Copenhagen, Denmark
Our trip wound to a close in the wonderful city of Copenhagen. We had heard that Copenhagen hosts one of the largest music festivals in Europe, Roskilde, and so we wanted to end our trip there.
The festival is a week long party where tens of thousands of people pitch tents in a large park. Despite buying our tickets several weeks before we started our backpacking trip, we had not managed to secure camping equipment in advance. To ensure that we’d have a place to stay, we bought a two-person tent and two small air mattresses from Krakow and took them on our flight. We flew into Copenhagen on day four of the festival (but a day before any of the concerts started), and so virtually all of the campgrounds were taken. After wandering the grounds for around three hours, we thankfully managed to find an empty corner to pitch our tent.
The campgrounds were raucous, with music blaring into the late hours of the night. Our first day there was warm and sunny, and we managed to both buy some additional camping supplies and see some great musical acts.
However, heavy rain started up that night and didn’t let up until the late afternoon of the following day. As the park was largely on flat land, the ground quickly turned to mud, and didn’t dry out for the remainder of the festival. The festival organizers did their best to dump hay and wood chips on the muddiest areas, but the mud was so ubiquitous that we couldn’t completely avoid it. Despite the conditions, we managed to see a bunch of great concerts, including Arcade Fire, The Lumineers, The Foo Fighters, Lorde, Justice, and several other groups that we had never heard of.
When the festival was over, we had one day to spend in the city of Copenhagen before flying home. What we discovered was a beautiful, progressive city built over a few islands and serviced by canals. We also found the Danish people to be very friendly and eager to help tourists. Thanks to a strong interest in sustainability, most Copenhageners bike everywhere, and so the city is largely free of heavy car traffic.
As we started exploring Copenhagen, we were fortunate to be walking through the main square at 11 AM, right when a free walking tour was starting. This tour had a great overview of Danish history from the Viking era up to the modern day, and provided for great views of landmarks such as the Nyhavn canal, where cafes crowd the brightly painted city street, and Amalienborg Palace, the residence of the Danish royal family.
After the tour, we got some great food at the Copenhagen Street Food’s indoor marketplace. From there, we walked over to Freetown Christiania, a semi-autonomous neighborhood that operates an anarchic community from the location of an old Danish army barracks. To close out our day, we walked to the Kongens Have (King’s Garden) and admired the view of the beautiful Rosenborg Castle inside.
That night, we took a train to Copenhagen Airport and flew back to London to end our trip. We had covered 10 countries in 63 days, sleeping in 26 cities over that span. While we felt exhausted by the end of the trip, it was a phenomenal experience, and one that we are truly fortunate to have had.