Copenhagen Green scene: cycling — with cute bike basket, ideally — is almost de rigueur. Opposite, clockwise from top, wine times; City Hall; avocado on rye breakfast at Atelier
September; posh wood-cabin Radio; street life in Nørrebro; minimalist Danish design can be found at Black — at a price; Radio serves up complex food, reasonably priced
Dane’s world Want to live like a local on your weekend away? Copenhagen’s the city for just hanging out, says Laura Goulden. Scandi-cool shops, cutting-edge food, beautiful people — and no sights… Photography: Jonathan Perugia
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Copenhagen
I expect you were probably sipping a cold beer while dangling your legs from an ornate bridge, sharing the last bite of something greasily delicious with a loved one or watching the sunset paint a tower block unexpectedly pink. This is why Copenhagen, to my mind, offers the best city break in Europe. In a stroke of genius, the town planners designed the Danish capital to be clean, compact, full of attractive airy boulevards and almost devoid of must-see sights — the best-known, the Little Mermaid, is mostly famous for being a disappointment. This means no racing from gallery to museum to cathedral, and lots of what you really want to do in a city: eat, drink and hang out (activities this city caters for exceedingly well). In short, Copenhagen offers the sort of weekend that’s made for people like my boyfriend Steve and me — secret lazies. So when we landed late afternoon, instead of wondering if we could squeeze a gallery in before closing time, our first decision was whether we had time for a beer before dinner. We quickly agreed that we did. Just 30 minutes later (the city is so small no journey is longer than half an hour), we were in the laid-back west-ofcentre Vesterbro neighbourhood — all quirky cafes, interesting-looking restaurants and independent shops — sipping exquisitely tart cherry lagers, and people-watching at Mikkeller beer bar. And what people-watching! Those Scandi stereotypes are all true: every single person in this city is handsome, blonde and under 35 years of age (what they do with the old or ugly is a mystery). They all ride trendy fixie bikes, accessorised with either a small dog sitting dutifully in a wicker basket, or a pair of genetically blessed children sitting dutifully in a wooden bike trailer. Make-up and blow-dries are thin on the ground — these guys are too good-looking to have to bother. After an hour of gawping, our stomachs indicated that it was time to make the seven-minute walk east to Kødbyen, an area once populated by butchers that has now been overrun with hip restaurants and renamed the Meatpacking District, à la New York. On a Friday night it was rammed and we waited an hour for sourdough pizza at modish Mother restaurant. But we didn’t mind because we had already factored in the next day’s lie-in and we pretended we were part of the young monochrome crowd, sitting outside next to white-tiled warehouses
Think about the best times you’ve had on a city break. I’ll bet my selfie stick that 9 out of 10 of those times did not involve a national monument.
INSIDER TIP-OFF Vaernedamsvej, in Vesterbro, is a great little street for browsing. Stop at Blomsterskuret florist (blomsters kuret.dk) to admire the blooms, Granola (granola.dk) for coffee, and Dora (shopdora.dk) for cool souvenirs
Magic hour: dusk falling over Nyhavn port
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Copenhagen
Food is the only thing that locals are impractically flamboyant about. Dishes arrived lovingly sprinkled with flowers
draped in fairy lights, nattering over craft beers and generally having very civilised, low-key fun. The beauty of omitting big-hitting sights from your city break is that you get to spend your weekend living like a local. You rarely see residents getting up at dawn to beat museum queues, but you do see them lingering over long, lovely brunches. We did likewise, idling the next morning over sliced avocado on rye, and yoghurt with pickled courgettes and candied pistachios (much more scrummy than it sounds), at our window-seat perch in minimalist cafe Atelier September. Gazing through the window I could appreciate the subtlety of Copenhagen. Instead of going in for dramatic, postcardworthy statement pieces like other European capitals, this city has homed in on the details, crowning buildings with spires and curled roofs and filling empty spaces with water and greenery. You won’t see one scruffy plastic chair or naff umbrella outside a cafe — they’re banned. 86
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And everything doesn’t just look pretty, it works like a dream. Wide boulevards have as much space for bikes as cars, the air is clean and there are no suffocating skyscrapers — it’s as if the city has been designed to alleviate stress. This style-as-well-as-substance attitude is evident in the classic furniture, too, much of which was designed post-war to be both attractive and affordable. And the same goes for Copenhageners’ approach to fashion — they all wear black, presumably because it always looks cool whatever the occasion. Our base for the weekend was Hotel Alexandra, a shrine to Danish design, with nearly 300 pieces of vintage furniture. Each suite is a homage to a different designer and all exhibit the sort of elegant, neutral-toned taste that it’s impossible not to like. Except ours. Verner Panton appears to have been a Danish eccentric, and while I loved the disco chandeliers and bright orange walls, they aren’t to everyone’s taste. ‘It’s giving me a headache,’ said Steve.
