Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

We arrived in Copenhagen on Thursday after a lovely sail north amongst the offshore wind generators and past the long graceful bridge crossing the mouth of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Denmark (beating into the wind of course!)

We found a berth in Christianshaven, a canal right in the heart of the city amongst the old warehouses and wooden sailing barges.

What a wonderful city is. There is a feeling of freedom and joy amongst the people. They all smile, have a spring in their step and manage to look elegant even when riding their bikes which pretty much take over the place! The roads are wide with cycle lanes everywhere. The Danes seem to have a very relaxed laissez fair attitude to life, very much in contrast to their Scandenavian cousins in Norway and Sweden where they most certainly would not cross the road if the red man was showing at the crossing. Here no one wears bike helmets, many smoke and they break what few rules there are with gay abandon!

Friday was a public holiday and party day, an annual holiday to celebrate the signing of the Danish constitution in 1849. We were out doing our tourist thing when we came across three youngsters attaching a bra to a rather fine looking statue. We asked them what they were up to and they explained that this year is the centenary of votes for women in Denmark. The sticking of bras to as many statues as possible before they got caught by the police was a protest that women still do not have equal right in Denmark! 

There was to be a rally which we stumbled across later that morning in part celebrating the centenary and part protest at female inequality. The march was huge. It was lead by very elegant young women dressed in suffragette clothing and flying Victorian style banners, they were still passing 15 minutes after they first passed us – a popular movement!

It is a beautiful city; many old buildings that survived the war (at least the last two, we Brits gave Copenhagen a real pounding in 1807 when we thought that they were getting a little too friendly with our old foe the Frenchies. Having pounded the city for 4 days we then ran off with the entire remains of the Danish fleet, 170 gunboats. Happily the Danes seeem to have forgotten that little incident!) Denmark was neutral in the first war, they tried again in the second but were soon occupied by the Germans but there was no damage done to their cities.

One of the most famous landmarks in Copenhagen is the little mermaid. Now here  is a magnificent piece of pr if ever I saw one! How does a small, rather insignificant statue given to the city by someone of no great importance and stuck on a rock on the water edge become the face of Copenhagen and the citys famouse monument? Who ever did that piece of pr I want to give them a job! 

The little statue was inspired by the mermaid who falls in love with a prince she rescues from a ship wreck  in the story by Hand Christian Anderson and was a gift to the city by the head of the Carlsberg brewery in 1913.

Copenhagen is known as little Amsterdam for its small canal system, the most famous of which is Nyhaven, home in years gone by to the whore houses and taverns serving the eclectic mix of seaman at this hub of sea trade routes around northern Europe. Today the old entertainment establishments are replaced with cafes and restaurants but old wooden sailing barges still line the canal, mostly now used a live aboards. 

On a sunny party weekend the cafes are full and the quay lined with buskers and a wonderful mix of people.

We came across one ambitious fellow building his own barge. Not only was he building it single handed from scratch but he even felled the trees himself! He has been at it 3 years so far with the hull complete and the decks under way, his hard wood planks lie on the dock along side him and he confidently tells me that he will have it sailing this summer – I love an optimist!

And then there is ‘The free state of Christiana’. If ever you needed proof of the laissez fair attitude of the Danes , this is it. In 1971 a group of squatters took over some deserted barracks in the eastern part of the city and established a commune. The local authorities initially tried to force the squatters to leave but, as the communities numbers swelled, the government decided to treat Christiania as a social experiment. Today the commune has 900 residents (it seemed either long grey haired hippies or younger Rastafarians and various coloured origins).

The commune has its own schools, infrastructure and system of government which are financed in part by cafes and the sale of handicrafts and yes, sale of the evil weed grown on the site! When I asked a lady selling Cannabis if it was legal in Denmark she explained that the police outside the commune regarded it as illegal but there was certainly no suggestion of illegality inside the commune. Sitting listening to the bands playing you could certainly get pretty high just from passive smoking from the many joints being smoked around you! As long as the commune are sensible about it the police seem to turn a blind eye. Upon leaving the commune there is a sign saying ‘you are now entering the EU’ – what a place!

Beautiful cities are always nice to see but what really makes travelling so special for me are the people you meet; the youngsters sticking bras on statues and the men building their canal barges from scratch – wonderful!

Mikes wife Sue and daughter Laura arrived in Copenhagen on Friday and joined us for a day of sightseeing. Gordon arrived on Saturday from Canada and joins me on the boat for the next leg of our journey.