Copenhagen Episode Four

 Yes, I got safely home on Friday. Busy and knackered yesterday, but now I have a wee bit of time to finish it all off. So, welcome to the 4^th and final episode of An English Fool Abroad with his sketchbook, summer 2023 edition. Well, I say episode 4 but really and truly this is more of a postscript when you get right down to it.

Now my flight wasn’t until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Judging from my experience on Monday, this could have meant anytime between then and 6 in the evening. Still, planning to be at the airport by noon, this meant that I could have the morning in the centre of Copenhagen and not worry – seriously, on the Metro it isn’t more than 20 mins or so from the centre. What’s that? Did I go and see Lille Hayfrue again? No, we said our goodbyes on Thursday evening. We had some fun, but at the end of the day we wanted different things. I wanted to go home to my wife and family and she wanted to sit on a rock staring out to sea. It would never have worked.

I did, though, head off to Gammel Strand where I sat and made the sketch of the fishwife statue. When I first saw it I did think that it had a definite early-mid 20^th century look about it, and a little bit of googling showed me that it was put there in 1940. Which is interesting considering that Denmark had a lot of other things to be dealing with at the time. The statue is officially there to mark the place where the olf fish market used to stand. It was a lovely morning in Copenhagen – quite bright and sunny, although not quite as glorious as Thursday evening. I took another walk along Stroget to Kongen’s Nytorv, which is the only station on all 4 Metro lines, stopping for a cappuchino. I’ll say this, I haven’t had a bad cup of coffee in Copenhagen. Mind you, I haven’t had a cheap one either, so I guess it all evens up. I did sketch an accordionist who was playing with his organ.

Coming back to food and drink, did I mention that I had a chicken curry? What with all of the excitement I must have forgotten to mention it. Right, now my first experience of curry in mainland Europe was when I tried currywurst in Berlin six years ago. Basically I found that it didn’t have a lot of bite, and was somewhere between UK chipshop curry sauce and tomato sauce. Well, the chicken curry I had yesterday was the same sort of thing, except that it was also sweet. If anything it tasted a little like Thai sweet chilli, in a curried chicken sort of way, that is.

In Kongens Nytorv, which I believe translates as the King’s New Square – there was a flea market going on. Granted, I didn’t actually see any fleas being marketed, but then they are very tiny. Right, I wasn’t going to tell you this. I felt that I owed it to my brethren and sistren of the international cheapskates to get the most out of my transport pass. So I went on a ride all the way around the M3 circle line. Which brought home to me like nothing else just how small and jewel-like the Copenhagen Metro is, since it didn’t take much more than about 20 minutes all told. It filled in a bit of time, and by the time I’d completed the loop it was time to head out to the airport.

So that was Copenhagen. Before I pass summary judgement I would like to share a little anecdote from Thursday. It was from when I was sitting on the bench in Nyhavn sketching the boat. A young couple sat next to me, English, and they were natterng away. They got onto the subject of Hans Christian Andersen – possibly because ewe were sitting on a bench opposite one of the houses where he used to live. The girl started talking about the 1950s musical based on his life, which starred Danny Kaye, and she started telling her partner all about the songs in it. Until she said, “Oh, there’s one he sings when he first goes to Copenhagen. It’s all about how great the place is. Oh, what’s it called?” When her partner didn’t reply I couldn’t help saying,

“That wouldn’t be ‘Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen’ by any chance, would it?’ She didn’t actually slap her forehead and say d’oh!, but it was one of those moments. Which kind of brings me to what I want to say about Copenhagen. Because when you get right down to it, it is a little bit wonderful. Weather notwithstanding I’ve had a great time, especially yesterday. I did originally think it was going to be a little bit like Stockholm, and in some ways, superficial ways I suppose it is a little bit. But then you could say it’s as much like Amsterdam as it’s like Stockholm. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the bikes yet. It gives Amsterdam a run for its money when it comes to being a cycle friendly city. Better, though, to just say what it’s most like is Copenhagen, and that’s a little bit wonderful all by itself.

Copenhagen Episode 3

Hello again, and welcome to episode 3 of An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, Summer 2023 edition. So nice of you to drop by.

I was awoken by sunshine filtering into my room this morning.- Hello.- I thought – What’s that all about? – By the time I’d got out of bed the clouds and wind were back. Okay, enough of that. This is not going to be another installment where I drone on about the weather. Well, only a little bit and that comes later on.

Cards on the table, I’ve had a great day. Honestly. Whenever I stay in a city I’ve never been to before, I can never tell how long it’s going to be before I really ‘get’ it. I ‘got’ Berlin straightaway. It took me about half a day in Malta. I never found that I quite ‘got’ Warsaw possibly because I came home early. I would say that I didn’t quite ‘get’ Copenhagen. Until today.