Treasure trove Check to see if the Ravnsborggade flea market in Nørrebro is on when you’re in town. It has a lovely community vibe and some great antique knick-knacks if you’re prepared to rummage around (ravnsborggade.dk)
But my choice of suite was forgiven because Hotel Alexandra has an added (furniture-designer) bonus. Here, you get to lounge in Finn Juhl’s long-limbed armchair, sink into the outstretched arms of Wegner’s Papa Bear armchair and let knowledgeable general manager Jeppe show you Jacobsen’s plain wooden Shaker seat, ‘one of the first pieces he made at design school’. A stay here means you don’t need to visit the Design Museum. So instead, that afternoon we hit the shops. The Scandinavians must be the most-copied people on the planet right now — open the pages of any interiors mag and they will be filled with interiors inspired by the mid-century modern style; flick through a fashion magazine and you’ll find cropped trousers teamed with clogs and Sarah Lund’s now-iconic jumper. So whereas we’d usually feel a bit guilty about shopping during a city break, here, we bypassed the NyCarlsberg Glyptotek gallery in favour of long, elegant Gammel Kongevej,
Friends united: from top, left to right, chilling out in Kødbyen; breakfast at Atelier September; the Verner Panton suite in Hotel Alexandra; picnicking in the Assistens Cemetery in Nørrebro; Scandi style at homeware store Hay House; vintage furniture at Klassik; Han Kjøbenhavn for edgy menswear (baby optional); taking a break in Vesterbro; chefs at Manfreds; Hay House interiors; right, have dog, will travel
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Copenhagen Anything but square: stylish shopping in the Amagertov pedestrian precinct in central Copenhagen
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the city’s most famous shopping street — picking up a bit of Scandi style felt like the thing to do. It quickly became clear that the casual Danish look doesn’t come cheap. I flipped over the tags nervously in Black, a minimalist slip of a store stocked with loose-fitting dresses and blazers that would look excellent on someone with the looks and budget of Tilda Swinton. Possessing neither, I splashed out on some grey jeans — I thought they made my legs look a bit Danish — from Nué, a little further down the street. Meanwhile, Steve left edgy menswear store Han Kjøbenhavn with a scruffy trench coat and some round-rimmed sunglasses that either made him look like a cool Copenhagener or a homeless John Lennon (he decided it was worth the risk).
Sunday Times Travel SEPTEMBER 2015
Outfits sorted, we made our way to the town centre where more-accessible-but-still-fashionable stores lined the surprisingly quiet cobbled streets. Copenhageners obviously have better things to do at the weekend than shop — Oxford Circus this isn’t. Making the most of the experience, we spent an unrushed hour deliberating over copper candlesticks and handle-less coffee cups in Hay House, a design shop whose every beautifully crafted object would look perfect in a Scandi-chic apartment, and awkwardly out of place anywhere else. Unable to think of anyone with a cool enough pad to buy these wares for, we ended up with fluorescent tea towels to give to our pals (Look! Attractive and useful!) and some grey felt coasters that might just blend into Steve’s flat.
