satisfying my inner ship geek

i've been in copenhagen for a few wonderful days. i was working with some of the most creative people in denmark and i get to keep doing so! what more could a girl ask? a little walk along the quayside at nordhavn. i encountered this rather rusty barge and remembered all the beauty of rusty metal. in all, a very wonderful few days. 

occasionally (not often enough), when i feel down, i visit the daily delights on darrel bristow bovey's website. they make me want to price tickets to athens and get my ass down there. i especially loved the one from february 5. i wanted athens to be my favorite capital city all of a sudden. i've been there once and enjoyed it, but i'm not sure it's my favorite capital city. that's probably copenhagen, which seems a bit lame, given that i actually live in the country of which it's a capital. 

but copenhagen really is wonderful. it's colorful, walkable, beautiful. there are art museums, history museums, design museums, the oldest amusement park in the world, the #1 restaurant in the world, the best burger joint ever (gasoline grill)...i could go on. 

i was gobsmacked yesterday when someone i know, who is danish, said she hadn't been in copenhagen since 2016 and had, in fact, only been there 4-5 times in her whole life. i expressed surprise, perhaps too vehemently, and she got a little offended and said, "what would i need there? it's expensive," which is admittedly, true. but still. it's wonderful. though i didn't mean to offend her. i just can't understand that anyone wouldn't appreciate copenhagen. 

before i changed jobs, i was going more or less once a week. and i'm definitely suffering from withdrawal. that must mean it's my favorite capital city. 

size matters

the world's largest container ship, the majestic maersk, is alongside langlinie in copenhagen these days. i don't think these pictures convey how truly enormous this ship is. 400 meters long and 59 meters wide and it can carry 18000 containers. it's good she's not closer to the little mermaid, because it would underline once and for all that the key word with her is indeed little. this is a whole new class of viking ship, don't you think?

copenhagen is cool

as i sat in the wonderful torvehallerne with a book and a glass of wine one late afternoon last week, lazily reading, but mostly watching people and scrawling notes in uPad on my iPad mini (thanks moneek!), it hit me that copenhagen really has come a long way in the 16 years since i first visited. then, it struck me as a quasi-eastern european backwater and now it's been transformed into monocle magazine's most liveable city. it's hip, it's comfortable in its own skin, it's happening, but still small enough to be charming rather than intimidating. i'm way more in love with it now than i ever was then. then, it was a good thing i was in love with the boy, or i'd never have stayed. now, i wonder a little bit why we moved out to the countryside. copenhagen today has a pulse and a vibrancy you can feel as you walk down the streets (or even just sit and sip a glass of cold white wine and watch the people go by). but maybe the reason i feel it is because i don't live in the midst of it every day. and man, do i appreciate it when i am there.

it's my birthday and i'll go to copenhagen if i want to

i don't have any deep thoughts about my birthday. it's my 46th, so i'm getting pretty good at them by now. what's funny is that when you reach these middle years, you lose track of your own age. i've thought for months that i was already 46 and when husband's eldest daughter recently pointed out to me that i was turning 46, i realized that she was right. i guess it won't be much of a shock since i already thought i was there for pretty much the whole past year.

i'm celebrating with a little trip to copenhagen. lunch with a good friend (who i'm making come along for the ride), a bit of poking around in art supply shops, a visit to my favorite tea shop and undoubtedly a little workout for my camera. at 46, that sounds like the perfect birthday.

happy weekend, one and all.

streets of copenhagen - how i love thee

tho' it was a grey, cold day, the streets of copenhagen still looked very fetching.