So, with no rain evident I set off to try to make up for some of yesterday’s missed sketching opportunities. On the way to the Metro I popped into the supermarket for some essentials. The lady behind the counter was, shall I say, not in the first bloom of youth, in fact I guess she could even be as old as me. So when she handed me the change and said a few words of Danish as she did so I said, “Cheers, me darlin’.” As you do. Well, I don’t in the UK, but this is Denmark. Once again, I had forgotten how well a lot of Danish people speak English. She looked at me, giggled coquettishly, and winked! No, I did not go back in on the way home.

Foolishness alert. When I got to Kongens Nytorv station to change lines, there were two escalators in front of me. One,bringing people down, was working. The other next to it was switched off. -Oh – thought I – it must be not working and we’re supposed to walk up it. And indeed I had gone maybe 10 steps up it when the berk who switched it off switched it back on again. Suddenly I was walking up yet going down. True story.

Right, first missed opportunity put right was to produce the sketch of Rosenborg Palace you see on this page. You might just be able to make out a couple of splotches from the slight rain. It turned out that as well as being ‘all slots are booked up Wednesday ‘ yesterday, it turned out that this is ‘all slots are booked up Thursday’ as well. Never mind. Now, it’s not that much of a walk from the Rosenborg to Langelinie, where Lille Hayfrue (see Tuesday) stands – er – sits. However, although I did pop down and have a look again, this was not the bare statue that I wanted to sketch. No, I wanted to sketch the bear statue – yeah, that pun doesn’t really work in print, does it? – I mean the Polar Bear statue. It’s a short walk from the Mermaid and was made in 1929. I think that I read that it commemorates a real polar bear shot at the time by a sailor, but I’m not sure.

Now, my Rough Guide to Copenhagen does not seem to like the Little Mermaid very much. However, it strongly suggested taking a walk further along Langelinie, to see, well, how should I put it? In 2000, the sculptor Bjorn Norgaard made a work called The Genetically Modified Paradise for Expo 2000 in Hanover. Most of it is now installed in a fountain and consists of seemingly grotesque figures with titles like The Pregnant Man, Jesus, Adam, Mary and others. One figure, though, is actually in the water beside the quay on which the fountain stands. This piece is The Genetically Modified Mermaid. And yes, it is a definite play on Copenhagen’s most famous statue. Like the original it too sits on a rock, and is the same green verdigris colour, and has a pose a bit suggestive of the mermaid. But it’s limbs are grossly exaggerated. Now, you might think that the good people of Copenhagen might have taken exception to this seeming mockery of the most famous symbol of their city. But that would be wrong. That is not the Copenhagen way. It was actually unveiled in situ by the Crown Prince. If this is a Danish sense of humour, then I really like it.

So, I mentioned Hans Christian Andersen yesterday, and the next part of today after sketching the alternative mermaid, was devoted a little more to the lad himself. Although Andersen himself was born in Odense he made his fame and fortune in Copenhagen, and you would have thought that as the city’s most famous adopted son, they would have made a fuss of him. After all, Mozart was from Salzburg, but when I visited Vienna you couldn’t go far without his name, his fizzog or his music greeting you. Chopin’s name was pretty evident around Warsaw, and he buggered off to Paris. Andersen does have a street named after him in Copenhagen, but that’s it. Later in the day I found that of the two houses he lived in on Nyhaven (more of that later) one is now a private dwelling and the other is a souvenir shop. No museum in either. Okay, you can visit the Hans Christian Andersen experience in Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but that’s not exactly what I was thinking of.

So this is why I decided to seek out his grave in Assistens Kierkegard (-Churchyard- Cemetery) I like a cemetery now and again. I mean, I wouldn’t want to stay in one, but in the middle of a bustling city they are little islands of calm. The way to his grave is actually signposted in small, respectful signs, and his grave is marked by a relatively small and tasteful stone pillar. That’s the Copenhagen way. On the way to the cemetery I crossed over a bridge, and found where the Danes have been hiding all the benches. Tons of them, but only on one side of the bridge. Not really sure why, considering that both views from the bridge seemed equally picturesque to me.

So, from there to Nyhaven to look for his houses. Now, if you’ve never been to Copenhagen but only seen photographs of it, then if it has a statue in it, it will show the Little Mermaid, and if it shows houses then it will be Nyhavn. Nyhaven – or New Harbour in English – isn’t new at all, which is rather the charm of it. It’s charmingly pretty, especially considering that it was all built by Swedish Prisoners of War. These Danes, eh? Now, you may struggle to believe this, but I found another bench! I quickly took up squatters rights and sketched the boat and buildings you should be able to see. Now, in the interests of truth I should not keep it to myself that while I was making the sketch a lady tapped me on the shoulder, painted to the one I was making, which also had the Rosenborg sketch above it, and she said, and I quote, “Excuse me, but your drawings are beautiful.” (Then her keepers put her back in her straitjacket and took her back where she came from. I though I’d say it before anyone else did.) Trumpet duly blown.

