Copenhagen a day of work

Two Creativity Friends in Copenhagen

Hello again from Copenhagen

Yesterday afternoon after my session Rosanna (Italian
CPSI friend from Switzerland) and I ventured out into
the streets of Copenhagen.

The day before I had wandered around on foot when I
wasn't working and became familiar with the few mile
area between the central train station and my CAB INN
Hotel. Rosanna had taken a Tour Copenhagen bus tour
and had become familiar with sites in Copenhagen.

The last time I was here was in 1977 and my 57 year
old memory is fuzzy at times. So Rosanna became the
tour guide.

Off we went to walk through the paved streets of
Copenagen, past row after row after row of beautifully
maintained Baroque style architecture, past shop after
shop: Gucci, Versace, Lego, 7-11, McDs, KFC, Burger
King...you know all the big BRANDED names.

The streets gradually were filling with residents and
hundreds that turned into thousands of visitors from
all over Europe.

As obcessive architect I could easily take one hundred
rolls of 36 exposure film of details of windows,
doorways, roofs, street art and street sculpture from
classic, 100 to 200 years old, to contemporary though
fairly conservative. The colors of architecture here
are generally brick, stone, concrete colors.
Occasionally there is an apartment building with
pastel color painted stucco.

Then their is a renovated building a couple blocks
from the central station that is

PINK
BLUE
WHITE
RED
YELLOW

It is a giant cinema with many screens and a dance
hall. It was the scurge of Copenhagen when it was
first renovated. Now you find photographs of it on
post cards and in souvenir books.

The streets are extremely organized here.

paved walking paths
paved bicycle paths (safe ones at that)
bus lanes
driving lanes

the cobble stones, paving stones, granite blocks and
other permanent materials are lined up as straight as
arrows.

Anyone could learn how to draw perfect perspective
drawings in Copenhagen.

Trees, shrubs, many different colored flowers, water
in multiple forms from ponds to lakes to streams to
pools to gushing or spraying fountains.

After our initial walk last evening through areas away
from Tivoli and the Central Train Station we choose a
sidewalk cafe to have dinner and talk for a couple
hours.

Then off it was for another Rosanna guided tour to see
sites I had not seen before of government and Queen
buildings and huge plazas including official guards
walking methodically in the dark, ritualistically as
if no one else existed.

Tivoli was our next stop at 11:30 pm. Tivoli was one
of the great well established, world renown amusement
parks that inspired Walt Disney in the initial
creation of Disneyland in the 1950's.

Imagine it is dark.
It is very late.
Yet the streets are filled with happy people enjoying
the company of friends, family members and loved ones.
Arm in arm many walking.
Smiles galore on the streets.

Now imagine that the skies full of stars had fallen to
earth and draped themselves all decoratively over the
buildings, trees, walkways, etc. of a wonderful
amusement park...filled with great sounds, smells,
tastes. The colors of the many flower beds could be
enjoyed still in the dark in the ambience.

The many dance floors and music stands or stages were
silent by 11:30 with the park but the sounds of fun
and excitement were not. People of all ages were
strolling throughout the park.

Restaurants to our right our left to the front to the
rear. Every kind of sweet and dessert you can
imagine. Whoa I feel like Pinocchio in Pleasure
Island.

Then the lotto, slot machine buildings, filled mostly
with elderly men and women, more women.

Past there the rides: roller coasters, dodge em cars,
target shooting, canon target shooting, free fall
rides, gigantic pendulum rides, carosels, .....

That was and is Tivoli. Tivoli is to be experienced.
Experienced from many perspectives: strolling adults,
lovers, children, teenagers, young adults.

This morning it was time to meet with Arne and wife
number one (inside joke) and go off to a photographic
exhibition. They road from their home on their
bicycles to my hotel and Rosanna walked over from her
hotel. Then we proceeded to walk through the streets
of Copenagen filling our senses with the urban
refinement of integrated design and consistency that
is most of Copenhagen. Individual period styles can
be seen from the Baroque to the contemporary yet there
is a unity and integrated feeling to most of it all
beautifully accented by widely varying exterior scale
artwork.

The exhibition was a gigantic size exhibit of mostly
arial photographs take by one photograph all around
the world.

His tag line for the exhibition is

The World is the Art, the Photographer is the Observer

The photos were from many countries from all seven
continents. They ranged from shots from helicopters
from maybe 30 to 50 feet to airplane shots from miles
up. Rivers, mountains, villages, farms, deserts,
crowds of people, Yankee stadium...were the art
subjects.

We were going to go to Louisana, an excellent
contemporarty art gallery/museum located an hour by
train from Copenhagen initially this afternoon.
Instead we decided to catch the green line canal boat
and ride all around the canels of Copenhagen to see
what we could see.

From there it was a couple hours of wandering around
the streets, filled to over flowing with people.
Musicians: guitar, accordain, flutes (eastern,
western, southern), varied Russian and slavic string
instruments, drums; entertainers: singers, dancers,
actors, comedians were scattered throughout each of
the streets we stolled along.

Then back to the Central Station for me to email and
rest to join up again around 7:00 for dinner once
again.

I wish you all the opportunity to visit and enjoy
Copenhagen some day.

Wandering Alan