Hello and thank you for tuning back into Denmark First, Tomorrow the World. This blog today covers Curtis’s short and sweet trip to Copenhagen and what we did in those 2.5 days.
As I do, I had a full on spreadsheet ready for Curtis’s arrival with 10-12 activities planned. Spoiler Alert: 10-12 activities in 2.5 days is too many, we did not do them all.
Curt arrived about 2 hours later than planned thanks to our favourite low-cost carrier, Vueling. I’m warning future exchange go-er’s, do not fly Vueling at all costs. The amount of delays and hours of lost travel Curtis has cumulatively faced from this company inconveniences both of us on almost all our trips. It is probably not worth your saved money people, love yourself. Please do not book Vueling. And Vueling, if you’re reading this, you suck.
Apart from my childish and annoyed rant, he arrived at around 3:00 with an empty stomach. We got some food in him, and I let him rest for a bit since he had little sleep. Unfortunately, that took until 4:00 PM and we had Carlseberg Museum on our list. They closed at 5 and didn’t let people in after 4:00 PM. Wave goodbye to the Carlsberg Museum friends! We decided to go to Christiania, pick up some cheap food, and then go to Tivoli. However, in the end we decided to just get fast food and go to Tivoli. 20 Chicken McNuggets later we were ready for Tivoli. Classic Murtis move.
Tivoli is the world’s second oldest amusement park. When Indra came, we walked around, but did not choose to do rides. Today, we were going all out. Tivoli gets decked out for October. It was covered head to toe in Halloween decorations. It was like Halloween had puked all over the amusement park. While the description I just gave sounds gross, it was actually quite beautiful. We started with a walk around the park, and then decided we would do all the rides. We pretty well did actually do all the rides we could, some were only for “Ride Plus” users and Tivoli had already stolen $62 from me, I was not giving them another $8 for one rollercoaster. Some highlights from this time include Curtis and I doing a VR shooting game. If you have been to the Buzz light year ride in Disney Land, you know what I’m talking. The objective is to shoot objects while you’re in a moving vehicle faster than the others. The carts had capacity for 4 but we were only 2. A lovely 5-6-year-old Danish girl was also in our cart. Curtis and I are very competitive people. About half way through we realized she had not shot anything, so we decided to miss on purpose for a couple. That did not fly for long with Curtis. Check out the final scores:
We also went on this time machine ride that spun in three different directions. Your chairs rocked back and forth, while your chars were anchored to something that spun you in circles, and all the chairs were on a spinning platform. Yikes. While the ride was fun, it spontaneously stopped and everyone got off. Everyone except us, since our seats weren’t letting us out. When we asked the ride workers they said the ride had malfunctioned but we could stay in and try again and then walked away. They didn’t ask if we wanted to stay in. Just hoping we did die, we stayed on for the second round (somewhat forcefully). The ride went smoothly and it was a pretty fun ride, but I was happy to get off.
We also did bumper cars. While I should reword, I sat in the passenger seat while Curtis drove the bumper car. I will never understand why Bumper Cars exist. It is like wanting to continuously get into a car accident. It is like willingly signing up for whip lash. Needless to say, I was not enjoying myself.
The whole date was real fun, and the park lit up at night was breathtaking. It was like being a kid again. We left around 8:00 PM, got some ice cream and chips and headed home for some New Girl and cuddles. My favourite end to a night.
Day 2: The First Full Day
We started day 2 by visiting the Danish Design Museum. The Danish Design Museum is free for students which is a W. If I learned anything from that visit it is that the Danes take their chairs very seriously. There was a huge part of the museum just on chairs and chair design. Here’s a cute selfie from the museum:
Then, we were going to go to Carlsberg Museum. We probably decided to leave at the worlds worst timing, it decided to down pour. To make it even worse, on this long exhausting, windy and rainy bike ride to Carlsberg a nice speedy cab decides to rip through a puddle beside me and absolutely drench me in puddle water. Not to mention I was pretty sure my phone was mildly water damaged for a while despite being in my raincoat pocket. At this point I started to cry like a little child. I then had a very bone chillingly bold bike ride back to my residence, with the wind blowing against us, in all wet clothing. Curtis, being the most loving and best boyfriend ever, got me a warm strudel and made me tea while I showered in warm water for way too long.