About 50 yards from where I was sitting there was a canal tour booth, and since I was feeling very good about myself after being told that about my drawings I decided to reward myself with the canal tour. To be fair I thought it was reasonably priced for Copenhagen. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it. There are parts of Copenhagen which are a little reminiscent of Amsterdam and it turns out that this is no accident. One of the Fredericks was very taken with the Dutch capital and he used some of his own capital to emulate it. Well, parts of the city, anyway. Another thing we did was sneak up behind the Little Mermaid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photograph showing this side of her before, and if I’m honest I think I do understand why the view from the shore is used on all the posters. I like boat tours anyway and I felt that an hour’s tour was just about right. It was interesting, informative, and the fact that the Danish for 60 minute guided tour seems to be Havnerundfart added just that little bit more to the entertainment value. If all else fails a little injection of toilet humour just helps the day along, I find.

Mind you, once we were out of Nyhavn, the wind really hit us. It had not been at all warm all day so far, and I’d been sitting sketching for the best part of an hour before getting on the boat. I’m sure there have been other August days when I’ve been as cold as I was on the boat. . . but not many. Then, just as we were mooring up, the sun came out. And it was almost as if Copenhagen itself shone. Honestly, you would not have thought that it was the same place. And if I hadn’t quite ‘got’ Copenhagen before, I did then.

Last week I painted a Whitby fishwife based on a black and white photograph from the turn of the 20^th century. As far as I know this is something my Clark 3x great grandmother would have been doing. Well, on the boat we passed a statue of just such a person. I made a note of where it was – gammel strand – which my knowledge of Old English identified as meaning Old Beach. Actually, thinking of that, I recall Henrietta, my tutor for Old English and Old Norse at Goldies once said that she spoke both with a Danish accent. However, back to the point. I walked back down to have a look, and although I was all sketched out for the day I made a note to myself that if there’s time before I go to the airport tomorrow, I’ll do it then.  I took a walk down the longest pedestrianised shopping street, Stroget, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I thought – d’you know what, I’d really like to see what The Little Mermaid looks like in the sunshine. So I went and took the photo. The difference between the statue in dull, overcast weather is the difference between Copenhagen in the same, only in microcosm.

To complete the day, when I got the Metro back to Vestamagr, for the first time since arriving in Copenhagen I got the front seat on the Metro. And I was amazed, as we emerged from the tunnel onto the long, straight open section, just how close the stations are, and more importantly, that I could actually see the train ahead of us. No wonder they don’t need timetables.

Copenhagen Episode 2

Well, hello, good evening, and welcome to An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, ‘summer’ 2023 Episode 2. Well, yes, I did put ironic quotation marks around Summer. You know how I moaned about it being like a November day yesterday. Well, at least I could sketch in it. Today wasn’t so windy, but it drizzled for almost all of the day. Which is all a rather long winded way of me apologising for the fact that I only have the one sketch to share with you today. In all honesty in most of the places I went today my sketchbook would have been soaked and unusable in about 10 minutes if I’d tried to sketch out in the open.

Right then – good day or bad day? Well, see what you think. I started it off with some foolishness. Now, it works like this. Nobody gets everything. I have a better than average memory for facts, and the answers to quiz questions. On the reverse of that particular coin though, I can be extremely absent minded. I never remember where I put things, even if I just put them down five minutes ago. So When I packed to go out this morning I gave the room the quick once over, made sure there was nothing lying around and headed off to the Metro. It was while I was on the Metro that I found that I’d left my guidebook and map behind. – Well – I thought – if that’s the most foolish thing I do today, then that’s not too bad. Still, it did leave me with a wee bit of a problem. Now, today was one of those days which as much as it tooketh away from me, it was prepared to giveth as well. I was aiming for Radhuspladsen station, because I knew it was a short walk from there to the Copenhagen Museum. I thought to myself that maybe I could find a large city map outside the station and photograph it and then use that. Nope. What they did have though was free (!) city maps and metro maps which also came with a handy small guide book.

