Denmark 2003/2004

20^th December 2003 and the journey begins.  Having recently opened my Christmas presents I was in an amazingly happy mood.  My mood wasn’t even dampened for too long by my bag breaking and a taxi driver who wasn’t the greatest in the world.  He only brightened up when he was given a tip near Romford Station.  It seemed the whole area had been taped off for a police investigation.  I never did find out why.

A short trip to London later and I met up with Kat and we made it across the London Underground with our heavy bags to the Stansted Express, which we got on after a little confusion.  I remember the trip to Stansted taking ages before on the train, but time passed really quickly this time.

When we got to the airport we did some reconnaissance as to where shops, check-ins and eating places were.  We sat down in the Oniels pub there and treated ourselves to bacon and cheese subs with chips.  It was just what we needed.

We got to the Hilton without too much trouble later on.  There wasn’t much to do there so we stayed in the room and amused ourselves.

At some ridiculously early hour of the morning we got up, having to skip breakfast unfortunately, for the airport.  We squashed on to the bus, but everything went smoothly.  The airport was busy and there was a long queue for security and we didn’t get a moment in Duty-Free and had to move quite fast to the plane.

Kats first flight went well and wasn’t too bumpy, she enjoyed it and we were in Denmark in what seemed like no time.  We were soon on the train to Copenhagen and everything was going really smoothly.

I knew that the Hard Rock Café was close to the station but I didn’t realise how close, it turned out to be only about two minutes away.  Both Kat and I went in and had Bacon Cheeseburgers and Coke Floats.  The burgers were fantastic and we enjoyed being there.  We went on to explore a little more of Copenhagen.  It was cold and we had heavy luggage in tow, so we didn’t stray too far.  If only we had known that there were lockers for hire at the Central Station!  We saw sow streets and a mall and the main square in Copenhagen.  All very beautiful.  A shame we weren’t able to see more.

After some time spent hanging around the central station we boarded out train to Horsens.  The train was very spacious the seats very comfortable.  The train had three stops and we were going to travel for three hours.  The both of us were asleep for over an hour and the train hadn’t stopped at its first stop yet.

We met Tina and Peter at Horsens on time and we went back to their place and chilled out.  Soon after I had the best pizza of my life.  A home made meat-feast, that was square not round.

The rest of the time away we chilled out, went walking and shopping, saw snow and got cold.  All in all had a great time.  Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve in Denmark.  You get your traditional meal in the evening and then open presents.  I got a jumper and underwear, a projector clock and more, which I have forgotten.

Christmas Day I spent mainly asleep.  It was Peters birthday when we were there and he had a party to celebrate where he watched Terminator 3.

New Years Eve was fun.  In Denmark they let off fireworks to celebrate New Years, much more so than in Britain.  I saw more fireworks in the first 15 minutes after midnight than I did the rest of the year.  They were everywhere and filled the sky when we looked from the window.  We let off plenty of our own too.

Denmark is a nice place with friendly people, I really enjoyed being there.  Some things were incredibly expensive there however and not so many were cheap.

Despite a toothache and some grief from our ex’s which threatened to put a downer at the end of the holiday, we had a great, great time.

The train journey back took us through some beautiful scenery and we saw some amazing bridges that were very long, including the rail bridge that took us from the mainland to the middle island.  It went on for ages.  Everything was also dusted in snow making it look fantastic.

Our train stopped at a station 10 minutes away from the main Copenhagen station and was stuck there.  After asking for some translations from Danish speakers we got on the equivalent of the tube and went to the Central station.  For a few moments we were concerned that we would be late for the airport, but everything ended up fine.  The tube train doors sounded a warning that sounded like an apache Indian wah-wah noise, that kept us amused.

Soon we were at the airport getting ready to go again, pending the last of our Danish money on food and drink.  It started to snow heavily and again we were concerned we might get stuck in Denmark.

A reasonable flight later we were back in England.  We were told the temperature was 8 degrees Celsius outside, and when we got there it felt really warm.  I don’t think 8 degrees has ever felt so warm.  It certainly doesn’t now!