Sunday, September 04, 2005

Unimportant Differences b/w Copenhagen and Minneapolis

You've been wondering about it, so here it is:

J-Funk and Kung-Fu Co-worker's List of Ways Copenhagen is Unimportantly Different from Minneapolis.

1. There are NO SUV's (although at the end of the trip we did see a few along a fancy wide road in a hoity-toity neighborhood).

2. Most of the escalators are flat.

3. The toilets flush in all sorts of weird ways, sometimes not immediately obvious and sometimes with several options.

4. Traffic lights turn yellow AFTER red (and again after green)

5. The red 'don't walk' signals never flash - they just go from green to red and you better hope you're safely on the sidewalk when it happens.

6. Bicycle riders are more hazardous to pedestrians than cars.

7. It costs $10 for an ounce of herring, 3 raw onion loops and half a slice of buttered bread, and $3 for a small bottle of water. It was the best herring I ever had though.

8. Hotel rooms are the size of a closet, generally don't have private toilets, and showers can be free-standing and anywhere.

9. Horse tack is sold at the grocery store in the middle of the city - this includes all the goods; bridles, full-seat breeches, saddle pads, polo wraps, boots, etc. I was in heaven. Apparently horses go grocery shopping in Copenhagen as often as people.

10. Almost everything closes at 6 pm on weeknights, 3 pm on Saturdays and all day Sunday. If you want something to do during those times, you go to Sweden.

11. All the street names are unpronouncable, even when a native speaker says it very slowly several times, and therefore immediately forgottable. This makes it impossible to navigate without a map open at all times.

12. Doors going into buildings PUSH instead of PULL. This can be particularly embarrassing, especially when it takes three tries to get buzzed into your hotel because you were improperly operating the door.

13. Two trains going in opposite directions can miraculously end up in the same place; one train going in one direction can miraculously end up in two different places. I'm totally serious on this one, both things happened to us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I toatlly feel you on the Train thing. Also feel you on the unpronouncability of Danish. Swedish is not that diferent but still, streetnames are really hard. I dont know how all those drunk swedes do it.

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