Yes, I did use the word free. I must take back my comment from yesterday that only the pissoirs are free in Copenhagen. So with a happy heart and a wet bonce I walked along to the Copenhagen Museum. As I approached the ticket office I noticed it was 95 Kroner – cheaper than the National Museum, I thought. I took out my 100 DK note, only to be told by the lady behind the counter, “Put yer money away, son. This is free Wednesday.” Yes, if any other members of the International Cheapskates Union happen to be reading, I had by accident managed to visit the museum on a day it was buckshee. The lady pulled me down from cloud nine, though, by saying, “But although you do not pay on a Wednesday, there is something important we have to ask that you do.” -Listen love – I answered in my head – if that means you want a good review on Trip Advisor my integrity is certainly for sale, and the price is a lot cheaper than you might think.- “I am sorry to say,” the continued,” that on Free Wednesday you must wear an orange sticker. Prominently, Where we can see it.” I nearly put it on my forehead, but I bet they get enough of that sort of thing as it is.

I liked the Copenhagen Museum. Yeah, of course I’m going to say that because it was freemans. But I did enjoy it as well. I was struck by the way that Copenhagen had to go through some of the terrible things that my own home city, London town had to go through. About 50 years after London’s 1665 outbreak they had a terrible outbreak of plague, followed not that long after by their own Great Fire. Having been late with those, though, they were in on  the ground floor with a devastating outbreak of colour at the start of the 19^th century. As city museums go it’s one of the better ones I’ve been to – although the Museum of London is better IMHO. One criticism I would make is that they make it hard for the sketcher in the way that there are no benches or seats. It was just too difficult for me to sit on the floor and sketch anything, and standing up and sketching was never going to work for me today.

Which brings me to a question that I would like to ask the good burghers of Copenhagen. What have you got against public benches? Now, okay, the rain did work against outdoor sketching today, but even so I passed many lovely places yesterday and today which I would love to have sketched had there been a handy bench nearby. But there never was. I’d like to meet a member of the Copenhagen Urban Sketchers ( if such a group exists) and ask them how they manage.

I’ve used the Copenhagen Metro a lot today. I can’t remember which station it was where I was amused by a printed notice. It was giving general information about the Metro, but one of the things it said was, and I’m paraphrasing here, our metro is so fast and efficient, we don’t need a timetable, so don’t look for one please. The notice has a point. The trains seem to whip through at 2 minute intervals. I’ve never had time to sit down in a Copenhagen Metro station before my train arrives. Mind you, that’s just as well, because they don’t have any benches, like a lot of the rest of Copenhagen. One thing I like about Copenhagen is that where they have those public notices about local rules and regulations, a lot of them say what you can do, not what you can’t. However, on the Metro they tell you what you can’t do as well, and one of them is loiter in the station. So I made a quick outline of the sketch you see but had to finish it off back of the apartment with the aid of a couple of photos. Oh, one thing I didn’t mention yesterday was that in my genuinely knackered state on Monday evening, on the way to Vestamagr I thought the first three stations were all called Udgang. Then I realised it was Danish for exit.

Well, lighter of heart and not of wallet, my next plan was to go to the Rosenborg, a park and a rather lovely Palace. The Palace houses the Royal Museum. Now, I may be wrong, but of all the Kingdoms of Europe (as opposed to Principalities or Grand Duchies) I’ve been to Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, so only Norway is left. As I approached the ticket office , I though to myself  - I wonder if it’s Free Wednesday here as well? The answer is no. No, in fact it was ‘You can’t come in because we’re fully booked Wednesday’ as it turned out. Oh well. This meant I was still leading 2-1 in the providence providing stakes.

My handy free guide pointed me in the direction of the Round Tower. The Round Tower is in a rather commercialised pedestrians only area. It is actually a 17^th century tower, built as an observatory, to continue the astronomical work of Tycho Brahe. What do we know about Tycho Brahe? He lost his nose in a duel and replaced it with one made of brass, and painted flesh colour. Coming back to the Round Tower, this was built by King Christian IV. I say he built it, although I somehow doubt he was actually manning the cement mixer. I did consider going in, but frankly my legs were still aching from yesterday. My stomach was rumbling as well. I looked around me, and with a metaphorical hey presto, providence provided a Chinese restaurant. Well, I expect it was there all the time, and hadn’t just materialised but I hadn’t noticed it. One noodle box and a hundred yards later a saw a souvenir shop.

