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Copenhagen 4/5 - Star Wars Day (May the fourth......)
This was going to be a fairly lazy day after Wednesday’s big day out, so Pete and I decided to go over the road to have a look at the Round Tower which we didn’t think would take very long. We were very wrong, what a great place to visit. It’s about 35 meters high with an observation deck almost at the top, and an observatory in the dome. It was finished in 1642, was the centre of the Regensen University which still uses the attached space and still has very old student accommodation across the street. It has a hollow core but there’s no definite reason for it, and you get to the top via a ramp that spins 7 ½ times around and part of the reason for it was so a horse and cart could take up heavy equipment as well as books etc to the library. It’s also attached to the church next door and there’s a great view through a window looking right through into the church.

The views continue as you walk up the very easy brick slope, we could even look down into the courtyard of our apartment as well as, from the very top, across to the port and a huge bridge. They have a great system allowing people up and down the short, narrow, winding staircase to the observation deck – three minutes each way controlled by red and green lights. We got stuck with a troop of jostling impatient school kids who had been having races round the spiral, who would get there first?

There was an old privy with a wooden seat and apparently emptying into a huge holding tank down below, it wasn’t cleaned out for about 60 years hence the pipe-smoking habit of students to mask the smell. Just imagine it. The bell loft had massive beams as well as a display of small items found under floorboards during a recent renovation. The library was light and bright, used as a small concert hall or meeting room but also had very good displays highlighting parts of the history of the university.

One story was about a choirboy about 150 years ago, he was playing hide and seek and fell 25 meters down the central core and lived to tell the tale. They had to dig into the wall to get him out and he only had some loosened teeth and bruises. These days they’ve put a thick glass cover on it and you can stand on it and look down the length of the core.

Hans Christian Andersen was known to have used the university library and spent a lot of time at the tower and he references it in several of his stories, one being The Tinderbox where he says the biggest dog had eyes as large as the Round Tower
https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheTinde…

I left Pete reading and went ‘home’, got out of the lift to find the family laughing and looking a bit guilty, next thing from the kitchen walked Andy’s Singapore schoolmate, Jon, who had come across from London for a couple of days to see us, so lovely of him to do that, we were really pleased. The kids didn’t know he was coming (they’d never have kept the secret) and Pete had a great surprise too.

So we had to celebrate the visitor’s arrival with our second attempt to find the Wild Kiwi Pie Shop, we made it this time (it helps to take the correct train), only a small place and they had a great menu, some had two pies, Ellie just had fries. Jon remembered the pies I kept in the freezer in Singapore, the boys used to heat them in the microwave, goodness knows how many we went through – they were an Aussie brand so the pies today were much better of course. They had a bowl of small nibbles of very more-ish ginger slice so I had to have dessert instead of a second pie, delicious. I was tempted by the lemon meringue pies too but resisted.

Had a chat to the owner, ex Canterbury and Auckland, he’s been here around seven years and business has been doing well, even through Covid. He said that a lot of Danish businesses supply lunch for their staff and they’d been doing that pre-Covid, then when people were locked down they decided they didn’t want to make lunch so ordered pies, and now about 80% of their trade is in orders or takeaway pies, the rest in the café part. He’s put kiwiana around the walls, the toilet is labelled ‘wharepaku’, there are books to read such as Hairy Maclary, Footrot Flats, the Tui ‘Yeah Right’ book.

Next stop was Nyhavn where we did the one hour tourist boat trip, had a very good guide who gave us lots of information about the pretty coloured houses by the wharf where we started, the various buildings we were seeing, the royal yacht was anchored in the bay and we had a great view of the Little Mermaid’s back, along with a number of tourists clambering around her looking for the best shot. He pointed out the new theatre which was built partly on big piles supposedly to mimic Venice, and noted that when it gets very hot they pipe sea water through the building to cool it down. Justyna and I liked the look of some new apartments, especially the ones with the grass roof, quite a contrast to the repurposed factory/warehouse next door.

One thing out of the ordinary – there was some kind of contest going on and both sides of a wide channel were packed with people watching a man walking a tightrope from bank to bank, probably all hoping he’d fall in. I don’t know how many tried and made it, but it was an unusual site.

We had a good evening reminiscing about the Singapore days and catching up on Jon and our family news. A great surprise.Read more