Wonderful Copenhagen

My feet hurt. After getting the right foot badly sunburned yesterday I disregarded the pain and went to Copenhagen today. Now my ankles are swollen and there are strange red dots all over the place, I think I'll have to spend tomorrow with my feet up.....

Getting off the train at the main train station (which is under construction and a *mess*) I headed for the "Danish Design Center". On the way I passed a second-hand shop and got this really funny necklace that is a pair of old-lady glasses, only in miniature. I love crazy necklaces, and ones that only cost a few dollars don't need to be justified.

The Danish Design Center had some interesting exhibits. The first was a bunch of clothes designers - all, of course, with gorgeous clothes and shoes for women who wear size 32 or 34 - me, I weigh in at 44-46.... why on *earth* are there so few designers that make nice clothes for women my size? You really have to hunt, and there was nothing here.

There was a "store" in the cellar stocked with white, advertising-free jars and cans and cartons, all labeled with things not normally found in stores: patience; happiness; thinking about the world; clean air; clean water; nourishment; stuff like that. Unfortunately, most of the jars and cans were such that if you opened them to put something in, you would ruin it. So they were just meant to stand, empty and labeled, on a shelf. Strange, but I was not interested.

There was a little selection of "Identity" posters, this could have been much longer for my taste. There was also a room for the Danish Design Awards of 2007. The Stelton coffee can (I am on my second one now, I *love* them) was awarded a prize for still being popular and useful 30 years after it was first made - and the design is unchanged. That is good design. There was an interesting washing table and a dentist's chair and an outdoor gym with some interesting equipment on it. There was also a sofa, and you could try all of this out. The sofa was so uncomfortable, I don't know why it got a prize, but the rest were nice, including a font that was created for a new brand of beer at Carlsberg.

Then I walked - along Nyhavn, along the Stroget, went too far and hit Kongens Nytorv, wound my way back through an interesting part of town with lots of little shops in the cellars. One was in the Women's House, and there was a big sign on the door, flatly refusing entry to any men. They were selling clothes with the old women's symbol with the faust in it. Gee, I have one of those somewhere, I'd better dig it out - retro is in! I wondered how the shop handled transgendered persons....

I finally hit my beloved Fiolstrade, but oh my, the times have changed. Very few of the old shops still there. The book-cafe where one could sit and read political literature is a sandwich shop; The clothes shops I loved have been replaced by shops selling cheap clothes or trash or both. Here and there there is a little pearl (and I got something nice at Pink made by Two Danes) still to be found, but for the most part: not my style, not really original, either. I walked back along the Stroget, resisting the urge to get one of those nice Danish ice cream cones with three scoops of ice cream, strawberry sauce and whipped cream.

They have nice new tourist traffic lights that tell you how long you need to wait until the light changes again. Not that the tourists really stop much at lights. They stand around on the bike paths and get bells clanked at them, or they just cross in front of some big truck.

The trip back was horrible - I caught the 16.43 from Copenhagen to Kristianstad in Sweden - packed to the gills, and late (lucky for me). The reason was that Emil's mother was looking for him, so they spent 10 minutes trying to reunite the two. They didn't tell us if he got himself found. I stood the entire journey, couldn't hang on to anything, but that was okay, because you couldn't fall, there were so many people around you.

It was nice to sit down in the car for the ride home :)