Let me tell you about my patch blanket. For Christmas 2019 my daughter Jess gave me a blanket, to which she’d stitched patches from all the different countries and cities I’ve visited on these sketching expeditions. If you’re of a certain age you’ll know the sort of thing I mean – often shield shaped, embroidered and bearing either the country’s flag or a design embodying a particular city or tourist attraction. Now, my first trip after Jess bought me the blanket was to Reykjavik. I did actually manage to buy an Icelandic flag but couldn’t find anywhere selling a Reykjavik patch anywhere. Which was possibly my first inkling that souvenir patches have gone very much out of fashion. Covid intervened after Iceland, and it wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that I made my next expedition, to Edinburgh. One souvenir shop, ladies and gentlemen, that sold patches. That’s all I could find. And the patches it sold weren’t a – argh, terrible pun coming up – weren’t a patch on the old fashioned ones you can buy on Ebay. Warsaw in 2022 – not a sausage. Back to Ebay. In Riga at Easter I did find a shop that sold Latvian flag patches. Right, so having set the scene, I went into the souvenir shop today, fully expecting nothing, only to find some rather nice ones. Yes please, thank you very much. Providence was running away with it, 4 – 1.

Okay then. If I say the name Christiania to you, what comes into your head? If you’re a quizzer, quite possibly Norway. For Oslo used to be called Christiania. However, there is a Christiania in Copenhagen and it has something of a reputation. It is supposedly in the top 5 tourist attractions of Copenhagen. Basically, it started as squatters occupying a deserted military base in Christianshavn. It’s become a community which, whether the authorities admit it or not, has acted semi autonomously since despite all efforts to close it down. It’s possibly so popular because of the open trading in cannabis in stalls, despite the fact that it’s illegal in Denmark. So yes, I popped down to see what all the fuss was about, and yes, I did pass stalls openly selling cannabis, and no, I didn’t buy any. It’s an interesting place to walk through, but I couldn’t supress a cynical thought that someone, somewhere is exploiting it all to rake in the cash.

Oh, I didn’t mention that I rode the S train earlier. In common with a number of big European cities, Copenhagen has a local train network running in tandem with the Metro. It’s like the S Bahns in Berlin and Vienna and the Pendletag (love that name) in Stockholm. The S Trains run on platforms longer and rather older looking than the Metro. The trains are new, bright red and rather swish. The Metro looks pristine. The S Train doesn’t, and both the carriages I rode in had been graffitied.

Did I mention Hans Christian Andersen yet? No? Well, time’s getting on, so I think we’ll save that for tomorrow. Godnat.

Copenhagen Episode 1

Hello, good morning and welcome to the summer 2023 Copenhagen edition of an English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook: Episode 1.

Well, if you saw my post on Monday you’ll know that my flight was delayed by about 4 hours. Now, looking back from the safety of my room, I probably feel more sorry for Jenn than for myself, since she was so pleased when we booked the flight back last year because it meant that I would be arriving while it was still light. I don’t know why that should make so much difference to me, but it does. Also it meant that when I perpetrated my first act of foolishness – leaving my printed maps and instructions of how to get to the apartment and how to actually get into it at home, she was the recipient of several phone calls. Copenhagen is only one hour ahead of Port Talbot, so they were quite late as well. Never mind, once I got to the metro station things began to look up. Copenhagen is only the 4^th airport I’ve flown into that has a metro station with it. Heathrow was my first, Madrid my second, Edinburgh my third (alright, that’s a tram line rather than an underground railway, but it’s called the Edinburgh Metro and that’s good enough for me, laddie) and now Copenhagen. Once I got out of the Metro station trusty old Google Maps took care of the rest.

Ok, there was a bit of foolishness yesterday – which only became clear today. I’m staying in a room in an apartment in Vestamagr. When I got into the place, one of the other people there showed me the room I was staying in. How should I put it? The room could not have been more basic without playing ‘Basic rooms are here again!’ on a continuous loop. Yes, there was a bed. No covers, sheets or anything else but I was so tired I just laid down and went to sleep. Where’s the silliness Dave? Stay with me on this one. I will elucidate later.

Now, if you’ve read any of my accounts of these trips before you might well have noticed that there are some recurring themes – I think I’ve called them required elements at one time or another. One of them is shopping in a local supermarket. Now it just so happens there’s one opposite the Metro Station. Stocking up for the day, I went to pick up a packet of Tuc biscuits. Now, there’s not many varieties of Tuc that I don’t like. Guess what though? The only variety they sold was Sour Cream, the one that I don’t like. “Mean spirited bastards!” I announced. All heads turned towards me in disapproval. Yes, gentle reader, a hell of a lot of the good people of Copenhagen DO speak English, and a lot better than some English people.

It was a relatively fine November day in Copenhagen this morning, which was a bit of a shame since it’s supposed to be August. As we flew into Copenhagen yesterday the pilot announced, as we were landing, “The weather in Copenhagen at the moment is . . . “ I’m sorry, but pauses in an announcement are rarely a good thing, especially coming from the man who has your life in his hands for the next 5 minutes or so. “The weather in Copenhagen is . . . a bit windy.” Oh, they love their understatements, these Danes. Today it was blowing a gale. Still, I’m a hardy Brit (well someone once said I looked like Oliver Hardy) and we thrive on terrible summer weather. So I made up my mind that I was going to make a date with Lille Hayfrue. Nice girl, but she doesn’t move around a lot. Lille Hayfrue is of course the Danish for the Little Mermaid. I decided to see the Little Mermaid first, before the crowds started gathering. And to be fair, that wasn’t a bad move.

