Copenhagen

April 30 — May 2; May 9–10, 2005

If this trip were a hot dog, Copenhagen would be the bun and Greenland would be the sausage.

Old phone boxes.

New phone boxes.

Post boxes.

Traffic lights.

Road signs are attached to poles, the tops of which are bent into a circle or a semicircle (triangular signs are attached to sticks).

Benches hurry about their business.

Guard making the rounds of the royal palace:

Someone screwed a clock onto the satellite dish, not wanting all that blank space to go to waste.

As a matter of fact, the entire city is clean, green, and eco-friendly.

The streets are so chock-a-block that there’s hardly any room left for the monuments.

It’s true.

Last but not least, the little mermaid. The monument is on par with the Eiffel Tower in terms of age (about a century) and significance (symbol of the city). “This week in Copenhagen”, a brochure, delights in giving the chronology of vandalism targeting the little mermaid — in which years she was painted red, how many times her head has been sawn off (two and a half), when her hand was sawn off, and when she was simply pushed into the water.