We started our day, eventually, with a walk to the food haven and market Torvehallerne. It was the only other place that Bill had recommended to see so it had to be good.
We walked through both buildings before settling on what to eat for breakfast. James had a fish taco from a fish monger and I had an egg wrap - a long tortilla shaped scrambled egg wrapped around "spicy" beef and lettuce.
The lettuce part was unusual. I had never had a salad with my eggs before, but the concept was a brilliant means of eliminating the starchiness that generally comes with breakfast. I also have no idea why they thought that beef was spicy. It had literally no heat to it. It was like a salty chili flavor beef. Oh well.
I did discover elderflower juice which is AMAZING. After breakfast we headed across the street to Starbucks to use the wifi and figure out what our next stop was. We realized soon after connecting that Christiania was only a few stops away from where we were so we headed there.
Normally as I write I include a photo or two to accompany what I'm writing about. My photos this time, however, will only be of the cute canal and homes surrounding the municipality of Christiania. That is because it is also known as the Free City where some people openly partake in the buying and selling of cannabis. There are only three rules there - enjoy your stay, don't run because it causes a panic, and no photos.
So we walked into the free city, which ignores some laws in the EU but seems to be left pretty much alone. It is also an artisan commune and there was beautiful graffiti (which is also legal, there was a tag that said please keep your tags friendly) painted on the buildings. There were a bunch of places to get food and drinks, one of which was a doner kebab stand that came pretty darn close to the first one I ever had in Germany. After walking around the small "city" we sat at a picnic table for a while, enjoying the sun and marveling at the people openly partaking. I thought that it was interesting that they used a lot of military camouflaging nets and other means of hiding themselves if they were selling. Later that night we heard from a new friend that there was a raid there recently which would explain the extra levels of secrecy.
After soaking up the vitamin D we left the free city, re-entering the EU according to the sign and hopped in a cab to go to a bar James had heard of. Apparently the cab driver hadn't heard of it though and brought us to the bar just outside of Tivoli, near our hostel. He was a bit of a strange guy, stranger then the typically driver you get so we weren't going to argue with him that we were needed to go a bit further down the road. We elected to walk it instead. Eventually we found it, this small but super fancy bar.
We sat on some uncomfortable stools and drank some delicious beer. While we were there we made some new friends from Toronto who regalled is with the story of their journey, and how one of their members lost his passport, camera, and money on the first day of their trip. It was great swapping stories and laughing with a new group of people but James was hungry (he skipped the doner kebab earlier) so we parted ways with our temporary friends and walked to find a place to eat.
We ended up at a burger place again. This one at least had great fries. I found the burger to be too much to handle by hand and had to resort to the Danish way of eating it with a fork and knife. We also had a couple beers with dinner, Carlsberg which tasted like water after the microbrews we just had. After dinner we Ubered our way back to the hostel.
A quick change of clothes and dropping some things off and we were back in the bar just in time to make the final happy hour moments. The bar was a bit more crowded then the day before but eventually we found a seat next to a handsome guy who stared at his phone not saying much if anything and a guy trying to pick up a girl. At first it was strange sitting next to these people and not saying anything but I also wasn't sure that they wanted to talk.
Then one of the hostel workers comes by and says "Does anyone want to play the hat game? You must do whatever the paper tells you to." The couple refused and were afraid of what the paper would say but James and I were game. It turned out all the papers said make a new friend and get a free shot. With that suddenly the quiet guy became Michael and the couple were Francisco from Italy and a girl from Germany. If you were wondering the shots are fruit flavored licorice liqueur. Later I found out from Alayana, a student from Romania studying in Denmark, that it is the most Danish thing you can drink and that the licorice flavor is something they learn to love from birth.
A few more beers and shots and stories later, Michael said he couldn't take it any longer and needed to eat. The bartender told us that there might be a kebab place open but since it's Sunday our best bet was McDonalds. All that advice and we ended up at Burger King where I ate yet another burger and fries. After eating we managed to make our way back, saying farewell to Alayana and then Michael along the way. At 3:30am we finally found our beds and hit the hay, with an early start to our journey home awaiting us.
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