Author: Lindsey

Queens, castles, and fairytales

Denmark

Copenhagen is a land of fairytales.

It is a land of kings and queens, renaissance castles and white horses, jutting cobblestones, medieval towers, and looming narrow alleyways unchanged from days of old. There is a smell to it, too, though I’ve yet to place it. A sweet smell, swirling with tastes of the ocean, baked bread, musty library books, burnt sugar. There is something in the air that sets your imagination ablaze. Its royalty must have felt it, too. It’s the sort of feeling that if anything can be dreamed, it can be realized. (And, in the monarchy’s case, with the right amount of bank).

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A walker’s Copenhagen: the humble and the picturesque

Denmark

Being pressed for time is never easy, especially when one has so much to tell yet so much sleep to acquire. This one is going to be just a clean, visual guide to Denmark’s capital. Hopefully, as clean and as visual as the city is itself.

This is just what I’ve stumbled on in the last three days; things noticed, I think, only by fresh eyes. These are no great landmarks, no highlights in a travel guidebook, and no recognizable names. These are, simply, a walker’s Copenhagen.

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Stunning streamlines in Danish design

Denmark

I’d just like to let you all know that I am currently enjoying the dinner of champions: a classic chokolademælk! and what the Danes must consider to be a club sandwich (chunks of chicken and salami (bologne?), lettuce, and a colorful array of roasted peppers slathered with a sweet, tikka-tasting mustard). Mmm mm good.

The Danes, and I’m pretty sure the rest of Scandinavia, are design-a-holics. The Danish know how to design a museum. They just…get it, from the streamlined lobbies to rooms separated by swishing automatic doors to pops of color in their adorable lower level cafés to ALLOWING photography as long as you behave yourself. And the symmetry. Oh, the symmetry! And not just in museums, mind you. Everywhere.

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Friends make places, not vice versa

Photography, Travel

Truthfully, there is nothing that a fine conversation with a wonderful person over sushi and tea can’t cure. And an invitation to a party filled with more lovely locals. Rain, you can’t spoil my parade.

But oh how it will try. Apparently, rain is forecasted for the entire time I’ll be staying here, which makes any good photo opportunities scarce and the thought of sidewalk meandering a full-on fight with logistics – I will not get sick because of soggy socks. I will NOT.

The point of this blog is to blog, not to photo dump. But let me tell you before I start getting into Denmark, how very lovely it is to fly. Even with my head flattened against a frozen plastic window, feet stuffed under a low-lying seat, headphones that refuse to decipher what’s playing on the overhead monitors (The King’s Speech), a chicken dinner that could pass for some artifact in a steerage museum, and turbulence that makes you grip your complimentary thread-bare blanket for dear life, the views are what really do it for me. I am a window seater for life.

Sleep now. Tomorrow: aesthetics and Danish design.

Oh, HEY Copenhagen

Denmark

It would be LOVELY if you could stop raining enough for me to, you know, take a good picture or two.

The first day is the hardest. I’ve been through hell and back with London, so I should anticipate this. Knowing zero words of Danish does not help. Yet, despite the grief with the hostel check-in and the rain and Bekky not being available till 5 and me not being able to find an ATM and not being able to eat until, well, dinnertime, I know this: my bunk bed is comfortable. The rain has stopped. What I DID see of the city was expectedly beautiful. I’ve freshened up. I’m heading to Rebekka’s for some yummy sushi takeout. And I know that at least ONE of the days I’m here, the sun will be shining.

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There is not enough time in life to do what you want to do

Travel

But hot damn, I’m going to try.

It’s a shame my London adventures are in another blog, but I think I’d be letting those memories down if I tried to jumble them with this new stage of my life. This time, I will not be taking classes or cooping myself up in a library while another world awaits outside. I will be free to see what it is I need to see.

Travel for pleasure, yes, but travel for purpose. This is no longer vacation. This is, as honestly as I can see it, the means to meaning.