五月， 2012： 哥本哈根， 丹麦

When the World Expo was held in Shanghai, the statue of the Little Mermaid (Den lille havfrue) was brought over to the Denmark exhibit. Now that she is back where she belongs, I have to go take a look.

But first, I need to change some Euro into Danish kroner. Once we crossed the sea from Hamburg, we are out of the Eurozone. All my three Scandinavian destinations uses the Krone (meaning "crown"), but there is the Danish kroner, the Swedish kronor and the Norwegian krone; and each is not on parity with the other two. The currency of the other Scandinavian country, Finland, is the Euro.

With some krone in the pocket, I step out onto the street. Tivoli Gardens is just across the street from the station. This is one of the oldest amusement park in the world. In a sense, the mother of all Universal Studios that were to come along.

The Little Mermaid looks on the map to be within walking distance, so I headed toward the general direction of the bay. The morning was gloomy and windy. A giant thermometer on the side of the Thai Airlines building was showing the temperature at about 15C.
 
On one corner of the town square, a poster was advertising a Chinese film festival with Jet Lee showing his palm, as if to say: 5 Kroner per show.

I tranverse the square into what looks like a shopping alley. There were restaurants open for business. But the Danish cuisine seems to involve quite a bit of seafood cold dishes. Having another night train to get on and no hotel room for the night, I was hoping for something hot. I do not wishes to risk a stomach upset between now and the train ride.
 
So when a Greek buffet restaurant appear on the street, I decided to enter. Imaging, here in northern restaurant having a Mediterranean lunch. It seems to be a popular place. When I first came in, it was half occupied by pensioners. But the time I left, the other half of the room was occupied by college students. The bright blue and white decor of the restaurant was rather attractive to customer coming in from the street on a cold gloomy day. The steaming colorful med dishes were place on what is made to look like a red-brick stove, exotic Greek music (sounding mildly indian to my ears) were playing, even the paper napkins had sketches of the Aegean Sea with islands like Chronos printed on them. I can understand if the the senior Dane citizens, maybe feeling that rheumatic pain in their knees, imagine themselves transported to the warmer Hellian coast as they chowed down on the mediterranian fare.

I headed out, careful to avoid the dead rat I have seen pedestrains side stepping while looking out from the restaurant window. It was a Friday but the street is rather quite for a capital city.
 
In less than 10 minute, a park came into sight. This is Rosenborg Castle Gardens (Danish: Kongens Have literally The King's Garden.) Here, the statue of one of the greatest of Danes share pride of place with royalty.
 
Denmark, similar to her neighbors with their variety of kroners, has her own royal family. Judging from how little most of us hear about them in our international and gossip pages, they are definitely more low-key and less scandalous than the British or Dutch counterpart. On the park ground, a group of teenagers were dressed like court ladies, all puffy dress and corset, and page boys were having a picnic. It looks like how the Danes do cosplay.

That great Dane is of course Hans Christian Anderson, writer of fairy tales, children stories. I am not sure if he has any influence, but it looks likes childrearing is in vogue amongst the dads here in Copenhagen. In this park and on the streets, it looks like most of the kids are accompanied by their dads.

Once out of the park, getting to the Little Mermaid wasn't difficult. In the smaller lanes, some of the residents had their beddings out on the balcony for a sunning, though the sun wasn't that fantastic.
 
Moving into main street, all it takes was to follow the crowd. It's not a massive crowd, but they were moving in a general direction. Sometimes there are benefit in following the herd. Very soon, another park came into sight, and more important, water. This is ChurchillParken, with a bust of Winston Churchil. Furthen down is the Langelinie promenade that led to the pier.

I just followed the promenade and very soon came to a crowd before that famous statue. Most are before the mermaid, but some were crowded around a barista serving steaming coffe from the back of a tiny van. I wasn't taken by the small size of her, but was surprise she was so accessible.
 
I remember in Shanghai, she was seperate from the sometime-mob by a body of water. Here, she was right by the bank. The visitors were stepping on rock to get to her. One guy actually climb on her to have his photoes taken. I think he was going to make some rude gestures, until some Japanese tourists plead with him "No, no good".

Undeniably a national treasure, it is therefore surprising that Denmark has resisted over the years to place it behind gates, chain or glass panel, away from the bank. Even though there had been a few cases of vandalism on the statue. I can only think that is because the liberal minds of the country choose to trust her people. Weeks after I left, China premier Hu visit Copenhagen. He was on a cruise with the Danish royal couple. From the ship, the Little Mermaid may look familiar, but the whole setting a bit bizzarre.

Of course it is no crime to be demure and hoping the world to leave one alone. But the biggest problem with wishing the world leaves one alone is that the world seldom does. Very soon, the world would be climbing all over you.





















 
Seemingly to balance out the Little Mermaid, the park is littered with statue of strong warrior type women/goddesses. One of my favourite is that of the Valkyrie, the scandinavian warrior goddess said to appear at battle field to pick up the defeated. The musculine statue seems to by scream down from heaven, standing guard near the entance to the park.

Having found the Little Mermaid, navigating back to the train station was easy. Down the road, by the water is Amalienborg, the winter home of the royal family, with the guards in bear-skin hats standing sentry.

 

Further down is Nyhavn. Something of a Danish Boat Quay. The boats line the water, and restaurants lined the bank. Only here, blankets were thrown on the restaurant chairs for the al fresco customer. Apparently, the temperature is going to dip as dinner approaches.

It was time to leave behind Anderson's fairy tale land, and headed back to the station.

I could have arrange my ticket to Oslo with the Danish Railways (DSB) counters, but Swedish Railway (SJ) has a customer service centre in the station.

The silvery grey color scheme and clean lines of the shop was really attractive. Swedish design won the day. I bought my ticket to Norway here. I was informed that for that particular weekend, the train will not go all the way to Oslo. The tracks were under maintenance and the final leg to Oslo will be made by bus. I have to admit that the slender Swedish blondes manning the counters didn't hurt their chances against DSB.

I heard out to the nearest MacDonald's before another night on the railroad. I was expecting some fellow tourists at the Mickey-D, true enough, there was a family sounding like Singaporeans.