Q: What do you know of Denmark?
A: 1. Place where Lego is born 2. Hygge way of living 3. Butter cookies
Q: Planning to visit there?
A: Well yeah, someday! It’s on the bucket list somewhere.
Q: How about tomorrow?
A: Oh what?
Pretty much how it went when the realization hit us that we were only a week away from Copenhagen trip – right after plane ticket had been booked.
So what exactly are we going to do?
It was neither an arbitrary decision or travelling impulsivity, more of a way around to get our Schengen Visa. That moment came to our attention when we noticed that those European mainstream countries were in long queue for visa appointment, let alone the time to process the visa itself.
It probably sounded too condescending to club those stunning-looking European countries into mainstream and non-mainstream, but in general manner for Indonesian travellers countries such the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland were considered as primary destination for their Euro Trip. Therefore, mainstream ones. Quite ironic as those countries were also what me and my friends had in mind to apply Visa from – guess we’re avid mainstream traveller after all.
In general, we could agree that world nowadays had, compared to couple years back, moved on from Covid as immunity herd from vaccination had seems expectedly worked, and so many pressing issues were troubling us – unprecedented inflation rate, energy crisis, heated climate temperature, hated wars and those others. Thus post-pandemic, travelling had rebounded well, or perhaps too well. Those desires and longings to see the world again had erupted making lots of travel destination were in full packed, including Visa application process.
In order to proceed our Schengen Visa through those mainstream countries it would’ve had taken longer than a month for the appointment alone, not including the process time and, as we heard and experienced ourselves, probability that your application could be denied was pretty much there as well. So we had to work around on where our Visa should be applied to and issued from, and in finality we chose Denmark.
Indeed, it wasn’t come with no consequences. We had to make here and there adjustment into our whole itinerary. The tenet of Schengen Visa application were: choose a country based on where you would be firstly landed or where you’d spend most of your time there. Considering our issued airplane ticket wasn’t on Copenhagen arrival, we chose for later option which to adjust on overall itinerary where Denmark would be our longest period of county spent.
Plan ahead, I reckon, was the biggest takeaway. Timing wise, we applied for Visa on a rather tight manner – barely two months before our departure. Back in 2018 on my first trip to Europe, I had my Visa issued even three months beforehand. Long story short, we got our Visa from Denmark Embassy. Europe here we come!
Denmark was the fourth country during our trip there – it started from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (journey in those countries will be coming up soon). The night before our flight to Copenhagen we didn’t own actual itinerary on where to go or what to see though we planned for 3 days stay there. Some suggestions came up on Google for sightseeing around Copenhagen or enjoying many museums around the city or spend few hours travelling to Odense or even paid a visit to Lego House (which I super excited to!).
At the end of our Switzerland trip, the very country before we moved to Denmark, we were so much in exhaustion after those early morning wake-ups and non-stop luggage dragging. Alas, we went with a laid-back trip in Copenhagen, served as pitstop to rest before our next country to Netherlands. It came with cancelling the Lego House trip which needed around 2-hour trip out of the city – sad but eventually we stumbled upon a Lego Store in Copenhagen and it was sort of a must to buy one from there 🙂
Upon our landing in Copenhagen, we bought ourselves a day-pass ticket covering most of city area transportation like tram, metro and bus. It was very convenient and we recommended those fellow traveller to do so. The City Pass ticket can be bought from the ticketing machine on the airport or any metro station. It cost us DKK 80 for 24-hour ticket. They also offered up to 120-hour ticket to adjust based on your itinerary.
Here, we learned that Hans Christian Anderson was a much respected figure. The world well-known story teller was born and raised in Copenhagen, even his house in famous Nyhavn port was dedicated as museum and advertised to be the must-have picture in front of it. Lots of his story books could be found in every merch store, though we didn’t get ourselves one as prices were rather steep.
