Half Marathon Day for Drew - A bit more religion than I expected for me!

The Lakes - Copenhagen

As often happens on days with things planned, I woke a little earlier than usual at 4.30am this Sunday morning. I'm not sure what I was excited about, it is Drew doing the Half Marathon not me!

I compete loading the photos from yesterday, which had been a photo heavy day, into Flickr and completed Friday's blog post. 

Drew also woke up earlier than usual at 6am. I make coffee, two cups each - stretching one coffee bag between two cups as I have done each morning since we arrived. 

Breakfast

We had decided to have breakfast at Risteriet Coffee Halmtorvet as it is nearby and the breakfast is quick to prepare and simple enough to meet Drew's criteria of no fussy food before his run. Typical of us, in aiming to be there at opening time - 9am - we arrived at 8.50am, but say on the benches outside until 9am. Arrived, we had what we had had on Thursday - Sourdough with cheese and ham for me and sourdough with cheese for Drew followed by an americano and a latte.

 

Breakfast finished at 9.20am we both headed to the Metro, Drew to travel on the M3 via Kongens Nytorv to Vibenshus Runddel and I on the M3 going the other way around the circle to Nørrebros Runddel station. 

I boarded the 9.30am Metro. Only I and one other person were the in our carriage of twenty people not carrying half marathon bags. At each stop more runners got on. 

Church

I arrived at Norrebros Runddel at 9.40pm and it is a ten-minute walk to Sakramentskirken (Blessed Sacrament Church) where there was to be Mass at 10am. 

A short walk brings me to the church which is in the main road in Norrebro. Indeed they were laying race directions and barriers out on the road as I arrived.

Sakramentskirken is a simple plain church and soon before Mass was due to start three Mother Teresa nuns sat in front of me. 

At 10am prompt we began a hymn, one whose words were familiar to me, though I'd not heard them in Danish:

What is strange is that these seven verses about the characteristics of the coming Jesus are normally sung in Advent, not at this time of the year. The English version taking its name for the final verse and chorus - O Come, O Come Emmanuel. The other verses are in the correct order - Wisdom, Adoni, Root of Jesse etc.

The 'priest' then gave a brief introduction, at which point the three nuns all left the Church, I was a bit puzzled, the only bit of the introduction I got was about the priest being on holiday in Slovenia. However, what the prayer leader had meant is that there was no priest to celebrate Mass, because the regular priest was in Slovenia and therefore, the worship leader, a Deacon, was going to lead a Liturgy of the Word and Holy Communion but not Mass. Of course, this only became clear to me after the Prayers of the Faithful, up until that point everything was as it would be at Sunday Mass. Then the Deacon went to the tabernacle to bring the Blessed Sacrament to the Altar - immediately I realised where that the sisters had gone, because they would be wanting to go to Mass on a Sunday. Still, I stayed and enjoyed the rest of the prayers and singing - Danish words to very familiar chants used in Latin and English.

I was also interested in the readings, as here in Danish, on this Sunday the readings set for the day throughout the Catholic Church include these words of St. Paul in his first letter to Timonthy (2:1-8)

My advice is that, first of all, there should be prayers offered for everyone – petitions, intercessions and thanksgiving – and especially for kings and others in authority... 

It seemed apposite for this day, the day before Queen Elizabeth the Second's funeral in the UK.

The other two readings were about supporting the poor. The first Amos 8:4-7:

 Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country … The Lord swears it by the pride of Jacob, ‘Never will I forget a single thing you have done.’

Is pretty in your face, the Gospel (Luke 16:1-13) also pulls no punches, as the last verses say:

English	Danish
No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.	Ingen slave kan tjene to herrer. Han vil enten hade den ene og elske den anden eller holde sig til den ene og ringeagte den anden. I kan ikke tjene både Gud og mammon.

It was interesting to me to see the Danish word for money in this context is the old English word that would be familiar to readers of the King James VI & I bible, though doesn't appear in modern versions. It gave me an insight into the homily (sermon) as the Deacon was constantly referring to the choice between Gud (God) and mammon (money). He was my kind of preacher; he had finished in six minutes. Focussed and with what seemed like a clear message. So, the service ended at 11am. But I still had to get to Mass. 

This idea may seem stange to non-Catholics, but one of the fundemental obligations laid on a Catholic (along with the commands of the Lord, like those mentioned in the gospel of loving and caring for family, friends and neighbours.) is "On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass." (Canon Law: Canon 1247.) While this can be abrogated for particular reasons, like illness or, for example, a pandemic. In today's case I was well and able to get to Mass as there were five other Catholic Churches in the City. 

However, as it turned out the answer was nearer to hand. Sakramentskirken is home of Copenhagen's French-speaking population and the French Mass was being celebrated at 11.30am. So, I had time to sit and pray, and was able to attend the Mass in French.

This did, of course, mean I heard the same readings in a different language. The French priest was much more fiery in his homily, taking 12 minutes about it. My French is very poor, so I made less sense of the homily than I did the Danish version - until the priest began decrying 'Trump' and 'La foule Maga' as examples of the people Amos was having a go at in the Bible. Who says religion and politics don't meet.

