Because I was up all night travelling (and watching DVDs) on Thursday/Friday, I was ready to hit the sack as soon as I checked in at the hostel. I stayed up because I had to go pray (which I did at the Turkish cultural centre, after listening to the khutba in Turkish), and because I wanted to get my bearings so that I could be ready to go as soon as I had caught up on my sleep.
On the way back, I found out about renting a bike, picked up some lunch (they have tuna sandwiches everywhere, apparently — IA jannat mein nahin hongay) and tried to buy a pallor, or a English-Danish phrasebook.
Bikes: sorted — Copenhagen is famous for ‘city bikes’, which you can pick up off the street from designated places by leaving a 20kr deposit in the bike stand and then drop off at any other stand to get your 20kr back. Of course, you can only use them within the City’s limits, so no taking them to Osterbro or Norrebro or anything. Still, very cool. I’m probably going to be taking trains to go to Hellerup etc. anyway, since the probability of being irretrievably lost increases with the distance I have to go.
(BTW, I have no memory of an area being called ‘City’ when we were here before. Then again, all I remember are Hellerup, Gentofte and Norrebro. But still, it’s interesting how some modern cities (London being another example) have an area called ‘City’, which is usually where administrative offices and the finance district are located.)
The bookshop I looked for a pallor at, unfortunately, didn’t have the specific one I wanted, so I’m going to go to another one in the City today and pick one up. I’m finding, BTW, that I get people’s Danish just fine. Sometimes it scrolls by too fast, so I ask them to say things slower, but generally it makes sense. So far, the only things I’ve said myself are “jeg forstar ikke” (’I don’t understand’), “jeg ska ga her” (’I want to go here’, with map out) and “kan du forstar English” (’Do you understand English’) — they’re short enough that the grammatical structure, if wrong, doesn’t throw people off. I’m determined to keep trying, though, and hopefully the pallor will help. (I’ve given up on using Danish glyphs, BTW, as you can see — it takes too long to copy them from the Character Map, and I’m not ready to learn Danish keyboard layouts yet.)
Anyway, I slept for about 5 hours when I got back to the hostel, then got up and walked around. I had dinner at a kebab place I found near the hostel (did anyone know Denmark is one of the largest producers of halal meat in Europe?) and then bummed around the hostel for a while before going to bed again. I have the bottom bunk, so it was a little disconcerting when the people above me moved, but AH I got another 10 hours of excellent sleep.
So now it’s Saturday, almost 11AM, and time to head out. I’m going to spend most of the day in the City today, which means the walking street, walking around the Tivoli/Skala/etc. area, the little mermaid etc.
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