Copenhagen & Denmark

So my trips in Denmark were not too successful except in Copenhagen. As you all know I had a little trouble when I first went to Denmark and was planning on staying in Arhus but ended up spending two extra days in Copenhagen. I then tried to go to the city in Denmark where Shakespeare's Hamlet is suppose to be set and see the castle in which the King of Denmark was suppose to have lived. However, I got the name of the town mixed up and I ended up in a small, quaint town that really had nothing going on.

Copenhagen on the other hand was excellent and is my favorite city by far, thus far on the trip. I was able to meet a relative here that almost no one in my family has met and I had a great time with him. He showed me around Copenhagen, he took me to see the Little Mermaid, the statue not the movie, he took me out to lunch twice for old fashion Danish food, which I am quite fond of and he also took me to the opera. There is a new opera house in Copenhagen that was built by the richest man in Denmark and then was given to the state. This however didn't work out too well beacuse the opera house is situated in a place in Copenhaen where there is little parking and the only way to get to it by foot is by a ferry that comes once every twenty minutes. Anyway, the opera I saw was Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman, which is a french opera and is very lovely. My great uncle Kjeld lent me a book on the opera and I was able to read the story before hand so I knew what was going on. I won't go into the details of the opera because it is actually a complex story that would take too much space and time to recount.

Copenhagen the city is very beautiful, unlike most major cities in Europe it was not completely destoryed in World War II and many of the older buildings still remain. I was able to see the National Museum which is suppose to have magnificent collection of prehistoric viking artifacts but the exhibit was close until May 2008 for renovations. It did have a very interesting exhibit on medival Denmark. I was also able to see, for free, the Glyptotek which contained thousands of acient Roman, Greek and Egyptian statues. I even took a picture of Pompey the great friend of Juilius Caesar, but I didn't find one of Caeser himself. Apparently, the Glyptotek was the house of Carlsberg, the man of brewery fame, and he had purchased many of the statues on his many trips to Italy. I had a wonderful time on Copenhagen.

I am now in Berlin and plan on going to Switzerland, then Austria then on to Italy.