Visiting the Bros

Map by Hazhk - Own work,
CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48192599

Copenhagen is made up of ten official districts, what in London would be called boroughs. Having spent most of the holiday so far visiting Indra By (Inner City), today was a day for visiting four of the others - three of whom are generically known as the bros - Vesterbro, Norrebro and Osterbro. The names are another example of the sense one gets in Denmark of knowing lots of the language - West, North and East are pretty clear at least in the pronunciation of the bro names.   

Early Morning

After 6.62 miles of walking yesterday, following the 7.7 miles the day before (16,950 and 16,200 in my step count - more in Drew's as we discovered in our Devon walks). I was tired going to bed and laid in until 6am.

Having not got the previous day's photos up on to Flickr last night, I completed this task this morning. 

I showered, shaved and brushed my teeth (in the reverse order to that which I just typed) earlier than usual today, so that we could drop our first few day's laundry down to reception. The message on the laundry bags (paper not plastic in this eco-friendly place) is, get them down to us by 8.30am and magic will happen to them by the afternoon. And indeed, the clothes were all back, washed and pressed (a shock for them I'm sure as I don't own an iron, buying non-iron clothing as far as possible).

Breakfast

Having learnt our lesson yesterday of not leaving breakfast to late or we wouldn't get any, we headed out at the earlier time of 9am and took the opportunity of the earlier time to photograph the garden area of the hotel that we walk through each time we come in and out, by 10am it is normally full with people eating breakfast, so we've not stopped before.

We headed around the corner to Risteriet Coffee Halmtorvet, where we had stopped for coffee on Tuesday afternoon. I opted for the sourdough with ham and cheese and Drew for the sourdough and cheese, this was washed down by a latte and an americano.

Given how busy it was we had to eat outside, but it was a pleasant 62F (16+C) so this was a great start to the day.

Vesterbro

Vesterbro is the area of the town - west of the railway lines - in which our hotel is located. But on Tuesday and Wednesday we had headed East from here, so haven't explored more than the four or five streets immediately beside the hotel when going out for dinner. So, this was our first visit to view the area.

Vesterbro is characterised by its muti-layered past, first as the butchery and meat-packing district, then as the red-light district and now as the hip centre of foody and cultural life in the City. The paintings on hoardings and the side of buildings are smart and well composed. 

There are some, largely residential, streets which are very decorously painted. Everywhere, as elsewhere in the city, there are lots of bikes and lots of bike lanes. I'm challenged by the reality that a bike being pushed is on the pedestrian pavement whereas a bike being cycled has a lane of its own. Given that pushed bikes are as much of an obstacle to pedestrians as any other bike, I'm not sure I buy into this philosophy. But Vesterbro certainly does.

Drew makes a good point about the number of unchained bikes - not only the majority, but every bike that isn't outside a 'bike rental' shop is not chained? Is it that Danes are more law abiding than Brits (Drew's view) or is it that Danes have so many bikes that the is no value in acquiring yet another one, even if stealing it would be easy?? 

We walked down Halmtorvet until it became Sønder Boulevard and to the end of that street where it meets Enghavevej. Turning up here we came to Enghaveparken, a delightful park laid out, in the gap between a busy road and a series of high rise apartments, in different sections. These included a grassy area, a child's play area, spaces for soccer and basketball and two planted areas, one wild and natural, the other structured and bounded by trestles, along with a lake - something for everyone.

From the park, which had plenty of charging places for EV cars around the roadside, we spotted a church. This was Kristkirken, Christchurch, and is again in the evangelical Lutheran tradition of the Danish National Church. This church was built to take account of the expansion of Copenhagen in the westerly direction and the funding was from donations from rural parish priests, who at the time - 1800s - were wealthy with large congregations, to fulfil the need of the urban poor. The church was designed by a son of one of the donor priests and he choose an unusual Romanesque style, unknown previously outside Italy.

The font is a 12th century font from an old church in Randers topped with a more modern depiction of John the Baptist baptising Jesus.

 

Drew was very taken by the idea of armchairs in a church, they are clearly not part of valleys' chapel culture!

From Christchurch we walked further up Enghavevej before veering off to see another church - St. Matthew's. Though this church was under reconstruction, so the only people who could enter were building workers. 

This slightly wayward route at least led us to the area around the Tove Ditlevsens School grounds, here the soft area designed as a school yard, also had educative purposes. I found myself, see above, walking along isobars between high and low pressure systems. On a positive note I must have learnt something from the FutureLearn course - Come Rain or Shine: Understanding the Weather - which I did with the Royal Metrological Society during lockdown.

Other parts of the yard include the Fibonacci Number sequence, prime numbers and reminders of the volume of cubes and circles (A=π*r2). 

We completed the walk along Enghavevej at 11am and at its junction with Vesterbrogade visited a coffee shop called Kaffestuen Vesterbro. We had a coffee each and used their facilities. 

Frederiksberg 

A little further along Verterbrogade we came to Frederiksberg which even had a Welcome to Frederiksberg sign.

A short distance from the welcome sign and we come to Søndermarken the Royal Park which was created along with the Frederiksberg Castle and garden in the 1730s. King Frederik the Sixth used the area as his Royal Hunting ground and invited members of the ruling class to hunt with him. Gradually, with the further development of the area and the building of a main road between the castle and the park, the area became a public park, though still owned by the Royal Family. 

The park includes some traditional elements of a park, with well-tended grass and avenues of trees.

It also has more experimental elements, like the rewilding area seen above

it was also something of a surprise to find a 'Go Monkey' climbing area which is similar to assault courses, but targeted at younger people. 

