Carlsberg in Copenhagen (a.k.a. Danish in Denmark)

We arrived in Copenhagen bright and early at 7:00 a.m. The only problem was that nothing was open at 7:00, nothing really opened until 9:00 and most stuff at 10:00. Plus, we were not really sure what we wanted to do in Copenhagen, it just sounded like a fun place to go and stay. And on top of that, we never found a room to stay in for that evening, so we needed to do that as well. So we had lots to do, but nothing was open to do it yet. So we walked around the cold train station for about half an hour getting our bearings and reading our travel books. I decided to search for an internet connection so that we could maybe get some information on anything going on in the city. Luckily McDonalds had free wireless for an hour, so we sat outside on a bench and borrowed their Wi-Fi for a little while. One of the highest priorities on our list was the Carlsberg brewery. Let me give a few reasons why. 1) The Tivoli (famous Copenhagen amusement park) was still closed for the winter so we couldn’t do that). 2) There was slushy snow all over the ground and it was about 35 degrees outside. We wanted something indoors. 3) We’re kind of tired of museums at the moment. 4) Scandinavia is really expensive, so doing anything costs a bunch-o-cash. 5) The most obvious, beer samples at the end of the tour. So we found when it was open, but the hard part was getting there. It was outside of the city and we had no idea how their metro/subway system worked. The ticket machine was only in Danish, and we, being self-centered English speakers, didn’t like that much. After asking 5-6 people how to work the machine and buy what we wanted we went back to the contraption. We then tried to pay by credit card, but would only accept a card that had a pin number associated with it (as we found throughout the city). Very odd. So we whipped out the debit card, bought our tickets and headed the direction of the brewery.

The brewery was really great. They send you on a self-guided tour around the brewery and the historic aspects of it as well. The first thing they send you to is their beer bottle collection, which is the largest in the world according to Guinness book of world records. The rest of the tour told about how Carlsberg came about and what it’s like today. They also showed you their trademark animal the Jutland Horse. The end of the tour was the tasting portion where we each tried two excellent beers. We agreed the Tuborg was better than the Carlsberg. We then headed back to the main city to do a little sightseeing. And little is the correct word because we soon headed back to the train station. However, we couldn’t leave Denmark without partaking in a “Danish.” It was the right touristy thing to do.

We hadn’t found a good room for the evening, so we thought, “Heck, we might as well just go to Berlin a night early.” So we went to Berlin a night early. A train left for Hamburg at about 3:45 and we switched there to go to Berlin, getting in around 10:30. On our train to Hamburg, we suddenly got quite confused. The train slowed down and stopped, and the attendant told everyone to get off of the train. It seemed like we were on some kind of boat, but that didn’t seem right. A train on a boat? Well sure enough, we boated across some body of water for about 40 minutes, got back on the train, and continued to Hamburg. I’ve been on a lot of car ferries, but I’ve never heard of a train ferry before. We’re having new experiences all across Europe.

We didn’t have a place to stay in Berlin either, but we did know of one place, the hostel we stayed at in December. We were pleased to find vacancy, and by a fluke, they gave us a private room at a cheaper rate than listed. A swift afternoon in Copenhagen that day, but we saw what we could and we moved on.