It’s really rather small, as world famous statues go, and it’s kind of. . . well, it’s just there. You see it and you think – oh, there you are then. The head is based on a famous Danish ballerina of the time, Ellen Price. Yes, despite the welsh sounding name, she was Danish. Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg lager seemed to have taken something of a shine to her and asked her to model for the statue after being enchanted by a ballet version of Andersen’s fairytale. Ellen Price agreed, but refused to pose in the nude, so the mermaid statue has her head, but stuck for a model, the sculptor Edvard Eriksen said to his missus, “Get yer kit off, love” and he used her as the model for the body of the mermaid. Whether the long-suffering Mrs. Eriksen also had a tail like the statue, History does not tell us.

After being unveiled in 1913, old Lille has been in the wars a bit since. The head has been hacked off at least twice, and the arms have been damaged too. She’s been covered with paint on quite a few occasions, and as part of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter Protests in 2020 her base was daubed with the words ‘Racist Fish.’

Here’s a thing I’ve found out about Copenhagen. It has more palaces in the centre of the city than you can shake a stick at. In a bracing relatively short walk from the Little Mermaid I passed the Amalienborg, the Charlottenborg, the Bjornborg and the Locutusofborg. (I may have made a couple of these up.) Now, you know how all of our guards regiments who take turns to guard Buckingham Palace wear red ceremonial tunics and bearskins? Well, in Denmark their guards wear bearskins and blue tunics. There you go.

Today seemed as good a time as any to check out the National Museum. And it’s very good too. As you’d expect the Vikings are given prominence, but I was surprised just how much the museum showed about the pre-History of Denmark. Goodness me but didn’t the ancient Danes love shoving things in bogs?! Seriously, it seemed as if well over 2/3 of the exhibits were found in them. The museum passed the 2 hour test. What I mean by that is that you know a museum is good if you can suddenly look at your watch and realise you’ve been there for two hours or more without really being aware that this much time has passed. Mind you, a fair proportion of that was taken up in sketching the skeleton of an Aurochs, while waiting for the crowds of primary school Danish kids to be moved on by their harassed teachers. As I exited, so did one party, and as the teacher called the register I was sorely tempted to shout yes for each name . Professional courtesy won over schoolboy mischievousness, but it was a hell of a battle.

Not far from the Museum is the entrance to the famous Tivoli Gardens. Now, I have to say that this famous Pleasure Park does illustrate something less pleasant about Copenhagen. Here’s a question. Why will you never see the phrase Gratis Adgang in Copenhagen? Because it means free to enter, and nothing is free to enter in Copenhagen. Well, apart from the public pissoirs – no, I’m not making it up, they do have them and they do call them pissoirs. When it comes to the cost, to be fair, I kind of expected it would be like this. I enjoyed both Reykjavik in Iceland and Stockholm in Sweden, but they were the two most expensive places I’ve visited on these expeditions. It’s a Nordic thing, I think. Still, the thing is that I just wanted to walk through the Tivoli Gardens. I had no wish to go on any of the rides thank you very much, and the prospect of being rushed over a tenner to do so was one at which I baulked. Getting into the Prater Park in Vienna, which is a similar sort of thing, is free, for example. Still, when I turned away, on the opposite side of the road I noticed two pubs side by side. One was “The Old Irish Pub.” Right next to it was “The Old English Pub”. The Old Irish Pub was packed to the rafters, inside and out. The Old English Pub was empty. Maybe the proprietors had gone too far with the English theme and perhaps they had stuck a couple of old codgers in flat caps by the bar, playing dominoes and moaning about the price of a pint. I blame Brexit.

Time was getting on but the international sketcher must laugh in the face of fatigue. Then quietly pretend to be an OAP to take the last available seat on the Metro. It’s not big and it’s not clever, I know. Whereas the Copenhagen Metro itself is not big, but it is pretty clever. The newest line opened in 2019, and the oldest stations were only opened in 2002. The first thing that struck me about the platforms was how short they are. There’s a reason for this. The trains themselves are only 3 carriages long, and these carriages are not separated by carriage doors between them. They remind me just a tiny bit of London’s DLR, because the trains are driverless and if you are lucky enough to bag a seat at the front you have a clear view ahead of you.  Last destination of the day was to have a look at the Oresund Bridge. Naturally enough I went to Oresund Metro station. Hmm. Oresund Metro station is not as close to the Bridge as the Airport is. I reckon it was at least a couple of miles away from the bridge. Nonetheless, the thing is so big – 5 miles long – you can see it from Oresund.

