Copenhagen

Copenhagen-Oslo-Stockholm-Tampere-Helsinki-Ankara-Cappadocia

On Monday, Mom, Phyllis, Blake, and I went on a tour of three castles outside Copenhagen: Frederiksborg, Fredensborg, and Kronborg (at Helsinborg, or, as Shakespeare would have it, Elsinore). Our tour guide was an older woman named Hanne, whose demeanor suggested to me that she had, at one point or another, been an actress. We got lost on the way there (a drive that was supposed to take an hour took nearly two), and seemed to be taking a tour of Copenhagen’s tony suburbs rather than its castles. When we did reach Frederiksborg, it was lovely. Lots of paintings, lots of history (schizophrenic kings, banquets at which everyone through their specially made crystal goblets out the windows). Because of our delay, though, the other two castles were only photo opportunities. I was disappointed; I had really wanted to get a look at Kronborg, even if Shakespeare clearly hadn’t (it was a tax collection depot, not a royal palace). My disappointment was alleviated somewhat, however, when Hanne told us this story:

Kronborg, understandably, often hosts outdoor festivals of theater during the summer with some production of Hamlet as their centerpiece. Sometimes the original, sometimes an opera, sometimes a ballet; it doesn’t really matter so long as there’s something rotten in Denmark. In the summer of 1979, Derek Jacobi (of I, Claudius) was playing Hamlet in a (fortunately) traditional setting of the play. Rather less fortunately, it was a summer of heavy rains, ensuring that the play was paused as often as it was going, making it a rather tedious endeavor. One such pause happened just before the scene in which Hamlet stabs Polonius through the curtain. Jacobi, talented as he is, expressed his frustration with the rain by stealing a line from Macbeth: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” It was quite the hit.

Copenhagen is a city of many bicyclists; there is a special third road surface between the sidewalk and the road proper that is devoted to them, and their traffic takes precedence over pedestrians whenever the two should meet. Likewise, its citizens are remarkably fit, and (unlike in Norway and Sweden, where I have since come) if one sees someone who is overweight, it is safe to assume that they aren’t Danish. The surprising flipside of this, however, is that Copenhagen is also a city full of smokers. Most establishments have ashtrays on the tables, and it’s impossible to escape the constant cloud that hovers just around one’s eyes. The incredibly healthy, and the incredibly bad for you: it all comes together in that quintessential Copenhagener (whom we witnessed in several incarnations), the smoking cyclist.

All over Copenhagen, I kept seeing the same t-shirt over and over again: the familiar I ♥ NY shirt that in New York itself screams “I am a tourist! Please rip me off!” Here, though, it had a different following: the people wearing it were utterly stylish, with hipster haircuts and that particular look of urban ennui that indicates that as soon as anyone under the age of 20 or over 25 starts wearing it they’ll drop it as if they’d never heard of it. Why such an affection (or affectation) for New York? In reality, it’s no such thing. “Ny,” you see, is “new” in Danish, and a t-shirt that unknowingly proclaims I ♥ NEW is just fabulously ironic enough to make it hip.