"my new home"

fabulous old specs on an optician

converse love

the window of the jackpot store.
i love the dark blue that's in for spring.
but can totally do without all the peach that i saw (but didn't photograph).

part two on købmagergade

the store i will have some day will be a bit like this.

my kinda shop - colorful!

books

love the simplicity of those houses

happy weekend, one and all...hope you can find a little beauty, even if it's grey and cold where you are!

copenhagen dreaming

i wonder if i appreciate copenhagen even more now that we moved to the other side of the country or if it just had on its best face (aside from that freak thunder/hail storm just as i wanted to get out of the car) on tuesday when i was there for meetings. happily, one of them was on this gorgeous little charming street (sankt peders stræde), where i went a little nuts with both digital and analog cameras.

no boring chairs in this country and no boring lamps.

i so wish i'd had one of these bikes when sabin was little. why didn't we ever get one?

i love the mix of shabby and gentrified.

that stormy sky hadn't completely passed yet, as you can see.

i want a shop like that! one off - so you just make what you want and feel inspired to do.

they take their flags very seriously. 

such a fetching scene. made me wish my city bike was a little more retro.

happy weekend to one and all, even if your path doesn't cross copenhagen, at least you've had a little taste.

corner view: street photography

i haven't done one of jane's lovely corner views in ages, but today, it was street photography and i realized i have some copenhagen street shots that i hadn't previously shared (i also lost some in the big death/resuscitation of the iMac saga, but i won't dwell on that). so here, i give you some interesting bits from the streets of copenhagen last november:

 "pear danish" - means as danish as you can get.
this in a decidedly not danish neighborhood.

i love danish irony.

 nørrebro theatre.

love that big N typeface.

 once you start to look, there are bits and pieces of street art everywhere.

 this says "all hanging of posters forbidden"

and right next to it: loads of rather graphic posters for a theatre piece.

this one went up on across ø/öresund at the time.

raw lunch and artistic globes

yesterday, i spent the day wandering around copenhagen with miss buckle, who is in town, attending events surrounding the COP 15 UN meeting on climate change that's happening in copenhagen right now. copenhagen is full of people speaking other languages and even the danes (which are few, since all of the people in shops and restaurants are swedes these days) in all of the shops in copenhagen seem to have forgotten to speak danish.

in the interest of kindness to the environment (and of course being healthy), we started off our wander with lunch (as one does) at a new raw food restaurant in the heart of copenhagen. it's called 42°RAW. i'd been wanting to try a raw restaurant since buying charlie trotter's raw "cook"book several years ago, but could never convince anyone to go to one with me. to my knowledge, there wasn't a raw restaurant in copenhagen before this one opened anyway. we really enjoyed the food. i had a brilliant salad with beets, seaweed and a horseradish dressing and miss buckle's pumpkin salad was loaded with pumpkin seeds and salty olives (we did wonder how raw they were, but we were cool with being eased into the concept). and the pumpkin on her salad was just a gorgeous, vibrant orange. we ordered fresh juices to go with our salads - mine was carrot, apple and ginger and hers was beet apple and ginger and they were just great. the restaurant also serves coffee (not that raw, i think), but we waited to get coffees later. we really loved the experience and i will definitely be dragging husband back there to show him that the occasional raw meal can be a good thing. after our tummies were filled, we began to wander in search of interesting people and things.

some of my favorites were these art globes displayed around kongs nytorv.

this one was my favorite.

i'm a sucker for colors, what can i say?

i liked how graffiti-style writing was used on this one.

this one highlighted the butterflies.

check out the police and uniformed military in the background.

this one advocated wearing a sweater rather than turning up the heat.

this one wanted us to drive less.

there were many more and they were all thought provoking. but my favorite was that at the base of each one was this sign:

it was pretty surprising to me that the shops didn't seem to have taken the opportunity to have an environmental theme to their window displays. they just seemed to be selling the same old christmas excess. i found that a little disappointing. but at least in this shot, you can see a bit of me and miss buckle.

at least the posh illum's bolighus had a bit of a nature theme going on, even if it was mostly just stumps on which to display the expensive designer items:

we saw quite a lot of police around on the streets, usually standing together with members of the home guards (hjemmeværn) in military uniform. we even overheard one conversation where they were calling in a report of a homemade sign on the side of a building. as miss buckle said, "if only they'd had their sign professionally done..." apparently the danes' aesthetic sensibilities are quite insulted by hand lettered signs and the public had to be protected.

i've got much more to share, but i'll leave it for another post.

nearly wordless wednesday - loving halloween at tivoli

this will also serve as a corner view. this week's theme love. and we do love tivoli at halloween.