Now, light of heart but sore of foot I turned for home. When I got there, I found a rather indignant young fellow waiting for me. ‘You are David?” he asked. When I answered in the affirmative he informed me that the room I had slept in the previous night had been the wrong one. When I replied that another guy had told me to sleep in there when I arrived, he wrinkled his nose and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me, “If he told you to jump in the Skaggerak, would you do it?!” but instead he replied,

“I do not understand why he would do this. I do not understand why you would sleep in this room with no sheets and no pillow.” I considered telling him that if he’d left his house at 7am and only arrived in the place he was staying at gone 11pm then he, like me, would have been ready to sleep on a chicken’s lip. But I didn’t. I even spared him the ever popular ‘Because I ain’t a bleedin’ mind reader, mate’. Instead I gave him an apologetic ‘I’m a clueless Englishman’ smile, which often has charms to soothe the savage European, and moved my stuff. Sorry, but that’s about the best I can do you for foolishness this morning.

Riga Episode Four

 Hello, Easter greetings and welcome to this final edition of An English Fool Abroad Spring 2023. I was travelling home yesterday which is why I didn’t post.

To be honest I haven’t got a great deal to say. That’s never stopped me in the past, I know, but as trips go this has been a remarkably foolishness free zone. I mean, there was the standing about 10 yards away from the door of the guest rooms and then walking off in the opposite direction when I arrived in Riga on Tuesday, but even then I don’t think I was entirely to blame. In four days I never saw any sign bearing the name of the place as it was given on Booking.com. Never mind.

The flight yesterday was due to leave at 2:10 pm, so I didn’t plan on catching the bus to the airport until about half past eleven. I ended up checking out quite a bit earlier than I had planned, though. You might remember how I was woken up on Thursday night by some very noisy fellow guests at about 3 am. Well, on Friday night I was woken at 2:30 am by an entirely different set of fellow guests. I have to ask myself whether this is a particularly Latvian thing, to talk as loudly as you can until an irate fat git comes storming out of his room, pointing at his watch and asking you to have a little thought for people who are trying to sleep? This time I didn’t just confine myself to gestures, but favoured them with such choice phrases as ‘have some respect’. And if that’s not proof that I am rapidly heading towards senior citizenship then I don’t know what would be.

I didn’t get back to sleep, so after checking and rechecking that I’d packed everything I needed to pack I eventually checked out about 7am, and headed off for some breakfast and 2 cups of coffee. I felt better after that and even better after my last tram ride in Riga. It was another very bright and clear day – although chilly at that time in the morning. This isn’t really surprising when you consider that Riga is actually the 6th most northerly capital city of an independent sovereign nation on Earth. I’ve previously visited the number 1 and five on the list in Reykjavik and Stockholm. Not so chilly that sketching was out of the question though. So I made two sketches. Firstly, of some of the houses in Livu Laukum.

You may remember that I sketched the cat statue on the roof of the Cat House a couple of days ago. Well these houses are just a few yards away. Oh, and while I was sketching a family came up and looked at the sketch, and so I offered them the book to have a look through. They gave me a thumbs up and one even slapped me on the back, so Riga and Latvians have proven themselves to be appreciative of sketchers and sketches, which is another mark in the positives column. I’ll come back to that in a moment or two.

I walked through the old town – without getting lost. It’s typical. I’ve got my bearings and understand how the street layout works, just in time to leave the country. The old town backs onto the Daugava River and I walked to a spot where I got a good view of the Railway Bridge, and made the sketch.

What can I say – I have a thing about bridges. The first railway bridge built here was a box girder bridge built in the 1870s. This current bridge was built right alongside the original bridge and it opened in 1914. Not exactly brilliant timing, since it was shelled during world war I and had to be rebuilt. Then the same thing happened in World War 2. It was 11 years before it was rebuilt and then reopened in 1955, during the Soviet period.

I completed the sketch and even though it was earlier than I planned, my sketching hand was aching a bit, so this was the last sketch that I made in Riga. So I made my way to the bus stop. And that was pretty much it. The journey home really was uneventful. Even the passport control at the airport was nice this time round. Yes, it was still a case of death by question but at least the guy at the desk had a smile on his face. A big thank you to my son-in-law Dan for picking me up from the airport yesterday. If I’d had to get the bus again it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but it was nice not to have to.

