Saturday 26 September 2009

Day 3 in Copenhagen: Mind the cycles

Strolling again...
The first sentence of the day is:"Domenik, here, we have to mind the bicycles not the cars"

In this phrase I can sum up the Danish (broadly speaking, the North ) way of life. They are accustomed to use bicycles rather than cars. Cycles lanes are widely spread all over the city,
there is also a route dedicated to the tourists in order to make them enjoy the most relevant places of the city by bicycle.
You can rent a bicycle or get one for free, indeed there are some that you can take like you do for a shopping cart. With 10 DKK (Danish coroners) you borrow it from one of well known bicycle points and you can freely ride it. When you park (not necessarily in the park where the cycle was picked ) you 'll get back your 10 DKK.
Unfortunately, the number of bicycles is underestimated and it's not easy at all to find some one that is in a good condition... what a bummer !
Going ahead, we went to the Round tower from which you can enjoy the view of the city.
Then we reached the Kastel Church, here I ran into some mills. Shifting briefly our focus to the mills: In Denmark, I noticed that even on some souvenir are represented or depicted some mills, as far as I know, Netherlands is famous for its mills... I have to ask to Google :)

We went sightseeing the city with a canal tour that takes about one hour.
The city is a mixture of old and new buildings. Residential areas are really nice and
liveable as we could notice by going there on foot, later on. For instance, a lot of houses stretch along a square in whose centre there is a playground for kids.
There are also several benches where you can simply seat on and wind up...
Honestly, a lovely place where I eventually would like to grow up my family. These facilities impress me, because I think that they are expensive to build up and maintain, but they can really enjoy only for a short time due to unaffordable weather conditions.

At 6:00 pm we were back on our way towards our hotel. Generally for the whole holiday, we decided to go back to the hotel at about 6:00 -6:30 pm, in order to have a shower, give relief to our pour aching foot and.. SLEEPING for 2-3 hours before going clubbing :)
In our hotel was also available a swimming pool, well why don't we plunge ?
that 's what I and Marco did, we brought with us a swim-suits, originally we wanted to
go to the Copenhagen shores, but as you can imagine the weather prevented us from doing it :)

A sad and nasty note:
At night we wanted to join the night life in Copenhagen, first of all, we were unlucky because during the working days Copenhagen is not so buzzing.
Second of all, we asked to the reception assistants to show some places where we could enjoy ourselves. One of them pointed us towards a well know night club...
Ok we might have looked like wolfs ready for their buck-hunting, a classic Italian stereotype
but you can suggest to your clients a night club, when they ask you "where can we chill out?,
where can we have a whale of time? "
Anyway we decided on our own where to go... this is another story, stay tuned :)

Thursday 17 September 2009

Recession... curious signs ?

You can see recession every where, big companies are going to close their offices in some countries, laying off a lot of people... I personally notice a curios sign.
Every morning when I take the bus there is a woman who used to bring with her a handbag branded by a blue chip company... some days ago I went to know that this company was laying off its personnel and coincidence the lady has replaced her bag with another one....

Sunday 13 September 2009

Second day in Copenhagen

We booked a room and in our package breakfast was included, the only drawback due to this choice was that we had to get up early in the morning, not later than 9:30 a.m.otherwise we should have said goodbye to our "vital" breakfast.
The first morning we had a great idea, why don't we prepare enough sandwiches for our lunch time ? Well, while we were eating croissants, sweet biscuits, jam and everything you can imagine
we packed our sandwiches let me say we made 10 of them ... Stupidly we left them lay on our table... a big hill of sandwiches, two minutes later a waitress, gently, rebuked us by saying: sorry, you can't take them out"... we were running a pony show, Italian stereotype.. I know it's frowned upon...
We were embarrassed, but we didn't want to excuse ourselves from the table with all those sandwiches therefore... we started to eat them, can you believe it? we were already stuffed ... just one word PIGS :)

Ready for our first visit in Copenhagen, a sweater or a windbreak -jacket embraced our chest (it was a bit cold), a map in our hands and we went to the city centre on foot. It's nice, small and most people ride a bike, it reminds me of Stockholm but the latter is better :)

What I didn't expect is the width of the main streets that are larger than the ones we have in Rome (frankly, the avenues in Rome are very large). For example the Andersen boulevard takes 50 seconds to be crossed from one side to another.. how can I know it ?

because they use some traffic lights equipped with an electronic counter that shows how many seconds remain :)
The buildings are quite similar, one to each other with stunning colours but it seems a city without a precise identity, actually. For example I didn't see a square dedicated or in honour of someone. Now I can also reveal what staff is really expensive in CPH.. FOOD !!
A bottle of natural water, half litre 1,5€ !! a chewing-gum packet 1.3€ thus our breakfast turned out to be "vital", because by eating in the morning as much as I could,
I could skip our lunch and this was what we carried on doing...
Next ride, next tale :) follow some pics
















Monday 7 September 2009

(From) Farewell

I love the love that distributes
in kisses, bed and bread.

Love the can be eternal
and love that can be fleeting.

Love that wants to liberate you
to return to love again.

Divine love that gets close
Divine love that leaves

P. Neruda

Sunday 6 September 2009

First Day in Copenhagen

10-Aug,
I didn't know one of the fellow travellers: Valerio, the other one was my closest friend Marco.
> We were at the train station waiting for our train for the airport, all of a sudden Marco's mobile rang...
I'm Valerio, I'm facing a problem... I don't find my ID card... well
Marco told me that Valerio lives at the edge of this world :) , but I couldn't believe he was able to lose his ID-card...anyway, no panic !! and try to wash away silly prejudices :) before meeting him.
Nevertheless, we decided to go to the airport and talk to the local police station, they suggested to Valerio going to the municipal office and ask for a new ID card, in the meanwhile we, Marco and me stayed in the queue for the check in.
I didn't care about his "problem" because I felt pretty positive about this holiday and confident that Valerio was able to reach us somehow.

Since by nature I'm a sociable animal :), I have started to talk to a guy and a girl..
The latter one surprised me with her story. She was Peruvian and living in Italy, her brother was half Danish and half Peruvian. This world is more and more beautiful and wothy to be discovered. Chatting, getting in touch with people, the time goes at fast pace... I've never told you, but I love queueing if there are some people you can talk to:)
Thanks to God, our airplane was delayed two hours and Valerio
succeededin getting to departures with us
In Copenhagen, a cloudy day was waiting for us, I personally didn't know that it would have been
our closest friend for the entire vacation ... The CPH airport is well connected to the city centre and within a few minutes, we got to it. Public transport are wonderful and efficient, but trust me, damn expensive.. one ride in the city centre is about 2 €... but we still ignored what the most expensive thing was
I'll say it to youlater, in the meantime try to guess ...
Our hotel was DGI Bean, a newly furnished building in a perfect Danish and modern style. A bit cold in my opinion, you know, some places can make you feel some emotions already at first sight...
In the end we unpacked our luggage, had a shower and went out, strolling in the city centre,
teasing and laughing at Valerio for his ID-card and planning our next days...
Intense, tiring, funny, exciting days were on the way :)
 

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