Velkommen til København

I arrived in lovely Copenhagen on Monday morning. I am visiting for a week with some dear friends and colleagues. Those who live here often say emphatically that this is a town best seen in the summer, when the days tap out at about 19 hours of sunlight, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Today, the daylight is 8 hours, 34 minutes and 9 seconds in duration, which is right in my wheelhouse. Long horizontal mornings, a bright productive afternoon, and a lulling evening. I am staying on the 15th floor penthouse of a building in Frederiksberg, a neighborhood which oddly enough, is considered its own municipality despite being nestled right in the city. To my left, I can see the grey sea, two windmills at work, several steaming smokestacks, and thousands of orange roofs with glowing windows tucked beneath. Behind me stretches the stripes of the cities parks and neighborhoods, and across the street below, a tiny cemetery with an elegant and tidy crematorium. My friends here told me it is only used once in a blue moon, but they saw it used one day when there was snow on the ground , and it is supposedly breathtaking. The fires smell different here and from Ireland ... sort of like Dublin smoke but more like leaves, which are by the way, significantly larger and drier than ours. This makes for the best lonely bustling sound when they blow down the street, especially if someone around the corner is walking in high heels or big boots. I am off tonight to see a film in the CPH:DOX festival, and maybe a warm drink in a bodega. Danish "bodegas" are not poorly stocked cornerstores as they are called in New York, but essentially a local pub (think, The Long Hall in Dublin) where smoking laws are bent etc. I have just done spring cleaning on my camera, so new pictures to follow soon, but for now - two of my aforementioned favorite bodegas, one abroad and one a stone's throw away:

The Long Hall, Dublin 2

               Café Intime, Frederiksberg