If you do want culture, it’s there — maybe at the aggressive-looking opera house, the helter-skelter Church of Our Saviour, the peaceful grounds of Kastellet star fortress or among the world-class medieval and Modern Art at the National Gallery. But you can pick and choose from these safe in the knowledge that, upon your return, no-one’s first question will be ‘What did you see?’. They will, on the other hand, ask what you ate. More specifically, they will ask if you ate at Noma. You need to be very rich and very organised to do this (£160pp for the set menu without drinks; tables sell out minutes after the booking window opens, three months ahead of the reservation date). And you can eat so well so
comparatively reasonably in Copenhagen that going to so much trouble feels like an unnecessarily large effort, which is not the cucumber-cool Danish way. No surprise then, that Noma is full of out-of-towners. Instead, we booked a Saturday-evening table at posh wood-cabin Radio, a mere four days in advance. Set up by Noma founder Claus Meyer just north of the three lakes that divide the city, this unassuming little restaurant serves a set menu of five complex little courses. It seems that food is the only aspect of life that Copenhageners are impractically flamboyant about. Each dish was delivered, lovingly sprinkled with flowers, delicious ‘dust’ and tasty pastes, and we demolished it all in seconds. Everything
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Copenhagen Just like mama makes it: young boy tucks into sourdough pizza at modish Mother restaurant
was pretty, light and like nothing I’d tasted before (in a good way) and it cost a reasonable £39 a head. Feeling like we’d got this city’s number, we pulled on our new Copenhagen clobber and spent our last day on rented bikes, making believe that we lived there. We negotiated the cobbles as we passed the colourful houses in Nyhavn port and shared a beer as we watched swans drift across the water from Dronning Louises Bro, a bridge-cum-sunny-day-hang-out where locals bag benches, bring supplies and wait for sunset. It was here that a woman, who looked satisfyingly like the reporter in Borgen, made our weekend. We were just about to drop the living-like-a-local charade and wind things up with a visit to the doughnut stands and rollercoasters of the 19th-century Tivoli pleasure garden, when, like a very modern, attractive fairy godmother, she offered us a crispbread and mentioned that her favourite part of town was Nørrebro, just west of the bridge. We dropped our vague plan, clambered back onto our bikes and headed west. It turns out that Nørrebro is a treasure trove. The city’s trendiest and most multicultural neighbourhood is packed with coffee shops, endless food options and a graveyard frequented by topless sunbathers (Hans Christian Andersen’s final resting place, pretty Assistens Cemetery, doubles up as a park). Jægersborggade is Nørrebro’s epicentre. We walked the cobbled street, pressing our noses against the windows of independent shops selling quirky ceramics and jewellery, before sticking our heads into Manfreds & Vin, a cosy cave of a restaurant run by another Noma disciple, chef Christian Puglisi. It was nearing dinnertime, so we got comfy and drank wine until we felt it was an acceptable time to eat. Judging by our fellow customers’ orders, the tasting menu is the thing here — but, unable to face a second night of multiple courses, we ordered steak tartare and a side of onions to share. What onions! Sweet little half moons smothered in cheese with warm sourdough for mopping — this was the sort of refined, feel-good food that should be passed between world leaders during peace talks. As we clattered back to the hotel that evening, our way illuminated by streetlamps strung up like Christmas lights, we chatted about what a great place Copenhagen would be to live, and the jobs and dog we might get if we moved here. Was this because Copenhagen is the world’s ‘Most Liveable City’ (a title bestowed three times by Monocle magazine) or because we’d spent the weekend acting like locals rather than tourists? Either way, we’d got to know this city in a more intimate way than we usually would. I had a feeling that this was the city break that would inform all our others.
Those Scandi stereotypes are all true: every person in this city is blonde, handsome and under 35
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Get Me There Go independent Norwegian Air (norwegian.com) flies from Gatwick and Edinburgh to Copenhagen from £60 return. EasyJet (easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick and Manchester from £53.
Go packaged BA Holidays (0844 493 0787, ba.com) has two nights in a threestar hotel from £165pp, including Heathrow flights. Or try Kirker (020 7593 1899, kirkerholidays.com).
Where to stay Hotel Alexandra (00 45 3374 4444, hotelalexandra.dk) has doubles from £113, room only. Urban House hostel (00 45 3323 2929, urbanhouse.me) has dorm beds from £20, and doubles from £80, room only.
Where to eat Mother (Hokerboderne 9-15; 00 45 2227 5898, mother.dk) has mains for about £7. Radio (Julius Thomsens Gade 12; 00 45 2510 2733, restaurant radio.dk) has a five-course menu for
map: Scott Jessop
£39. Manfreds & Vin (Jaegersborggade 40; 0045 3696 6593, manfreds.dk) does a seven-course tasting menu for £23; mains about £9. Atelier September (Gothersgade 30; atelierseptember.dk) is brilliant for breakfast; the avocado on rye costs £8.
Where to shop Many shops close about 4pm on a Saturday and some don’t open on Sundays. Hay House (2-3 Ostergade 61; hay.dk) has beautifully crafted homewear. Klassik (Bredgade 3; klassik.dk) stocks fine vintage furniture, but prices are astronomical. Black (Gammel Kongevej; blackcoph.com) has chic clothing (from about £250 for a jacket). Nué (Gammel Kongevej 111; nuecph.com) stocks (slightly) more affordable womenswear, from about £100 for jeans. Han Kjøbenhavn (Vognmagergade 7; hankjobenhavn. com) sells edgy menswear — about £75 for a sweatshirt.
Further information See visitdenmark.co.uk. SEPTEMBER 2015 Sunday Times Travel
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