Mary's Denmark
Just to be clear, I'm actually backdating these things. Guess what? It's the Innernet! I can do what I want! Any complaints, send them to theboss@theinternet.com
Copenhagen's a really easy place to start your travels. For a start, everyone and his uncle speaks excellent English (the importance of which isn't apparent to me at the time). Also, it's a bite-size city - population just over a million - with a fairly well-defined city centre. You can get an idea of how to exist there in no time.
Also, it's a beautiful city. Lots of magnificent city-block size apartment buildings, but with a height limit of five stories, and architecture from back in the day when they had taste and no chrome. And a bit of more modern stuff, some done by the Sydney Opera House guy. Pretty good public transport too.
The main downside is that it's damn expensive. Prices are in kroner (DKK) and it's apparently one of the cheaper Scandinavian countries but it still hurts the wallet.
So when I arrived I was staying in a nice hotel in the middle of the red-light district. Considering I've never been asked if I want sex in St Kilda, it was a little off-putting for it to happen twice on my first day here. Walked the city a lot on my own and found some nice little districts. Then met up with some kids - Rach, Nick, Cath, Sarah and Ange, in that order - to prepare for Roskilde.
The logical thing to do in preparing for an alternative music festival is to go to a modern art museum, so next stop is Louisiana, about 40 minutes from Roskilde. The setting reminded me of Heide in Melbourne - the collection not so much. It's just got your run-of-the-mill Picassos and Warhols and Lichtensteins. Also a pretty interesting audioguide tour of the grounds, done with plenty of creativity by a Canadian artist. And a big exhibition on a furniture designer - they love their furniture up there.
Also watched Australia lose the soccer to Italy. Enough said about the game, but the experience was amusing, in a British theme pub in Copenhagen (they all seem to be theme pubs) where we met a few other Australians. One was a guy named John who apparently went to primary school with my cousin Matt! This world isn't quite big enough...
We didn't see Mary, apparently she was out of town. We did see a bit of Hans Christian Andersen, they love him over there. Mum reckons we've got a distant connection, though on the wrong side of the sheets. That practically makes us royalty in Denmark.
Then to Roskilde.
