A few things have caught me pleasantly by surprise though. The first is that Danish design has been unique and, in many ways, contemporary for centuries. I’d developed a concept of European architecture based heavily on Greco-Roman influence. My visits to France, Switzerland, Spain, and London largely bore this out (though between Gaudi and Moorish influence Spain represents a bit of a departure). But Denmark is different. Whether it’s distance from Rome or something cultural I don’t know, but everthing around me is at least a little different. For example, the Børsen (stock exchange, 1620s), Vor Frelsers Kirke (1750ish), and castles like Kronborg Slot (1700s) are striking in their differences from what I’m used to, even as they draw on more traditional influences (click to see larger images):

Going back further (12th century-ish) are Bornholm’s fortified round churches:

The architecture uses unusual shapes: spirals, bold vertical rectangles in church facades, intricate fairy-tale effects on castles, and in more modern buildings, interesting angles and colors. And everywhere there are these delightful, orange, tile-roofed buildings, a constant element of the old amidst the new:

Then there’s Christiania, arguably a topic unto itself…

Modern Danish design also held some surprises for me. Have a look at the chairs at the Danish Design Center:

These span about 60 years of design. Can you accurately guess which are from the 1950s and which are from last year? I couldn’t. There’s a timelessness, a persistent relevance and modernity, to a lot of Danish design that I’ve often found to be lacking when I go into a contemporary furniture store. I think, in part, it has to do with the fact that modern design isn’t new here; in a sense they’ve been doing it all along.

That also means they’re not afraid to retain elements of the old. For example, Royal Copenhagen’s recent Blue Fluted Mega porcelain pattern is based almost wholly on their traditional Blue Fluted pattern but recasts it in a more modern light (Blue Fluted on the left, Mega on the right):

It seems the Danes have a long history of doing their own thing, building on existing styles but striking out in new directions. The result is surprising and often delightful…and in a capital city nearly free from skyscrapers. I have way more architecture photos than I could possibly put in one post, but you can see them in the photo album.

It would be difficult to find a better fit for the word idyllic than the island of Bornholm. It sits southeast of Denmark proper, just south of Sweden at the mouth of the Baltic Sea. The water is warm for swimming, the terrain is rolling and agrarian, the coast is alternately rocky and beachy. There are quaint, picturesque little towns, friendly livestock, smokehouses, a brewery, and spectator-friendly local industries like glassblowing and candy-making.

So we rented bikes and explored…

…diligently investigated the beach…

…admired the amber waves of grain (they’ve got it all over us in this department I’m afraid)…

…ate tasty smoked fish…

…swam in the Baltic…

…and made friends with the local sheep.

We also checked out one of Bornholm’s round churches, which served as both a place of worship and a defense in case of attack. Even the fortifications are idyllic:

As always, there are far more photos than I’ve posted here, but you can check out the rest in my photo album.

So, what have we been up to? Well, a little bit of sightseeing to begin with. Near our apartment is the Vor Felsers Kirke, a church dating back to 1699 with a nifty helical staircase up the spire.

The church houses a carillon (whose Saturday evening concerts we can hear from our apartment) and affords excellent views of the city.

We’ve also done the obligatory hop-on / hop-off bus tour of the city and taken a walking tour of Christiania, the self-governing hippie colony. (More on that in a future post.)

Then there’s the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. On Monday we attended a concert at Tivoli. In the first half we heard a Danish pianist, Christian Dahl, along with a trumpeter and harpist. While occasionally a little too ambient for my tastes the trio were very talent, and the music was often entertaining, sometimes amusing as the artists played off and surprised one another. This improvisational interaction is in my opinion part of what makes Jazz such a great art form. The second half of the concert was a Scandinavian band called Supersilent, four talentet musicians who have devoted themselves to complete cacophany. You might get a similar effect by taking a boy scout troop, giving them supersize Cokes, and letting them loose in a Guitar Center. Megan sat through it all, but I joined about 1/3 of the audience in leaving to enjoy the sunset over Tivoli.

While in Tivoli, we took advantage of the Star Flyer ride and the Daemonen roller coaster, both of which were excellent.

The Danes like to grill out, to the point that all the supermarkets sell $4 portable self-contained grills. Thursday we joined other grilling, drinking groups by the canal on Amager and listened in on a concert at Havnescenen, the floating outdoor stage.

Last night (Friday) we bought tickets to see Danish rock singer Jomi Massage with the DR Big Band performing jazz versions of her songs – a good concert with interesting harmonies – and stayed for some smaller groups in a late night performance.

We’ve just crossed the Øresund channel into Sweden on a long bridge that Megan thinks may be the longest in the world. All the displays on the train have switched from Danish to Swedish.

Tuesday, we took a little day trip up the eastern coast of Zealand. Our first stop was Helsingør, site of Kronborg Slot, the castle that inspired Hamlet. (That Shakespeare’s anglizication of Helsingør into Elsinore is a fairly accurate one should illustrate why English-speakers have some difficulty pronouncing Danish.)

Then it was on to Hornbæk to swim in the Øresund (with surprisingly warm water) and eat fried fish by the beach in the rain.

And of course there was our Thursday tour of the Carlsberg brewery.

More soon. And don’t forget that I’m posting far more photos than I include here in the photo album section of my site.

Copenhagen is lovely and feels very comfortable. Everyone seems a bit more relaxed here, and takes advantage of the long daylight hours and warm weather: walking and biking, swimming, picnicking by the canals. The city is pretty and compact. We’re continually surprised by how easy it is to walk around.

And did I say long daylight hours? The sun rises earlier than I care to track, and it’s not fully dark until at least 11pm. We find ourselves forgetting how late it is. By the time we went to dinner Wednesday all the restaurants had stopped serving food. (The local sushi place was kind enough to assemble some of their leftovers for us, and we ended up with a great deal on the Miscellaneous Maki Meal.)

Speaking of food:

• Bacon features heavily. Bacon grease in the soup, bacon in the chicken salad, bacon wrapped around the sausages. Yum. We were also served some sort of spread with our herring that appeared to be bacon grease. Further investigation is needed.
• Plenty of preserved fish too: pickled herring, curried herring, smoked eel…and to those of you saying “eew,” well, your loss.
• Plenty of beer. And nothing so quaint as open container laws. People just carry it around with them, drink it by the canals, keep it in their bike baskets. We’ve really had no choice but to imbibe as much of it as possible.

Recently Copenhagen cleaned up some of its waterways enough to be safe for swimming. We checked out one area last night and found the water to be much warmer than expected. Hundreds of recent swimmers sat by the canal, drying off and hanging out in bathing suits or underwear (the distinction seems unimportant here, which makes sense as far as I’m concerned).

So all in all, a good first few days. We haven’t done much in the way of sightseeing yet, but that’s a real advantage to a longer trip: we can spend a few days just getting our bearings without worrying about what we might be missing. I had my first conference call yesterday, a successful proof of concept for the whole VoIP thing – having email access abroad is cool enough, but the fact that anyone in Cambridge can pick up the phone and call me on a local number is something else.

Today’s the beginning of the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, so we’re off to check that out in a little while. It’s a rough life.