Rejser længere væk i København - Travelling further afield in the Copenhagen

 

Early Morning

Tuesday, our second Tuesday in Copenhagen arrived, it was another day with me waking up at 5.30am, not bad, there have been holidays when mornings have started at 3.30am! 

With Malmo having been so busy yesterday I had a lot of photos to upload and name on Flickr in between making cups of tea/coffee for Drew and I in the hotel room. So, even with the best intentions of leaving the hotel at 9am, not to be too late for breakfast, in the end, by the time we had both got washed and dressed we didn't leave the hotel until 9.50am.

Our plan for today was to venture to parts of Copenhagen we had not yet visited. Before the trip I had complied a list of 'must see places' informed by Visit Copenhagen's Top attractions in Copenhagen, Time Out's The 17 Best Things To Do In Copenhagen and Trip Advisor's Top 10 Attractions In Copenhagen and edited to our interests. Armed with this list there were only two places that really stood out for us that we hadn't managed to get to in our earlier days here, the two were Grundtvig's church and Amager Strandpark, which are on opposite sides of town from each other. 

Breakfast

Having renewed our Copenhagen City Pass on our DOT apps on Saturday we walked the one block from the hotel to the Stampesgade metro station to catch the metro to the Radhust station, from here it was a short walk to the Buzz Kaffebar that we had enjoyed so much on Saturday morning. We arrived at 10.00am and had a lovely breakfast.

Drew stayed with the Orange Juice he'd tried last time we were here, whereas I went with the drink called Hygge, which was a delicious mix of strawberry, apple and ginger - really refreshing.

For food we both had, again, the dish called Eggs and Sausage, which is such an amazing platter of delights. The description of it is here. Filling and delicious.

Suburban Train

On leaving Buzz we walked the five minutes to the Vesterport suburban train station, our City Pass, in addition to covering us for the metro, buses, waterbuses also allow for travel on the suburban trains in the City. So, today was our chance to try one.  

Vesterport Station is, as you can see in the photo below, built in a cutting between two sides of a very busy road in the middle of the City.

The view from the platform, see below, is also evidence of the urban nature of the location. In fact, the station is quite a busy one with four lines converging here. 

Only one of the four trains headed in the direction to which we wanted to travel, the B train, it arrived at 10.08am and we embarked on our way to Emdrup Station, the nearest station to our destination. 

Emdrup, though only 15 minutes away from central Copenhagen, is green and airy. Even the station looks more like a park than a railway station.

Everything is green in colour and in environmental terms too, down to the green planted roof over the platform.

Grundtvig's Church

Grundtvig's Church is, along with the Marble Church which we visited last Tuesday, one of the best-known churches in the City. 

When visiting the Marble Church, I mentioned the influence of Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, the poet, priest, hymn writer, teacher, philosopher, historian and politician on Danish culture and life. His most significant influence being on a restoration of Danish language and traditions at a time when the Danish Royal Family, of German stock, had introduced Germanic usage into both language, religion and teaching in Denmark, Grundtvig drew on the empowerment of the Danish rural population to renew Danish life. His contemporaries noted that he had renewed the Danish language and created a popular and national self-confidence. It is this same Grundtvig for whom this church (Grundtvigs Kirke in Danish) is named. 

On Grundtvig’s death in 1872 it was felt that a memorial to this great man shouldn’t be a small plaque or even a statue, but a church built in one of the new areas of the City, so that the faith which had been the centre of his life should be celebrated, or perhaps incarnated, in the up and coming community of Bispebjerg. A competition was held and in 1913 the architect Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint was selected to build it. He adopted the Expressionist style, which is very evident throughout the grand church. However, due to World War 1 the work didn’t start until 1921, the tower was complete by 1926, but the church and the surrounding buildings weren’t completed until 1940. 

Perhaps most striking is the frontage or tower of the church – it is an amazing edifice and approach the church from the direction of the Bispebjerg Cemetery at the end of the avenue it looks more like a mountain than a building, reminiscent in some ways of the approaches to great Baroque cathedrals.

Indeed, not only does it look like a mountain, but it actually gives its name to one. In 1936 Danish mountaineers saw the peak of one of the unnamed Greenland mountains and called it Grundtvigskirken, this image (borrowed from this site) shows the reason for the name!

I could spend the next section of the blog in superlatives about this church, its height, the amazing light, the way the tower, so dramatic outside is unnoticeable inside, all are striking, but I’d recommend you look for yourselves – the photos start here on Flickr, you’ll see there are plenty, both in and out. 

Indeed it is like no building I’ve ever seen before. 

Amager Strand

Having been awed by the designed grandeur of Grundtvig's Church our afternoon was spent in the contrast of the sandy coast of Copenhagen.

We caught the 12.24pm train from Emderb staying on this time to Norreport Station which has connection with the Metro, we caught the M2 from Norreport to Amager Strand station. The route was like this:
 

We arrived at 1.28pm and walked from the station towards the shore and in to Amager Strandpark. 

The map shows the scale of this open space by the sea, the second photo the way that land and sea have been integrated here to make for an amazing park area for pedestrians and cyclists and, as we saw, canoeists, paddleboarders and windsurfers.

Lots of Bike parking

Wind Surfing

Canoeists 

The park also led us past large numbers of windmills, Drew had been updating me about the huge increase in wind energy in Denmark since we arrived here last week, so now we had evidence of it. 

We also got to see our old friend, the wonderful Øresund Bridge which looks even more dramatic from this side of the strait that it does from Malmo.

Having walked for three miles we found ourselves closer to the Femøren station, the one further down the line, than the one we had got off. We caught the M2 from here to Kongens Nytorv and changed there for the M3 to København Metro Station a 21 minute journey, with a 400 metre walk back to the hotel. We arrived back at 3.30pm time to shower and dress before heading out for our last evening in this lovely city, but more of that in the next blog post.