Where I get a Danish mailbox up my ass
We're at the right place
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. After a smooth flight, azrhey and I arrived in Copenhagen Wednesday evening, greeted by skjalm, who's kindly keeping us safe from the elements, even kicking himself out of his own bed! Not to mention use and abuse of his Internet, booze, food, and what-not! He made us a very nice dinner of home-made lasagna, accompanied with some of the tasty mead that he's made himself. And a solid eggs and bacon breakfast the next morning.
One of the small details I liked was the faucet in the shower: it has a control for the temperature and a separate one for the flow (instead of the more common control for hot and cold water flow). This allows one to set the water temperature, then easily turn off and on the water (while you're soaping up, for example) without having to set the temperature again. I've been wanting a faucet like that for a long time, and while I'm assured that they're not that uncommon, the closest thing I had seen was a combination lever type faucet, but I don't know, they're just not quite accurate.
Chilling in the Nyhavn
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. On Thursday, skjalm accompanied us downtown, walking around a bit and eventually ending up in Nyhavn, where, as tradition would have it, we had a cold beer on the edge of the water. I don't really like traditions just for the sake of traditions, but when there's a good one, I take it! Despite what skjalm might say, the girls in Copenhagen are quite nice. I think he's just spoiled.
Boat house
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. azrhey and I then decided to take a boat tour, which turned out to be quite nice, as far as touristy things went. As it turns out, there are canals going into all sorts of places, and they are usually bordered by interesting buildings or places where people hang out. Since it was a nice day out, there was a lot of people.
Coming back, we walked on the Strøget (pedestrian street), checking out stores of various kinds (Danes really are at the top of the heap when it comes to design, and we both quite like good design!). We stopped at The Dubliner, where I had my first decent hamburger in a restaurant since I've arrived in Europe (in France, they have no concept that "tasty" and "hamburger" can intersect, MacDonalds seem to be just about the best you can get in Toulouse!).
Shark head tricycle
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. Walking back to the train station, we saw a shop that sold awesome tricycles, one of them with a WWII fighter plane style shark head painted on the side, quite cool!
Friday, we took it easy (we were on vacation, after all!), and had BBQ at skjalm's place, which is pretty nice, by the way. It's a housing coop, and people take care of maintenance jointly, as well as sometimes taking up projects (for example, skjalm set up a shared Internet access). This makes for the neighbours really living as a community, rather than just neighbours, as shown by a number of them joining us for BBQ. We also met friends of skjalm's, chellie_rose and her Montreal-native husband. skjalm baked bread, which I found quite good, as well as drinking some of his mead and sima.
Susana and our hot-dogs
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. The next day, we went at chellie_rose's place for, well, more BBQ. Apparently, the Danes like their beer and their BBQ! Which is pretty good, since they're both good and fun. There was a mountain of food, and some more friends of chellie_rose and her husband. She has a vampire teddy bear with bat wings, the cutest thing ever, not to mention a really friendly dog. After eating enough food to make sure I wasn't going to get hungry for the rest of the week, the girls went inside while "the guys" stayed out, drinking beer. We went back in at some point and watched V for Vendetta.
On our way out, I managed to shove a mailbox up my own ass, as I kneeled down rather quickly to tie up my boots, without noticing the mailbox on the door, and just about directly under my rapidly descending ass. I got it for a pretty nice cut in my bum, cutting through both my (brand-new and being worn for the very first time, of course) pants and underwear, and putting out a surprising amount of blood. I'm a special kind of genius, no doubt about it!
For the Sunday, azrhey and I headed over downtown, hoping to visit the Danish Design Center, but since it was closing early that day, we decided against it. We tried to find a city bike (which I think is a fantastic idea), but later found out that they would be put out only just after we'd leave (it was still, uh, "winter"), too bad.
The Round Tower
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. On our way, we saw people people play with a ball in kayaks, in the Frederiksholms Canal, they seemed to be enjoying themselves quite a bit. We visited the Rundetaarn (the Round Tower) and its museum, had a beer at the Europa café, checking out the girls, and then went to visit the Museum Erotica (logically). It's pretty nice, much larger than the one in Barcelona, and I'd recommend to plan at least a couple of hours for the visit.
