Exploring & Museum of Danish resistance

A brisk walk through Copenhagens delightful, eclectic buildings brought me to the Museum of Danish resistance, a neat little structure with a rusted industrial quality near the harbour. The exhibits are all on dimly lit basement levels, giving the whole exhibition an appropriately claustrophobic feel - literally going underground to learn about an underground. The chronologically ordered exhibits are well curated, with all manner of multi-media elements alongside carefully chosen, often poignant artefacts.

Among the exhibits are concentration camp uniforms marked with the star of David to mark Jews or the red oblong marking political prisoners (particularly communists). Other cases contained the clothing of resistance members - still showing the holes made by the bullets that killed their owners. A display on Danish sailors who took their ships to join allied merchant navies or signed on with the Royal Navy caught my eye; it included four British service medals: the Atlantic Star, Pacific Star, Africa Star and Italy star awarded to Danes for their service with Britain in those theatres of war. Only the Arctic Star (created retroactively only about 10 years ago) was missing.

I stayed until the museum’s 17:00 closing time, and then headed to the famous statue of the little mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s novel. It was predictably crowded with people seeking a selfie and I felt no particular desire to trade my currently good mood for the agitation of queueing, so strolled north along the harbour side with no particular destination in mind. The city seemed very empty, I have no idea what this part of town is actually called but I thought of it as ‘the ghost quarter’ because it was like a ghost town (albeit one with beautiful marinas and public art) - cruise ships dock in this area, so it is probably very different if one is in port.

I spent about an hour wandering a beautiful part of town with barely a soul around, before pushing backwards the centre of town. I spied a lady wearing the emblem of the Sea Shepherds conservation society, which I imagine is a bolder move than it would be at home given the cultural attachment to fish etc in this part of the world. Sadly, a Google maps hit for vegan waffles turned out to be a false promise, but I found an adequate bite on my way back to to the hotel for the evening.Read more