Back in Europe for the Institute of Sensible Transport Study Tour and taking a few extra weeks to travel around, because who goes to Europe from Australia for just a week!
First stop Hamburg after a 8hr flight/5hr layover/13hr flight/6hr wait/2hr train ride. Gruelling. Hamburg is seemingly reinventing itself again. After copping a fair bit of flack during WWII, it’s erasing the first rebuild and renewing itself as modern information-based city. The tower of St Nikolai Church stands as a reminder of this, still accessible after the rest of the building was obliterated.
The most spectacular relic of its past glory is the warehouses in the Speicherstadt district which line the canals. Impossibly ornate brick and copper and accessed by a network of steel arch bridges, they are an overload of 19th century texture.
Right next door is the renewal area of Hafencity, anchored by the spectacular (for 750M euros you’d hope so) Opera House building design by Herzog and de Meuron, perched on top of an old warehouse. At mostly 5-6 stories, but spread over a much larger area, the scale of this district is so much more appropriate than, say, Barangaroo whose towers create an inhuman density and pretty crappy microclimates.
Slightly surreal was a USA chapter of Rotary meeting in town. It seemed you couldn’t walk anywhere without encountering some earnest upstanding mid-west american accents, including at the Groniger Brewery where I had stopped in for a beer and a feed. By that stage of the proceedings they were very ruddy and raucous, the day’s proceedings being apparently done with.
Only slightly late into Copenhagen after an extended wait at the border between Germany and Denmark – who knows, maybe they found something serious – I found my very suburban, very comfortable AirBNB digs in Tårnby very welcome.
Knowing the Scandinavians have fully embraced coffee culture, that became the first thing to nail. Bingo 156 in Amager came to the rescue with a world-class flat white. From there it seems I’m destined to check out the highest point in every place I visit. The Rundetaarn or ‘Round Tower’ is the highest point in central Copenhagen. More interesting than the views out over the city, however were the spiral internal ramp with vaulted ceilings which formed the way up, and the guy with the megaphone broadcasting some kind of passionate message – presumably to do with the European parliament elections which happened when I was there.
As well as coffee, there’s an overload of design on show, spanning multiple eras. The Danish Design Museum showcases a lot of it under one roof, but it’s really everywhere including the neo-gothic Grundtviks Church to the very-five-minutes-ago Superkilen Park in Norrebro. Some things might be more timeless than others…
Copenhagen is really polycentric with a number neighbourhoods each with their own character forming the broader city. There’s a loose centre which is more due to age than location or function, and plenty of new areas emerging seemingly out of nothing. Christianhavn, Vesterbro, Norrebro and Amager are just some of the names which signify a different character, either of renewal or establishment. Renewal, when it happens, seems really thoughtful. Take the library – it boldly pushes a massive new modern addition focused around a 6-storey atrium up against the old building dating from 1906. It sits across the main canal from Cirkelbroen, a bridge conceived as a series of circular platforms arranged to give the impression of ships masts. Even Kastellet, the old fort which used to protect the city has a modern insertion of a discreet memorial within its steep grassed ramparts, now very gentile and pleasantly green but I’m sure there was a time where they were far necessary.
Most interesting of these districts to me was Refshaleøen , a former shipyard area now becoming an alternative arts and culture precinct. It’s where the iconic wind farms are located and it seems like if you have an idea to try, Refshaleøen will welcome you and let you try it out. Want to live in a sky-blue shipping container? Sure. Grass ski down the roof of a green energy building? Of course. It was also home of the Copenhagen Photo Festival, a collection of exhibitions on, well, you know. The subject matter tended toward the grim (photo essay on far right activism) to the sparsely beautiful (up and coming danish photographers) to the wacky and fun (snapshots from the early 80s in Massachusetts, enlarged to the max.
