COPENHAGEN | A Daily dose

[Austinlee]

Nice dome. (if not a little stubby!) oh well....

[FREKI]

Another one of my favorite buildings in the city is the Magasin du Nord department store

This 138 year old store is currently the largest department store in Denmark and has more than 40.000 customers weekly and 1700 employees

Recently the nearby Kongen's Nytorv Metro Station was made with an underground pasage right into the lower floor of the store where you'll find a food court and a great high quality food market

Prior to the department store this was the site for the exclusive Hotel du Nord where among others storywriter Hans Christian Andersen used to live..

[FREKI]

Today we'll take a look at a more modern part of the city - Tuborg Havn ( Tuborg Habour ) located in northern part of town

If the name Tuborg is familiar to you it's probable because it's a succesful Danish beer brand created by the same Brygger Jacobsen who also founded Carlsberg..

The habour itself is from 1868 but as you can see have been newly renovated after the Tuborg breweries - and the south of it is currently one of largest construction sites in the country with a large number of high income apartments being build.. even a highrise that is a pretty rare thing around here sadly..
It is also one of most exclusive and expensive places to live in the Kingdom..


It's a very nice place for a stroll on a sunny day - and you get a great view to nearby Sweden from there...

[Austinlee]

^Now that's what I like!! Modern buildings and modern toys... Sexy!

[Bergenser]

That's nice glassy, building
and cool Porsche.

[FREKI]

Going back to the old stuff I'll like to present Christiansborg Castle home of the Danish Parliament and some of the Royal chambers for ceremonial events..

The spot it's located on ( and island called Slotsholmen ) is the exact same spot as the founder of Copenhagen Bishop Absalon buildt his first castle on in 1170 to protect his city..
At that time the island were a lot more isloated than it is today, where it's now a key transportation area for the city with bridges going to the islands both Zealand and Amager..

The current castle are relatively new as for some reason the castles have a tendency of burning down to a point where it's not even funny anymore - latest in 1992 where an emergency flare made a large part of the roof burn down..

The low building infront with the turning spirer is the old stock exchange Børsen from 1620 now home to the camber of commerce


The Christianborg spire is 106m tall - exactly as high as the city hall and the two towers are the tallest structures in the Copenhagen municipal

[Western Spaghetti]

Great pictures

[erwin]

Originally Posted by FREKI

Another one of my favorite buildings in the city is the Magasin du Nord department store

This 138 year old store is currently the largest department store in Denmark and has more than 40.000 customers weekly and 1700 employees

My daughter is gonna like this building, she loves shopping!

Nice pictures! I get a sunny feeling.

[Surrealplaces]

Nice pics, thanks for posting these.

[FREKI]

Thanks all!

"Copenhagen" in Danish means "merchant's habour" and there's a good reason for that - see the city was founded at a key location between the islands of Zealand and Amager at an easily defendable spot with easy access to the Øresund straight where access to the Baltic sea could easily be controlled ( and at times taxed )

These days the "habour" part of the habour is almost gone and instead now we have a nice channel running trough the city with cozy waterfronts on each side..

Another relatively new things are the habour baths - these are enclosed parts of the habour where you can swim safely under the supervision of trained lifeguards.. needless to say these are loved by kids on warm summer days..

The largest one is located in the area known as Island's Brygge not far from the city center

[FREKI]

Today will take a look at the older side of town Nyhavn ( "new habour" )

These days the habour is all but new with the youngest building being more than 300 years old, but it's more popular today than ever before..

The area was a redlight district for sailor trough several centuries but is now a faviored bar area with some really great seafood restaurants too..

I can tell that in all my 27 years of existing I have never found a better place for a ice droughtbeer on a spring day - an experiance I will HIGHLY recommend!

Nyhavn have been home to many famous people trough the years - the most known is probable Hans Christian Andersen who lived in sevral of the buildings and wrote many of his fairytales here..


In the summer this is also a great place to go if looking for some of the best Icecream in all of the Kingdom!

[staff]

Damn, I miss summer.

[Austinlee]

Colorful. That last pic looks like it could be a carribbean island.

[FREKI]

^On a cold winter day perhaps ( a warm summer day here rarely exceeds 30C here )

[Bergenser]

So many colours, I like it.

[FREKI]

A few kilometers from the inner city you find the municipal of Frederiksberg with it's lovely Frederiksberg Park constructed by King Frederik IV

And the jewel on the crown is the Frederiksberg Castle from 1699 with it's great location on the top of a hill known as Valby Bakke

Much of the castle now fuctions as part of the Army's Officer School and are rarely used by the Royal Family

This is by far my favorite park in Copenhagen and a must see if visiting in the summer!