After we ate lunch, we realized we only had an hour before my class at 2:30, which would probably not be enough time at the Museum. Instead, we opted to work on some applications for UBC clubs together. Then I headed to a dreadfully long 2.5-hour class with a teacher whose voice was as soft and sleep inducing as the narrator on my Headspace mediation app.
Once I finished class I took Curtis to Christiania. You’ve all heard about it, he was very wierded out. Wasn’t really either of our scene, but alas I needed to show him the hippie cult in the middle of the city. As I did with Indra, we went to that cute bakery and got Danish pastries. Mine was this delicious strawberry angel fruit cake concoction that blew my mind. We got back home and I made us Ramen (not instant noodles, like real ramen) and we headed to Bastard Café.
Bastard Café is a huge boardgame bar and it was PACKED. There was no seats when we got there. After wandering for a while there was still no seats and more and more people were pouring in. We found a tiny chess table that people were using to put their bags on in one room and asked the staff if we could use it. It literally couldn’t even fit a board on it:
Also, the games cost money to use. What a money grab eh? There were some free games though and monopoly happened to be one of them. If you know anything about me, it is that I get too competitive in Monopoly. Curtis asked me to stop being mean at one point. I turn into a different person: MonopolMira. But man, nothing compares to the sheer joy of seeing people go bankrupt. Something about watching Curtis scramble and mortgage all his properties was so satisfying. I resisted the urge to throw all my 500 dollar bills in the air when I won, mainly because we were in public.
Day 3: On our final day we headed to Fredericksborg Caste in Hillerød, Denmark. It’s a solid 1.5-hour transit out of the city but was worth it for sure. Also, we drove in a Mercedes Coach Bus at one point as part of public transit. Maybe THAT’S why it costs $12/trip to take the bus. Curtis and I played the logo guessing game on my phone and got through 100 logos. CONSUMERISM BABY. Here’s the down low on the castle:
Frederiksborg Castle is situated in Hillerød, north of Copenhagen. This impressive and unrivalled Renaissance castle was built in the first decades of the 17th century by the legendary Danish King Christian IV and incorporates the best of Renaissance architecture and craftmanship. Frederiksborg Castle is a unique place for superb cultural experiences, scenic walks and boat tours. (source)
When we got to the castle it was amazing and huge. Check the photo’s out. The inside was equally as stunning, but also there was a lot of self-portraits, at least 200 I’d say. The oddest part was a chair that was made into “an elevator” that the king’s slaves literally had to manually reel by hand to move up and down.
Once we had finished touring the Hogwarts sized castle we checked out the gardens. They were phenomenal, and also very extra. There is no reason that was necessary. There was even a man-made island in front of the castle and Curtis brought up the point that they literally had to bring a lawn mower by boat to it.
Once we were back and had lunch in our tummies, we headed to Go Boat. I had organized a Go Boat with others in our Cohort. Go Boat is a solar powered boat you can drive yourself through the canal. You can bring food, drinks, and just have some good “hygge”. While it was pretty cold it was definitely a cool experience. We also got to hear the story of how my friend Spencer got screwed by Ryan Air and boy was it a tale.
Curt and I were going to go to Reffen, a cool and hip outdoor food market after for our last dinner together. But, alas it was damn cold. We decided to head somewhere indoors instead and stumbled upon a café callsed Paul and Bodgan in old town. It was really reasonably priced and super cute. It was library themed with books all around and very warm and cozy. We shared nachos and a slice of cake because we’re children and don’t eat sophisticated meals.
On our last night together we tried to a) Figure out how to update Curtis’s phone and get him a boarding pass, and b) Had a cute “Halloween” movie night and watched Scooby Doo. That movie was terrible and awesome at the same time. We drank cocoa and laughed at how ridiculous the plot line was.
Curt got up at 6:00 AM and was out the door in 20 minutes. It was really sad to see him go (I cried? No YOU cried), but I was so happy that he visited.
