The Green Goblin Blog

On Wednesday morning I told the customer I was visiting in Copenhagen that I'd had a great time at Tivoli the previous evening. He informed me that it was good I hadn't gone on Monday as a woman had commited suicide from the ferris wheel.
I'm sure even knowing about that event, let alone seeing it, would have made me think again about going on the rides.

Swedish woman in Copenhagen ferris wheel suicide: park

A Swedish woman in her 50s plunged to her death from atop a ferris wheel at Copenhagen's Tivoli amusement park on Monday in what appeared to be a suicide, a park official said. "According to the preliminary investigation, the victim committed suicide by jumping from the ferris wheel when it was 18.5 metres (61 feet) up," in full view of other park goers, spokeswoman Stine Lolk told AFP. The victim's identity was not disclosed. The ride was shut down pending a police investigation in order to determine that it was indeed a suicide and not an accident. Lolk said Monday's death was the only one ever recorded on the ferris wheel since it entered into service in 1949. Tivoli, which opened in 1843, is Europe's third-largest amusement park after EuroDisney in Paris and Blackpool in Britain.

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark, Tivoli

Copenhagen is great for having an amusement park in the middle of the city (and half a mile from my hotel).
I decided that Tuesday would be Tivoli night after scouting around the site on Monday. The prices seemed a little expensive but I planned to make it worthwhile. Entrance to the park was 85 DKK (£9) and a further 200 DKK (£21) for an all-you-can-ride wristband. I'd worked out by browsing the Tivoli site that you wouldn't want to purchase individual tickets unless you weren't brave enough for the scary rides. These 3-ticket rides would cost over £6 a time (incredible!) so after four I would start to save money.

I thought I would take it easy and started with The Spinning Top, one of those rides that spins you round and from one side of the area to the other at the same time. The web site has a rating system for each ride although I'm not too sure about the science behind it. A "speed" rating of 4/10 seemed simple enough (and 0/10 for "height" was pretty obvious) but how do you give The Spinning Top 7/10 for "fun" and 6/10 for "excitement"?

Nicely warmed up, I went on to The Odin Express and joined a queue.
Unfortunately the queue was not for the small roller coaster ("Height" 4/10). No, instead I was soon to reach the-point-of-no-return for The Star Flyer, at 80 metres high the world’s tallest carousel ("Height" 10/10). I looked behind me and saw a queue of people who would definitely notice me excusing myself from a ride they were easily able to handle. I looked to my right at the people leaving the ride. They seemed to be able to walk without difficulty and showed no signs of mental trauma. Maybe the ride wasn't as mind-bogglingly scary as it looked...

The ride is ludicrously simple. You sit in a small plastic bucket seat (which has a lap belt like in a car plus a metal bar across your hips to keep you in) suspended by chains from a carousel far above. The carousel slowly rises up and spins round for a few minutes at up to 70km/h, giving you an excellent (but windy) view of the city which now seems to populated by swarms of termites.
Strangely the height doesn't seem to bother you initially - in the same way that you can look out of an aircraft at 30,000 feet and not really give it much thought. That is, until I looked at the top of the carousel and noticed how close it was, instantly giving my brain an exact reference point to work out where my bucket seat really was. My tip for this ride - look around but don't look up; there is nothing interesting to see there anyway.

And as the ride finishes, bringing you down to earth again, you congratulate yourself on how brave you were before realising that you have been holding the chains so hard that they are now almost an integral part of your hands.

Here's the view from below:

 

and from the 5th floor window of my hotel:

After correctly locating and riding The Odin Express - with by now a queasy stomach - I decided to go for a walk and see more of the park before settling down to an evening meal. I wanted something traditionally Danish so eschewed most of the restaurants and fast-food establishments before ending up at the Viften café where I ordered "Danish Beef". You can't get more Danish than that, surely? Hopefully it's not a meal truly representative of the country's culinary expertise as I was served potatoes and gravy with a sort of bland beefburger (plus obligatory pickle on the side).

Coffee and meal finished, I strolled round the lake to the Glass Hall where a lot of neat theatre-type people were standing around waiting. I vaguely recollected that something was scheduled here for 8:30pm so I eventually walked in and found a seat near the front to read my Bill Bryson book while I waited. Needless to say I was sitting in someone's seat though I have no idea how this was possible as tickets were not required and I never saw anybody else with one. But I moved nonetheless - when you don't know anyone or what's going on, it's usually best not to make a fuss.

After a while the theatre began to fill up more and the show started. I soon realised that this was a local show for local people and I would hear no more English within the theatre after the earlier "you're in my seat". This wasn't too much of a problem - the sleight-of-hand used by the magician to pick-pocket poor victims from the audience was pretty visual although it would have been nice to hear his banter; the comedy trio's jokes, though were lost on me - even their naff singing of "99 Red Balloons" at the end was in the original German; the juggler was good, especially his motorised bin-shaped object dispenser. So after an hour I was released back into the park, not much the wiser as to Danish humour and culture.

More rides were in order but I instead found the aquarium (seemingly unmarked on the guide map) and paid the 20 DKK to watch a vast wall of fish swim backwards and forwards for an hour. It was very calming to stand in the peaceful gloom watching sharks and big fish go about their monotonous life. Also, a bit disappointing as the environment wasn't very real - all the coral was from moulds as the real creatures wouldn't last very long without the sun's energy and the volume of fish in the tank. I noticed a fair number that in normal circumstances would be munching away at coral and this pseudo-reef would soon have been stripped. So no coral - or anenomes, shrimps, worms and a bazillion of other lifeforms that you would normally expect to see in the sea - just fish. Despite that, it was still enjoyable to have such fish swim I shoals just a foot from your face.