You also find Copenhagen Zoo as part of the park along with some wonderful small canals where you can rent small rowingboats if you feel like taking the misses on a romatic mini cruise

[Bergenser]

That's Denmark.

[FREKI]

Today we'll keep with the old and Royal and take a look at the main Royal Palace Amalienborg from 1750

The Palace is made up of 4 almost identically buildings ( one of them shown in the picture ) placed around a square with a stature of King Frederik V in the middle. ( some may know it from Sim City 4 )

HM The Queen stays in one of the buildings with her husband, the Crownprinces share another one ( although they currently both live elsewhere ) and the remaining 2 are used for guests and family visits..
You can always see if any Royalty is present in the daytime if a Royal flag is raised ( in this case it's the Queen's and she is at home )

A daily happening is the changing of the Royal Guards that takes place every day at noon.. you can also follow them to and from the Palace to their base located a few km's away ( it's a small parade in itself )


I had the honor of serving in the Royals Guards back in the day, so it's a place I hold very dear..

[arbeiter]

oddly enough, I didn't make it to Nyhavn when I went to Copenhagen. I think it was too far out of the way from the more central Indre By locations. My feet were cold and soggy from the melting snow.

Copenhagen's aesthetics were very interesting ibecause they just narrowly missed true awe-inspring elegance by retaining a classically Nordic sense of functionality. There are plenty of great winding alleys near the University, but there are also conspicuous neon signs, some in English (and they certainly don't need to be in English - advertising a non-English brand name in a city where more people are likely to find comfort with lines cancelling out the letter o) - but I adored the juxtaposition of ornate buildings and boxy buildings, conglomerate logos and church clocks, sea-hardy maritime lidos and canals, mid-rise office buildings and garishly-painted amusement parks, charcoal train yards and slick subway entrances, 7-11's and sex shops, the lack of heat in the train station but heated sidewalks, anarchist colonies that exist by government regulation, graffiti that lacks any sense of urgency or seriousness, and of course, gay bathhouses where people mostly hang out and chat.

I felt that Copenhagen is essentially a fancy outfit with rain boots and a slicker. Along the subway, it seemingly takes about 3 minutes to go from one end of town to the other. I recognized the same people more than once, and it all made sense when my friend said he had stopped seeing the cuteness a long time ago, sometime in high school, and would prefer to see the ugliness of Brooklyn just because it keeps you on your toes.

i went with him to a gay bar on Studiestraede (student street, I believe) - it was essentially a little cubbyhole with a flimsy looking bar serving weak small drinks and standard beers, and had absolutely no hint of Danish style whatsoever. The guys who hung out there seemed to be mostly bored looking 18 year olds sipping weak ciders and looking kind of plain for what I thought Danish gay guys would look like. But they definitely noticed I wasn't Danish and talked to me immediately in flawless English. They directed me to a gay restaurant, which isn't very common in America, uncommon in all but probably 2 neighbohoods nationwide - bars are gay, clubs are gay, but restaurants are rarely 'gay'. The most gorgeous waiters I'd ever seen served moderately priced, pleasantly plastic tasting Danish takes on Mexican food. I ate alone because my only friend there was en route on the S-tog. I noticed a lot of other guys eating alone, peering their eyes over their menus at other guys peering their eyes back over theirs. Cruising and cuisining, I guess. I didn't even have to make some kind of awkward gesture when I ordered - they talked to me in Danish, I hesitated and responded in English. Their summarization of my order was as heartless and routine as at a midwestern Chili's. I felt like being a native English speaker automatically relegates you to banality in parts of Europe - because, well, let's face it, the Danish speak English about as good as you do, and they're not even natives, and they have to also know all the other regional languages and pay higher taxes and look more beautiful. A car with hubcaps does the trick, but an upgraded engine and alloy wheels is something else. Still, I felt proud of being a New Yorker, because when Danish people asked me where I was from, my answer was both a common one yet a respected one. They might be a handsomer superpeople, but the conversations I had with some of my peers revealed that there is something very special and comfortably elitist about knowing that irony, nuance, cultural reference, and other peculiarly English things are not easily translated. It's also great being an American overseas sometimes, because if you hold someone's attention for long enough, they are almost always pleasantly surprised. America's negative stereotypes are lunged across the world daily, and it's fun to be a little ambassador of surprises. It was mutually gratifying to talk to someone on the train across the Oresund and for him to realize that there are people in America who actually know where Malmo is and more than one thing about it.

Given the chance, you'll find that many Americans would be just as interested in being part of your culture as you inevitably are with ours.

[Deepstar]

Nice photos. Great looking city!