Aaaaah, that hostel – Danhostel Bellahoj! What a pain. In addition to having to physically construct your own beds , the showers and bathrooms in the hostel were closed from 10am – 2pm. I imagine that this time range is when most backpackers are waking up….arrrgh. On this day we actually managed to make it for the city tour. To be honest it was not that great a tour, though we did learn a few interesting things – we passed by the royal family house – found out how approachable the Danish royal family is – one can bump into them on the streets. We learnt about how Denmark made a fatal error in partnering with Germany during WWII – not really partnering but never putting up a resistance to German occupation. During much of World War II, Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany – from April 1940 up until German forces withdrew at the end of World War II following their surrender to the Allies on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1943. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic Danish government and a totalitarian nazi system. Over 3000 Danes died as a direct result of the occupation.
Later in the afternoon we went to the city center to visit my company’s Copenhagen office. After this we went to Freetown Christiania – a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen – which is the hippie part of Copenhagen. We then took a boat bus round the city. Soon it was time for us to meet our new friends and my boss who was in Denmark for meetings. We got so lost and walked round in circles for 2 hours in Copenhagen before we finally made it to the meat-packing district. Times got so desperate to the extent where we had to sneak into some art gallery or something of the sort to use the washrooms – we had drunk a few beers in Christiania and after many hours of walking idly, we were really really pressed. We met up with everyone in a reggae place in the meat-packing district, partied the night away there and in another club close by called Joleen. The next day was chaotic – we left Copenhagen in the morning and were to get to Munich at 11pm, but a train had fallen on some train tracks. We finally made it to Munich at 5am the following day, and quickly prepped for the festivities that would be the closing ceremony of Oktoberfest.
