bra.  But many girls did have swimsuits—things with bulky ties in the back and such, never intended to hide smoothly under a shirt.  Why the different choices of sunbathing attire, I wondered?  Did the women in bikinis plan to sunbathe today, and the women in underwear made a last-minute choice?  How is it that their bras and underwear match if they weren’t planning to show them off?  My own undergarments rarely manage to match well even when I try to plan it that way.  And why was nobody actually topless? 

            Then I got my comeuppance.   A bird, hopping around in the shady branches above my head, dropped a deposit on my foot.  Disgusted, I cleaned myself up as best I could and continued on my way out of the park, across the street, and into the botanic garden. 

            The botanic garden was everything I had hoped it would be—trees, flowers, a huge pond full of lily pads so dense that birds nested in them, a giant greenhouse, shady paths.  Unfortunately, even after my sunbather-watching rest in Rosenborg, I was so exhausted and sore from my walking that I could only briefly explore before I slumped on a bench to rest and rub my feet. 

Botanisk Have, Copenhagen

            When it got late enough, I left, limping on sore feet on my long walk back to the hostel (one and a half miles).  I stopped again at the Jarmers Plads ruins for more pictures and a little rest, and finally made it back to my luggage.  Cursing my Bill Bryson Syndrome, I hobbled my way to the train station, dragging my heavy suitcase over the cobbles.  It was time to catch a train!