Nyhavn was probably what the internet first showed you when you typed Copenhagen on your browser. They’re stunning canals with beautiful colourful houses flanking the waterway. It brought similar vibe as Piazza San Marco in Venice where you found idyllic-setting restaurant serenaded with local musician playing accordion and guitar.
There, you can book a one-hour canal trip to see famous spots around the city through city’s canal and narrow bridges. It cost for DKK 100. Little did we know that there were several canal tour provider that offered similar service with lower price. Though we were happy with our choice considering the boat’s state of condition. It was a guided tour that explained each and every spot with both English and Danish, that also included the iconic mermaid statue, a direct inspiration from Anderson’s Little Mermaid where the heroine stared at her ill-fated and sitting on a rock longing for her prince lover. Well, I kept saying it was Ariel who’s waiting for Prince Erik to come and get her. Where were Sebastian and Flounder?
Denmark was largely a monarch sovereign country that’s reigned by Queen of Denmark. Since the death of UK’s Elizabeth II, she’s the world’s only female monarch. Many Royalty’s estate and palaces were shown to us during the canal trip, including their winter residence, Amalienborg Palace. Little did we know, that the Danish royal guards had lots of outfits similarities with British’s – that explained our confusion when coming to merch store.
The surrounding of Nyhavn was this stunning looking open sea with beautiful blue shades. Thank God we came one a bright sunny day. Temptation for taking good pictures with that very background was overwhelming.
Another highlight of Copenhagen would be the jaw-dropping-looking museum. We visited Glyptoteket, or The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, an art museum representing private collection of Carl Jacobsen, the son from the famous Carlsberg family who owned the Carlsberg brewery brand – unfortunately didn’t get the chance to sip one. Reason to choose this museum over the others mostly due to economical reason as after thorough internet research we found that museum was admission-free on Tuesday! A no brainer decision because #zerospend.
Gylptoteket was vastly a sculpture museum, showing huge array of collection from ancient era such Mediterranean, Egypt, Rome, and Greece. It consisted of huge several buildings with several floors to explore. Top floor offered paintings collection from French impressionist and Danish Golden Age paintings. On the Egyptian section, there was a basement stair linked to real mummy collection – a first time for us too to witness the thousand-years mummified royals. It was quite surreal that ancient practice could be witnessed and studied to this day, an epitome of Egyptians’ advances on technology.
Through our days there, one that we ended up coming back each day was this shopping district near Nørreport station. There were cobbled street alleys filled with unique stores selling books, cool merchandises, coffee shops, and of course a Lego Store. Every time we went there it was as if there were new set of stores to look at or suddenly new alleyways we didn’t see on the previous day. One time we stumbled into a store with superb collection of Tintin figurines and dedicated cellar for Harry Potter stuffs, the other time it was a store selling complete decoration sets of Halloween, and other time we went into book stores with ones that you wouldn’t find in Indonesia. We noticed that Copenhagen was swarmed by book stores, even many of café’s decoration was adorned with book cases. A conception of reading as a culture and practice had truly moved forward.
Happy face and a must-buy in Lego Store! Later, I figured that temporary impulsivity had real consequences on luggage spacing.
What was seemed as an obligation to go for our Visa issuance, turned to be a relaxing and eye-pleasing experience. Denmark marked to be our first Scandinavian country to venture. Coined as the happiest country in the world that we were quite able to relate should we’ve came from good fortune or huge family inheritance. Prices are crazy! And this was coming from us who just went from the notoriously expensive Switzerland.
Regular-sized Ice Tea Boba Milk cost us DKK 45 or around IDR 95,000
Denmark was the perfect example of old beautiful European country along with its historically rich narratives, architectural marvel and windy canals. It was exciting to learn about a country when you basically had no expectation at all. Guess, that’s travelling was all about: gave you chance to immerse on polar opposite environment and understanding dissimilarities to build the ever enduring empathy.
-R
Later photos were taken using my iPhone, if you noticed some drops in quality.
Journey on Journal 
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