Copenhagen

On the twelfth of April I caught the train from Aalborg to Copenhagen with my British mates: Lauren, Alan and Drew. We were going to stay in Copenhagen until Tuesday and meet up with Laurens boyfriend from the UK. On Tuesday I was meeting up with some Polish girls and heading to Poland for one week.

The train trip lasted six hours and we passed the time talking 'codson' (British expression meaning 'to talk shit'). We arrived in Copenhagen at around 2pm at the central train station. Lauren and her boyfriend were going to be staying in a hotel whilst Drew, Alan and I were staying in a hostel. First we found Lauren's hotel and it turned out to be a bit of a dive. The hallways were so skinny that even a hobbit would have had trouble walking down them. Her room didn't even have a toilet and the view would have made a happy person want to commit suicide. You get the picture dear reader.

We left Lauren and found our hostel nearby. It was nearly twenty stories high and looked brand new. The lobby was huge and their was a classy bar situated near the entrance. It looked nothing like the hostel we were expecting. We rocked up to the front desk only to find out that the hostel had some stupid system that canceled any booking unless you came in before 6pm. Luckily for us they had room so we re-booked. The guy behind the counter was an Australian who informed us that alcohol was forbidden in the rooms. He also informed us that noone would come in the room while we were there and we could find the cheapest alcohol in the supermarket. Legend.

Our room was shared with three other people whom we never actually met. It was on the ninth floor and the view was bloody fantastic. It was better than Lauren's room and she was paying double the amount!

We unpacked all our gear, well, when I say unpacked I mean we put our backpacks on the floor. Then we set out for the night to see what Copenhagen had to offer. The streets seemed quiet even though it was Saturday, but we managed to find a karaoke bar called 'Sam's bar' that was full of people. There was one guy who wouldn't give up the microphone to anyone else. This would have been fine except he couldn't sing for shit and most people in the room were starting to look murderous, especially when he butchered 'Stairway to Heaven' (Led Zeppelin). None of us were in the mood for singing that night so we moved on.

I'm writing this two weeks after the trip so some things are hazy in my mind, however I remember the first night was pretty uneventful. We visited about four more bars, most of them Irish funnily enough and then we went home.

The following day we were a bit more organised and walked around central Copenhagen to take in the sights and snap the obligatory touristic type photos. After awhile we found a nice park and sat on the grass. I had the bright idea of getting some photos of Alan and I up a nearby tree. You can guess what happened next. I tried to pull of an orangutan stunt dismount that failed dismally, and I plummeted to the ground landing on all fours. I wasn't hurt but everyone in the park thought I had died. This was accident number one and we all know that these things happen in three's...

After walking around some more we decided to take a canal tour in a sightseeing boat. It was about as interesting as you would expect but it did help us to get a better idea of the layout of the city and some places that we should visit. When we were leaving the boat at our stop Drew made a passing comment to me: 'Don't trip off the boat mate'. As I was walking up the steps that join the boat with the dock I somehow tripped and slammed down on the metal bridge. The noise was tremendous for such a small trip and immediately everyone on the boat looked at me. Unfortunetely another group had just boarded and the boat was full. To make matters worse the boat had a see-through roof and I could see an old couple laughing at me. Fucken brilliant.

I made my way off the boat and tried to get away as fast as possible with Drew and Alan both laughing hard as you would expect. I wasn't hurt at all but the embarrassment levels were high on the Richter scale. Number two accident complete.

Later on we found a cheap bar called 'The Moose'. It was a bit of a dive but it had character and the beers were cheap. The barman also happened to be a crazy DJ whom we had seen in Aalborg a few weeks earlier at a ghetto soul night. In keeping with the moose theme we found another bar on the way home that had a moose's head on the wall. At 3am the moose started to talk. Both Drew and I saw it and we told Lauren, who refused to look. Her boyfriend Steven saw it happen but he wouldn't admit it and Lauren refuses to believe it happened to this very day. When Drew and I got back to the hostel there was a couple sleeping in the hallway and Alan was fast asleep as he had gone back earlier. As punishment we took photos of him while he was asleep with us in them.

The final night in Copenhagen we found a venue that promised live music. The place had around fifteen people in it and six of them were band members. We were doubtful at first of the bands ability, especially when they told us that they were gigging together for the first time. The music was supposed to start at 10pm but the band decided to wait for more people, a mistake as by the time they started playing at 11pm nearly everyone else had left! Fortunately they were great. The singer, a woman, was amazing. The rest of the band were great as well. They mainly covered well known songs but the woman brought something unique to each one. By now we were literally the only ones in the section of the venue with the band. We felt sorry for them because they really did deserve a bigger audience with their level of talent.

To show our respect we stole their drumsticks at the end of the night and followed the bass guitarist to an underground alternative bar. The bar was cement and soon enough we had made friends with the barman, a twenty something with nearly as many piercings on his face. We started talking about the nastiest shots of alcohol that he had and of course we had to try them. He agreed to shout us the shots, probably because he wanted to see us get messed up. True to his word they tasted terrible. I likened the taste to that of drain-cleaner. We left late and the barman gave us some water for free for the trip home.

Number three happened the following day while I was walking up some steps at the train station with Alan and Drew. I tripped and nearly fell, but managed to regain my balance at the last minute. Of course Drew thought this was bloody hilarious, I was just glad that my three accidents were over. We sat down outside the train station and it immediately became apparent that we had sat in a 'dealing' area. Actually, it couldn't have been more obvious, a man sat down next to me and started rambling about how he had Valium to sell and did I need any? No I told him so he talked some more shit and finally left. It was getting close to the time when Alan, Lauren and Drew had to catch the train back to Copenhagen and I was going to meet the Polish girls and head to the airport. We said our farewells and split up.

The next post will be on Poland, in fact Poland will need more than one post...