It was also something of a surprise to come across Rhinos, though, contrary to what appears from the photo, they are on the other side of a tall, strong, metal fence. As the Copenhagen Zoo is part of the area originally given over to the park. So, while we saw some of the animals, we didn't visit the zoo. 

After a lovely walk through the park we arrived at the part of the park which faces across the road to Frederiksberg Castle, but were intrigued by the fountain and the glass boxes behind us. 

It turns out that the glass boxes are the entrance to an underground world. 

The former underground water reservoir of the City, opened in 1856, to provided drinkable water for the City and withstand the ravages of cholera, the reservoir ceased in its original use in 1933 and were drained in 1981, becoming redundant, though continuing to develop stalagmites and stalactites like a natural cave would do.

In 1996, as part of Copenhagen's time as the European City of Culture, the old space was brought back to life and became what it is now - an amazing art space.

The current exhibition is artist Chiharu Shiota's Multiple Realities. This uses water and moving images to draw you into reflection on the nature of life and reality. [Co-pilot's note: Oh, My, God - see what I have to put up with!! They were just pretty colours!] Because two of the three chambers in the Cisternerne have water at the base, and water is used and projected on to some of the moving items, the whole place feels risky. Watching the moving pieces and not watching your feet could easy lead to you paddling, rather than staying on the complexly designed walkways above the water. Juding by the amount of damp footprints on the floors, many people had stepped to far, we even saw one woman so content to photo or video with her phone, that she forgot to look down and walked into the 10cm (i.e. not life threatening) water. We managed to avoid stepping in, but it was touch and go a few times, given my propensity to stride forward, rather than take short careful steps, but the place forces you to slow down - an amazing exhibit and great fun. More photos and more of the history can be viewed on Flickr - start here.

We then crossed to Frederiksberg itself - an impressive castle, once the Royal summer palace, now the base of the Royal Danish Military Academy.

The castle boasts amazing gardens and lakes and is a much more refined stroll, familier to people who know English country houses with lawned gardens, than the less organised park in Søndermarken.

On exiting the palace gardens, we come to a street called Allégade, which appears to mean Boulavard Street? If I'd been naming it I'd have called it statue alley as it has a range of poets, an actor, a jester, a politician and a journalist which can all be seen on Flickr - starting here - the road eventually leads to the impressive Fredericksberg Town Hall (see photo above).

Soon after leaving the town hall, Frederiksberg says farewell to us as we move into our next Bro.

Norrebro

Norrebro is a much more mixed community than Frederiksberg. While the main street in the former has Bang and Olsen and other expensive brands, the same street in Norrebro has local stores, including an impressive hardwear store, kebab shops and other small retailers. 

Norrebro is also more likely to have street art/graffiti, much of it very well done indeed.

In one of the more urban parts of town it was good to see how local apartment blocks were not concrete jungle but grow plants up the sides of the buildings introducing greenery into an otherwise brown and white space. 

Østerbro

At Universitetsparken Norrebro become Østerbro a more refined part of the town, with Fælledparken playing a big part in setting the scene. The park with its large lake and multiple sporting venues is also the location of the Danish National Soccer Ground where FC Copenhagen also play.

Half Marathon

It was at the other end of this part, from the side we entered, that Drew had to collect his information pack and t-shirt/bib for Sunday's half-marathon. [Co-pilot's note: It is interesting, dear readers, that they give you the t-short before the run. Where Cardiff make you wait until after the run]

the Bib Pick-up had a big queue even though it is also open tomorrow. 

Here is Drew getting to the end of the queue, while I find a nice bench and begin to wait.

It turns out the wait wasn't long, indeed Drew was back with his stuff in ten minutes from joining the queue. He puts this down to the fact that the runners are segregated inside into their expected speed groups and Drew's "the elderly and infirm" was the smallest group represented, so once inside he didn't have to wait.

Armed with the material we headed back on the metro to the hotel arriving at 4.45pm, almost 8 hours since we left and with 10.7 miles of walking which comes to 25,130 of my steps!

I guess it was no wonder we were a bit tired and spent the rest of the afternoon resting and sorting out our photos to upload them to Flickr.

Dinner

We hadn't decided where to eat tonight. I'd seen an interesting looking menu at a place called Warpigs - the menu was USA BBQ in style, so we walked the 1/2 mile from our hotel to the place, only to find it completely full with tables of 20 being shared with strangers, and no sense that it was going to have space for the two of us any time soon.

Drew had spotted an alternative - Burger Garage - a place he had seen on the first full day we had been in town. It seemed a viable alternative. So we opted to go there. It turned up to be a busy, friendly place, but they were easily able to accomodate us.

For starters I opted for Chicken wings, which were nice pieces of fresh chicken wing in a breadcrumb batter deep fried. Simple but tasty - I was so pleased this was real chicken, not some nugget concoction. 

Drew went with onion rings and these were also lightly breadcrumbed and while they were as large as some you see they were perfectly cooked for Drew's taste; he especially liked the light seasoning in the breadcrumbs. 

For Mains I went with the Latino burger. A Danish beef patty cooked with cheddar cheese, salsa, guacamole and jalapeno chillies in the bun. It really did have a Latin flavour I'd more commonly associated with nachos, but they went well with the beef patty and the juices were mopped up well by the bun.

Drew went with the Fire House burger with the same pattie, this time treated with lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos and sweet chilli sauce. He says the meat was deliciously juicy and the bread not overly sweet. It had lots of hot jalapenos, which he loves. 

We had fries, curly in Drew's case, not in mine and two sauces, chilli mayo for Drew and Alioli for me. The chips were crisp and dry, not at all greasy and the dips were perfect for dipping the chips in.

We finished our dinner and walked back to the hotel by 9.30pm and getting to bed at 10.45pm after finishing yesterday's blog post.