In the evening, we took skjalm to a nice sushi restaurant in one of the dodgier parts of Copenhagen (which, in a way similar to Montreal, doesn't really mean anything, except more sex shops and tattoo parlours). We got out just in time to catch the end of the magic hour as we walked back to the train station. All those nice houses, restaurants and cafés, turning on their tasteful lighting while the sky gets a darker and darker shade of blue...
At his place, I geeked out with skjalm a bit, where we discussed maze generation algorithms and clever optimizations, among other things. He showed me Dice Wars, one of these simple and addictive Flash games. Which I'm nicely addicted to, by the way. Nice work, skjalm!
Skjalm's attempt at killing us
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. Monday morning, he figured he'd pick up some of his favourite Danish desserts to eat as a breakfast. There was one of the pieces, I think it was made exclusively of fat and sugar. This was also referred to as "his attempt to kill us". I suspect he was eyeing my laptop. But we survived, thankfully!
azrhey and I took another go at the Danish Design Center, which was successful this time. They had a section dedicated to bikes, some of which were quite amazing. There was another section for computers, with nice comparison of various breakthrough computers and their current counterparts (for example, a Macintosh Plus, an iMac G3 and the current Intel iMac). They had such pieces as the Compaq Portable, and a Nokia Communicator similar to that used by Val Kilmer in The Saint. We also saw the FLOWmarket, which I found very clever, although I didn't need to be reminded of that myself (azrhey insightfully pointed out the material waste that the exhibit itself constituted, but in the name of passing an important message, I suppose it's worth it). I got myself a fancy lighter at the shop (skjalm tells me that yes, I should indeed have a lighter, it's very handy).
Where Ungdomshuset used to be
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. In the afternoon, I went to see where the Ungdomshuset used to be. I was rather curious to see what kind of neighbourhood it was located in, and while it was clearly not a rich neighbourhood, I found the area to be quite pleasant (particularly the colourful apartment buildings in the streets behind, with the small bookshops, reminding me a bit of the McGill ghetto in Montreal). I find it quite regrettable that the place itself came to an end, and particularly the sketchy circumstances surrounding this whole episode. Between the city turning down a large sum raised by its community to buy it back, the police's use of potentially lethal gas and the arbitrary rounding up of people, it's hard to see the goodwill. I was told that until they destroyed the building, they had graffiti only on the Ungdomshuset itself, carefully keeping the surrounding buildings clean. Visiting the Ungdomshuset was actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to visit Copenhagen, and these events unfortunately happened before I could manage to do so. Looking at a list of artists who performed there certainly makes it look like I could have had some fun there.
Den lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid)
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. In the evening, I headed downtown with my camera and tripod to hunt for some photos. I don't think I was very successful, unfortunately, only managing to capture Den lille Havfrue (the Little Mermaid), which proved to be quite difficult, and then some shots of Nyhavn. I'm getting quite rusty with that camera, it seems. Also, mad props to iPhoto's "straighten" tool.
Bagsværd Sø
Originally uploaded by Pierre Phaneuf. That night, I had some fever, and it turned out that I got myself a cold. On the Thursday afternoon, I thought I was doing better, so I went for a bit of a walk around Bagsværd Sø while skjalm was doing his run the other way around, but by the time we got back to his place, I started feeling quite iffy again. I had been planning to see Christiania that day, but I ended up lying on the sofa lifelessly pretty much until we had to leave. Oh well, that'll be something for the next time!
At that point, I stuffed myself with aspirins, and managed to be well enough until I reached my seat in the plane, and the iffiness came back. My guts didn't appreciate the takeoff accelerations too much, but I remained in one piece. In Paris, we had to take a bus to the plane, which was a bit weird, especially as one of the buses had some mechanical problem, so we took off with about half the passengers.
I wish I had stayed in bed for a few days, but I worked right the next day! Let's say that those two days of work weren't the most productive in my life.
Photos from that trip can be found here.