Copenhagen, Denmark.  31 May 2014, Saturday

Airports can be exciting, full of promise and glamour - holidays in exotic places, business deals burning, families reuniting.  They can also be drab, depressing and utilitarian.  Sometimes all those things combined.  People surge purposefully along corridors while others wait morosely, hoarding a table in a coffee lounge, making one cup last, however long their plane is delayed.  Sometimes, the architecture can affect the mood.. Sparkling and glitzy, as in Dubai, or 50 years old, morose and beyond saving.  

Terminal 2 at Barajas, Madrid is one of those middle-aged ones, tarted up by an alley of duty free shops, but still, superseded by its upstart sibling terminal 4. But it was at Terminal 2 we had to spend a few hours this morning.  I have this fear of missing flights, so we always have to go far too early to the airport.  Now, it's not too bad if your ticket gets you into a club lounge, but today, we were just part of the plebs, waiting for our three hour flight to Copenhagen, drinking coffee out of disposable cups, and using up the 15 minutes of free internet time the airport so generously allows.

Ordering food is too hard... It's too much to expect coffee shop assistants to be multilingual, so unless you can point to what you want, you go hungry.  We have mastered some phrases, like vino tinto reserva, and cafe latte, which, while not Spanish, is well enough understood.  And some basic numbers: un, dos, quartro.  And aseos (toilet).  But that's about it.

Now,  we're facing a new challenge, Denmark and the Danish language. We are spending a few days based in Copenhagen before our Baltic cruise leaves on Tuesday afternoon. Plus, there's a new currency to work out.  Danish krone, which I think is about five to $A1. That was one challenge we didn't have in Spain, since we are reasonably familiar with euros.  

We don't really have an agenda here, except for one thing... To drive across the Øresund bridge, an imposing structure linking Denmark and Sweden.  The bridge became well known outside the Nordic countries through a TV series called, simply enough, The Bridge. It's a crime drama, set jointly in Copenhagen and the city at the other end of the bridge, Malmo in Sweden.

It's not the first time I've been enticed to visit a place because of a TV series....a few years ago, it was Sicily, home of Inspector Montalbano.  And of course, Oxford has appeal seen through the eyes of Inspector Morse.  Now  it's the turn of The Bridge, and a day's drive around southern Sweden, home of the BBC's Wallander series.  

Looking at travel from this perspective, I'm sure the tourist bureaux of various countries find it more than worthwhile to subsidise some of the production costs of TV shows.

(later).

There was no  need for worry about language difficulties - yet.  A young girl, probably still a teenager, gave us directions to our hotel  in perfect English, which she said she'd learned at school.  She was so good I thought she must have been a native English-speaking tourist here, except she was about get on her bike (although tourists do hire bikes here too, of course).

We've checked into our hotel, gone out for a pizza meal, and had a short walk around The Square, which constitutes the heart of central Copenhagen.  Everything we've been told about how expensive it is here is true - it makes Sydney restaurants look reasonable.  An ordinary pizza was  €A25 - €A30.  Plus that add on €5 if you are sharing the pizza between two people

Unfortunately for photography, Copenhagen's central Square is a work in progress, with big green hoardings up around most of it while it is being rebuilt.  Our hotel receptionist told us that "the whole city is being rebuilt".   Just a little exaggeration.  The more than life-size statute o the city's proudest son, Hans Christian Anderson (left), is still there, at the side of the square, with its copper burnished bright from thousands of hands rubbing it.

And the city  lives up to its reputation  as being a haven for cyclists.  I think they're a protected breed here.  To us, the surprising thing was that no one, except maybe children, wore bike helmets.

above: Copenhagen Town Hall, fronting the city Square

Next: a day trip to Sweden