Europe 26 – Copenhagen Revisited

Wednesday, 19 August

Happy to be back on foot and on public transit 🙂

Started the day with my first actual Danish pastries. Mmmmm.

Climbed up the tower in the Church of Our Savior…also called the Stairway to Heaven. Unfortunately, the construction hides most of it.

Lots of stairs haha

HUGE bells! It was a little nerve-wracking walking past them 🙂

I would love to see someone working this at some point. So cool!

It was very windy at the top!

It narrowed more and more until at the top, my back was against the tower and my belly against the railing. It was honestly terrifying.

That’s a crazy long way down!

The Museum of Danish Resistance was really well done. Dark with dramatic lighting to emphasize the gravity. Great audio-visual presentations. Touching stories. And all underground 🙂

People wore Danish flag symbols or these lapel pins with British colors. Copper coins were withdrawn from circulation so people secretly kept them and made trinkets.

Some people in the resistance had to balance home life with secret meetings. This story of one mother whose daughter swallowed a bullet cartridge had to figure out if she could take her to the emergency room and risk getting discovered. She used the pram to deliver leaflets.

Many operated underground printing operations when the occupation took control of the press.

Huge crowds of people would stand in the streets and sing traditional Danish songs. There were also mass riots and strikes at certain points.

Many people lost their lives. Posts from a mass execution site north of Copenhagen where resistors were tied.

Mass celebration in the streets with liberation

Good job staying strong, Denmark!

On my way to the Little Mermaid, I passed Gefion fountain and St Alban’s church. Beautiful even on a cloudy, drizzly day.

There she is! There were roughly a million people there so I just did a quick treatment. I don’t really prefer crowds…

Frederik’s church. Gorgeous.

My out-of-control frizzy hair, less so haha

Sat and enjoyed the peace and quiet for a few minutes.

Toured the Christianborg Slot. Incredible place!

These are intricately woven tapestries called gobelins. They are stunning!

I love this room. I pictured it being used for a ball 🙂

No king on the throne right now, but he does in fact sit here and entertain foreign dignitaries and such.

Toured the ruins under the palace. There was first a bishop’s fort, then various castles, and then the 3 iterations of the palace.

Well…

Water pipes made of hollowed logs bound together with copper I think?

The Palace Church is also stunning!

Round Tower…most people go for the great view but I went to learn more about an awesome scientist Ole Roemer.

He discovered by observing Jupiter’s moons that light is not instantaneous like people believed but that it had a speed. An incredible discovery! He did a million other things too like designed a water system for the Versailles fountains. Just an incredibly brilliant guy!

He was in charge of the Round Tower and Observatory and the attached Trinitatis church

He worked with Tycho Brahe at his observatory on the island Hven. I did not get to go out there (and I really wanted to!) so this picture is as close as I will get for now. But the Round Tower observatory was built to resemble this one.

Original privy. Just a really long long tube down to the streets 🙂

Yay! The top!! Rainy but beautiful out there.

A few more stairs to the observatory complete with amazing telescope. They only open her up a few times a month so alas…

There’s a long shaft down the middle of the tower. You can stand on the clear glass. Terrifying.

The entire building is just this huge winding paved ramp with lots of windows. Super neat!

Found some aeblesvivers 🙂

I also found Moses. Although I wasn’t looking for him.

The Copenhagen Cathedral. The organ was playing when I went in. So beautiful.

The original Christus statue by Bertel Thorvaldsen. In my experience, what makes it unique among depictions of Christ in churches and cathedrals is that rarely is He shown not on the cross. I like to think of Him this way. Resurrected and living.

National Museum of Denmark. Went through there pretty fast. I’m not really a huge fan of anthrological shtuff. But the Viking Sorceress exhibit was trippy.

And an actual recreation of what a Viking woman might have been like.

Plus some gold. 🙂

The Renaissance rooms were pretty interesting.

Gorgeous building, though!

Walked out to Victor Borge square

My Dad loved watching Victor do his comedy music routines. I grew up with them and love them too!

Went by the Niels Bohr Institute even though it’s not a site you can really visit. So much incredible physics has been and is being done here

They did have a cool relief mural.

There’s Niels in front of the Institute.

Also visited his grave.

And Hans Christian Andersen since I was already there 🙂 Lots of pens and some other rando stuff left there…

Then I went out to visit the temple.

Did some baptisms. It was really cool. They created the temple from a previous church building and they didn’t have the ability to dig down for a font, so this is the skylight over the font here sticking out in the fountain! There is an incredible mural inside that has famous Danes on it. I need to look it up.