My Universalis app, provided me with the text of the Mass for both languages - a really great bonus of an app I already use multiple times of the day. Given this church is regularly used for French Masses they also have a Carnet De Chants available. 

So, intending to go to Mass - normally 50 minutes most Sundays, I ended up in Church from 9:55 until 12.30am, certainly as I say in the title of today's post, more time than I was expecting. But handy that I didn't have to hunt out somewhere else to go to Mass later in the day. 

Lunch

Given the length of time I had been in Church and the additional time I'd been travelling there, I needed to find a toilet. Thankfully, just 200 meters down the road was a nice cafe selling sandwiches and coffee. I stopped there, placed my order and visited their toilets while it was being prepared.

I tried to be adventurous and asked for Rugbrødssandwich med røget laks, hvidløgsost og Spinit - a Rye Bread Sandwich with smoked salmon, garlic cheese and spinach and, of course, a cup of Americano. It was delicious.

Walking Back

After leaving the cafe it was another 100 yards and I was at the Queen Louise Bridge.

This bridge separates the three lakes, which are in fact manmade items from the time when the old City was walled and these were part of the moat on the glacis of the walls. They are now a lovely place to walk. Indeed, they are so popular that instead of the usual close pedestrian and cycle path, the ones here are separated by a grass verge as they are both so busy. 

The lakes are called Sortedams Sø, Peblinge Sø and Sankt Jørgens Sø with the first two being separated by Queen Louise Bridge and the final two by Gyldenløvesgade. This photo is of the housing on Peblinge Sø.  

In the gap between Peblinge Sø and Sankt Jørgens Sø keeping pedestrians and cyclist completely separate is harder, but it is managed effectively by the Danes with the steps being for pedestrians - up on the right, down on the left - and the ramps for cyclists. It seemed to work well.

At the end of Sankt Jørgens Sø is the National Planetarium building with its own fountain beside.

Across the road from the end of Sankt Jørgens Sø is another Catholic Church, the Church of the Sacred Heart - it was closed when I walked past (mid-Sunday afternoon). 

Hotel

I arrived back at the hotel at 2.30pm and Drew got back from his half-marathon at 3:10pm - having done a time of 2:26 minutes, seven minutes less than the Cardiff Half earlier in the year. I made us some teas and Drew bathed and relaxed while I updated the blog and loaded some photos.

Dinner

Given the running, when booking the holiday, I made sure that tonight's meal was going to be close to the hotel - in case Drew wasn't up to walking far. As it happens, he was fine.

The restaurant of choice was Nimb Brasserie based in the Nimb hotel the opposite side of the railway station for us. In this case the Railway station becomes a path from one side to another. 

Our table was booked for 7.30pm and we arrived a few (10) minutes early. The setting was lovely and the view outside was across the Tivoli Gardens, this hotel being designed as part of Tivoli with entrance on the park side as well as on the public side.

The meal began with some delightful bread, two rye, two white.

For starters Drew opted for the Classic steak tartare with egg yolk and cress - as ever the 'little underdone' joke reappeared! There was a really deep herbiness to the flavour and the egg was gooey.

I went with the Duck rillettes served with cornichons, mustard and grilled bread. The cornichons and pickled onions were amazingly pickled - the sharpest I've tasted and an excellent foil for the rich texture and flavour of the duck. It was like being transported to France with this food.

I also had a soup course, which was wonderfully flavoured. It was Porcino mushroom bisque with scallops cooked "mi cuit", piquillo pepper, marcona almonds and grilled olives. The crunch of the almonds and the crispness of the caramelised scallops were a great delight, but the bisque, with the sweet unctuous peppers were the real star of this delightful little morsel.

For mains Drew had Gnocchi in creamy herbal sauce with peas, spinach, courgette and parmesan. This dish was also rich in herbs, the gnocchi was nice and squidgy like a good gnocchi should be. It was just right for Drew's after race need.

While I had Danish matured ribeye Steak with pommes frites and salad. Simple but delicious - the chips were astounging crisp, the salad had a balsamic and oilive oil dressing which was perfect and, the star of the show

As for the beef, when I asked for blue steak, the waitress said her tick list only went down to rare. She said that she would ask the chefs but thought that as they were all French trained, they should be able to do it. As you can see below (vegetarians look away) they managed it perfectly.

For dessert Drew had the Peach Melba Special which had snowflakes (little bits of icecream) sprinkled over as part of the service. 

The meringue was very rich and sweet, very lightly toasted and amazing to eat. Delicious. The sponge in the melba was light and tasty and there was a nice bit of soft fruit to offset the peachiness.

 

I opted for the three 3 French cheeses with garnish and crispbread. I must have messed up using the 'night' feature on my phone, as by this time it was very dark, but when I checked this photo it was black. However, I can tell you that the cheeses were Époisses, Comté and Selles-sur-Cher. Each one of them delightful in their own way, the crispbread was thin rye bread toasted on both sides, so less like a Ryvita than I was expecting, and very crunchy. 

We finished with a cup of espresso each. Very pleased with what we had had.  

We walked back the .2 of a mile to the hotel and were there by 9.45pm and in bed by 10pm. Today I had only walked 4.1 miles. Drew had done significantly more!

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.