Old Zealand

Copenhagen

We always thought Denmark would just be a stop-over point for bigger and better things in Scandinavia but it turned out to be a bit of a gem! Everyone there is pretty relaxed, the emphasis on life in these parts seems to be on living, not working which is kinda nice. Our hostel was next to a lake near the city centre, which is mainly pedestrian only streets, so was a perfect place to just wander round and look at stuff. While we where there the weather really turned it on, making it a nice wee stop-over. Incidently, Copenhagen is on an island called Zealand, yet the resembalance in shape or character to New Zealand eluded us!

Carlsberg Brewery

This was a bit of a hike from where we were staying but the weather was so nice we walked it anyway. En-route we had to pass through the red light district which consists predominantly of tattoo parlours and sex-shops of various persuasion with some, uh, interesting window displays. We were really going to the brewery to score some cheap beer but it was a pretty interesting place too! They had a mint beer bottle collection (13,000+) of beers from round the world and had restored heaps of the old steam powered machines they used to use to make the beer. There's a lot of history behind the company, I wont go into it but look it up if you are bored, is worth a read. And of course at the end of the tour we got to sample some of the beer...

Stop drinking all our beer New Zealanders!!!

Christianhaven and Christiania Freetown

Christianhaven is an area of Copenhagen which is kinda on an island in the harbour. It's pretty funky and in the middle is a church on which you can climb right to the top point of the roof and look out over the city, cool. At the edge of Christianhaven is Christiania Freetown. Christiania was formed in the 70s by a bunch of hippies as an independent society. It's self governed and has it's own flag, but not quite an independent state. The place is famous because you used to be able to buy drugs openly and legally on the street there, but the Danish government has since cracked down on this. The place is pretty much a hippie commune, street stalls with rasta hats and designer bongs, but was pretty cool to walk around, quite relaxed as you can probably imagine, even the dogs there looked stoned! Unfortunately you cant take any photos inside so we cant show you what it looked like.


Worlds Best Small-to-Medium-Sized Fountain

We were walking down to the harbour to look at this big boat that we'd spotted from the aforementioned church tower. The main attraction down here is the Little Mermaid, which Copenhagen is apparently famous for. It was so shit, it was just a statue on a rock by the ocean, it's even less impressive than that stupid cone in the square back home! But near there we found this Mac Daddy fountain which wasnt mentioned in any of the tourist material but was awesome! The pictures dont quite do it justice but the way they've desigined it makes the chariot look like it's moving. We went back the next day to see it again as it was so cool!