The taxi driver who picked us up at the airport must have been British. At least, when he discovered neither of us could speak Danish (usually we make some attempt at a language, but couldn’t find any sort of connection between how the words looked on paper and how they were supposed to sound, so we chickened out) he dealt with this by speaking the same Danish slowly and loudly, and then huffing when we still didn’t understand. He was also especially impressed when the (obviously foreign) couple he’d picked up from the airport didn’t have any change, only banknotes, what with only just having got off the plane. Welcome to Denmark! I wonder has he ever picked anyone up from the airport before? I wonder if he’ll ever go back there…
Of course, he wasn’t the only grumpy wee man we encountered. There was a particularly strange hot-dog seller, not to mention the gent on the information desk at the Black Diamond (well, not on the desk, more behind, or even within the desk – you know what I mean), but we’ll get back to him. Forunately for us, everyone we encountered after that first car journey spoke English, so at least we were grumped at understandably.
It was cold, very cold. It snowed. A lot. Yes, we chose to travel to a Scandinavian country at the start of March, but apparently the weather was quite abnormal for the time of year. We enjoyed two or three days of blizzards, beginning just as we got off the plane, but the snow has a certain appeal. I had to buy a woolly hat, and an exceedingly warm pair of gloves which I have since mislaid. It did let up eventually, the day before we left. I don’t think it got any warmer, though. The neon thermometer around the corner from the Central Station didn’t budge from -2C any time we walked past it, day or night, so I’m taking that to mean it was broken. Cold, but broken. Possibly broken by the cold.
If you want to spend money, Copenhagen is the place to be. Shops, shops, and shops, with the emphasis on labels and extravagance. Even the cafes (of which there are many – it seemed there were even more than in Vienna, which I’m sure violates some kind of natural law) require a quick telephone call to the bank manager. When I’m spending 13 quid on hot chocolate and cake for two people, I tend to break out in a rash.
That’s how you know I’m British – I come back from holiday, and the first thing I say is that the weather was bad and it was expensive. You’d wonder, otherwise.
But it was good.
More photos at pgallery.net