Denmark: Christmas in Copenhagen
During winter times, Danish people will boast about their ‘hygge’ which literally means cozy. Danish people take the word cozy to a whole new level, and have cafes and bars with fireplaces, blankets, and stuffed animals to reaaaallyy let you feel the cozy.
I went to one that sounded the most cozy: the Living room.
The Living room: Shitty wifi and a real, real comfortable atmosphere with families and college students, mostly. The whole area around it seems to be the rather hipster area.. with lots of coffee shops and exotic/secondhand clothing shops.
During Christmas time, all the European countries do celebration pretty fantastically, and the highlight is the Christmas Market. I wanted to go see the famous Tivoli Gardens. Turns out its not really a garden but a mini amusement park. And the alleys sort of resemble Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, so I got unreasonably excited.
And in fact, the second oldest amusement park in the world. I hear Walt Disney came to Tivoli and decided to make Disneyland/Disneyworld. The oldest is in Klampenborg, which is a 20 minute train ride out from Copenhagen. For christmas, the whole park turned into a Christmas wonderland with 110 Kr entrance fee for all, and 220 kr if you want to get on the rides, as well.
There are game stalls, christmas decoration stores, and merchants selling woolen products. At 10pm, they turn on a fountain show (which is sort of lame if you have ever been to Disneyland) and have beautiful Christmas decorations all over the huge park. Try to go here with friends or family, because I was there alone amidst 100 families and 5000 couples, and it puts a bit of a damper on the Christmas spirits.
White Christmas Market: The christmas market in Nytorv is called the White Christmas market because their shops are set up under tents instead of wooden cabins. There is a ferris wheel and a merry go around, but everything else sold is the same.
A lot of food stalls will sell glogg and glenwein, both types of warm mulled wine that tastes like cinnamon-y apples and grapes, and this is a local favorite! They also sell toasted almonds called paves? and aebleskiver is the Danish ‘pancake’ but they’re pretty much donut hole shaped pancakes that come with jam and powdered sugar.
If you don’t want to make the trek to Tivoli or pay the entrance fee though, I passed by just three Christmas markets on the way that pretty much sold the same things, with no entrance fee. Just walk through the main walking path across the city, lit with decorations and expensive store windows, and you’ll naturally run into them. The three locations that I found them in were Kongens Nytorv (King’s new square), Nytorv, and the plaza with the Storkespringvandet.