 

 

I did try and research what fish were in the tank using the touch-screen panels. This went reasonably well for a while - a lot of fish were newer than the web pages described - until I clicked a link to a page that didn't exist. The screen turned to a web browser error page which - on a touch-screen where all interaction is restricted to navigating the content - meant "game over". The other panel sadly bounced a "check cable" message round its screen so no joy there either.

Always on the look-out for interesting implementations of day-to-day items, here are the wash basins in the toilets by the aquarium. The surface looks flat but slopes down to the central column where the water disappears into hidden drains. Neat.

By now it was getting late so I knew I would have to rush to catch the rollercoaster. The ride was plunged into darkness without any movement so I walked on disconsolately, realising I had wasted my ticket money. Looking round for an ice-cream to cheer myself up with, I was startled to hear a rumble and scream as the ride burst into life - obviously it had just been waiting for enough passengers. The Demon was good enough for me to go round twice on - no stomach-churning drops down steep slopes but with a few Immelman loops and twists to make it interesting.

Some unlabelled but brightly-lit building:

As it was by now past 11, I decided on a night-time flight on The Star Flyer to see the city lights from way up before finally buying my ice-cream and making my way out of the park. This is where things started to go slightly wrong. I had a great mental map for the trip between my hotel and Tivoli - it's a straight road so shouldn't be a problem. Come out of the entrance and turn left, keeping going for half a mile, and you're done. Unfortunately I came into the park via the station entrance and left through the main entrance, rotating me 90 degrees in relation to my route home. After 15 minutes of chatting to my wife on the phone and starting to realise I didn't recognise any of the buildings, I discovered exactly where Copenhagen's red-light district was...

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark, Tivoli

Even inebriated, you realise when the music playing through your Zune is just not appropriate. Limp Bizkit's "Chocolate Starfish", for example, just doesn't cut it when you're walking past museums and expensive boutiques in central Copenhagen. Jacksonville FLA it is not. What the hell am I rebelling against? Well, 50 Krone beers but that's not really the stuff of teen angst. Which I said farewell to in the early 80s anyway. Yeah, "My Generation"...

Subnote - it IS possible for it to rain so heavily you flood your in-ear headphones.

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark, Limp Bizkit

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark

Maybe these counters make the roads safer?
No more wondering how long the lights are going to stay red and getting impatient as a result.
No more gambling on how much time you have to cross the road before the green man disappears.

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark

It's strange that I had to go all the way to Denmark to take part in my first Pride event.



It was a pretty small affair, set up next to the splendid Copenhagen City Hall in the town square (Rådhuspladsen).



A collection of around 20 neat pod-like tents provided information or sold products that you would expect to see at such an event - safe-sex guides, rainbow coloured nick-nacks and soft porn. I settled on supporting the event by treating myself to a couple of Tuborg beers - and, no, acting sweetly camp will not get me to pay 50 krone when it says 35.



A very small covered stage threatened to provide entertainment for a long while as some roady-type messed around with cables and speakers. Losing my patience, and not wanted to drink in the outside when the weather was started to spit, finished my beer and started to leave. Just then two things happened - a singer (Danish star Ida Corr) was produced and the skies opened.



Ready as I was to hang around to listen, I just wasn't dressed correctly for the downpour so I retreated off down Frederiksberggade in search of dry food and wet beer.

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark, Pride

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
'Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down
To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Salty old queen of the sea
Once I sailed away
But I'm home today
Singing Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful
Copenhagen for me

I sailed up the Skagerrak
And sailed down the Kattegat
Through the harbour and up to the quay
And there she stands waiting for me
With a welcome so warm and so gay
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

{Repeat first verse}

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark

The flight to Copenhagen today was interesting. I learnt many things, such as airport control towers have fire detection systems and when a fire alarm goes off the occupants of the building evacuate. Which obviously gets you to thinking "what happens to the planes on the tarmac queuing to take off?" The answer is they stop where they are and switch off their engines to preserve fuel. Boy, does that get tedious. The next question that drifts through your mind as you stare out of the window at the rain-swept airfield is "what happens to the planes in the air that would relish the luxury of waiting on the tarmac?" Maybe I'll be (un)fortunate to find out another day.

The next thing I learnt is that some planes have cameras mounted in the nose so you can see what's ahead on the drop-down mini-screens. This is a pretty handy addition to the service as you can watch the planes in front during the nose-to-tail procession to the runway. Then you see the tarmac whizzing before you as the plane speeds along and takes off - at which point the camera rotates to show you the ground underneath getting further and further away. Marvellous stuff.

Thirdly, I found that if you approach an information desk and ask for a particular store, it will be the store directly next to the information desk. I remember having the same result years ago in Dublin when asking in a newsagents where the nearest post office was. Of course, it was the massive building containing the central post office just on the other side of the road.

Who would have thought that you could exploit the safety movie on the plane for product placement? Whoever did should be able to retire on their bonus. After the flight attendent in the film asked a (well dressed and pretty) passenger to switch off her PDA, you are presented with a shut-down screen showing Sony Ericsson. At first I was thinking "intrusive bastards" and then "why doesn't that say 'Microsoft Windows Mobile'"? Inspired marketing.

At the hotel, I found that if your bill says "Communication Package DKK175.00" then it probably means you have spent a while observing the adult movie channels. Obviously there are so many frequent travellers out there who need to get their expense claims through their claims department without too much embarrasment that the hotel colludes with them.

And finally, when you travel you know you will forget something. This time it was the camera USB cable (so no photos uploaded before I get home) and underarm (three cheers for free hotel soap). And talking of soap, the supplier in this Danish hotel is "Guest Supply UK" from ... Reading. Well, Aldermaston to be more accurate but that's close enough.

Labels: Copenhagen, Denmark