So that was Riga. I was asked yesterday where I would place it on the list of sketching trip cities I’ve visited. That’s a tricky one. It’s a lovely place and I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. I certainly enjoyed it much more than last year’s Warsaw trip – no disrespect intended towards Warsaw, just a case of speak as you find. I wouldn’t rate it as highly as Berlin, which is my Mary Poppins destination (practically perfect in every way), but I would certainly rate it highly. In particular, Riga has the best value public transport of any city I’ve visited. Most cities I’ve been to have some kind of travelcard system, but many don’t let you use it to and from the airport. On Tuesday evening I bought a five day travelcard for 10 Euros, and never spent another cent on transport for all the time I was there. I don’t know how they can do it for the price, but I’m very glad that they do. It all speaks of a very enlightened attitude to public transport which I guess they must heavily subsidize.

Thank you Riga, and thank you for tuning in. Next trip planned is Copenhagen in the Summer. Hope to see you then.

Riga Episode 3

 Good evening and welcome to An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook, Easter 2023 Edition, Episode 3. And it’s been an absolutely beautiful day in wonderful downtown Riga today. We had snow on Tuesday and Wednesday, rain and mist yesterday, but today there’s been non-stop sunshine. Mind you, the day didn’t start quite so beautifully. It was about 3 o’clock in the morning when I was woken by the sound of voices – male voices – loud male voices. Very loud male voices. And they were going at it for a very long time. So much so that I even got up, went into the sitting area, and then pointed at my watch. Then, for good measure, I made the yakitty yak sign with my left hand as well- you know, the one where you make your hand go like a crab pincer. One of them gave me a cheery wave, and they did – eventually – give it a rest. I, on the other hand, got no more rest for another hour or so before I fell back to sleep again.

So I was a little late getting out and about this morning. But was I downhearted? Yeah, actually, I was a bit. But there was nothing wrong with me that two coffees couldn’t put right. I was interested to see just how seriously Riga takes Good Friday, and I was delighted to find that it takes it about as seriously as we do in the UK. So while a lot of places were closed, the Supermarket , the market, and Costa Coffee were all open for business.

So I made my way first to the Blackheads House, and was a little disappointed to see that there was no Clearasil House (other skin care products are available) opposite it. The name is all to do with Merchants, apparently, who used to wear black caps. Riga was an important Hanseatic League trading port back in the day. I didn’t sketch the building itself, but I did make a sketch of the statue of Roland (or for readers who grew up with Grange Hill, Row-Land).

Roland is the hero of probably the most famous of the French Chansons de Geste, the Chanson de Roland, originally written in Anglo Norman French and probably within a decade or two of the Norman Conquest. Basically, he was the hotheaded nephew of Charlemagne who was ambushed with his men by Moors in Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees, where he had his bottom handed to him on a plate, to use the vernacular. Why this is celebrated with a statue in Riga, that I don’t know.

Now, I did tell you all about the Swedish Gate, didn’t I? Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks of the words ‘hurdy gurdy’ when I see references to the Swedish anything? Oh, I am. Okay. Well, this time I went back to it to make the sketch that you can see with this post.

Being out in the open air sketching when there were far more people about than in the last two days, I was able to assess the locals’ reaction to an open air sketcher. It’s funny the different etiquette that seems to apply in different cities. Here nobody, not one person, passed a comment on any of the sketches I was making. In fact most of them went out of their way to pretend that they weren’t even looking. Maybe it’s a Baltic thing – my recollection is that it was a similar thing in Kaunas in Lithuania. Or maybe they just thought they were all crap and didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

The trams were running, albeit rather less frequently so it wasn’t difficult to get to the market. It was lunchtime you see. I took the opportunity to sample Latvian curry sauce with my baked potato. All I can say is that it wasn’t very hot, and was distinctly more pale than I like to see in a curry sauce. Well, there you go. I can’t see me giving the Michelin guide a run for the money any time soon with reviews like that.

Back out again, and I took a quiet walk by the canal. Now, you have to hand it to the Rigans. When you say the word canal to me I can’t help thinking of the Grand Union which has cleaned up its act a bit recently, but when I was growing up frankly wasn’t the most salubrious of places. Well, the Riga Canal may not exactly be the Grand Canal in Venice, but it’s rather lovely, passing through a rather lovely park area as it flows past the National Opera House. I took the opportunity to sit for a while, and as I did my sketching hand became itchy so I made a sketch of a nearby fountain, which you should be able to see with this post.

And it was while I was making this sketch that I had a rather lovely experience. Stop that – you’re making up your own stories. No, I saw my first butterfly of 2023, and what’s more it was a small tortoiseshell which is one of my favourite spring butterflies too. On the negative column of the ledger I believe that I did catch a bit of sun while making the fountain sketch, since my face is feeling it a bit now.

I mentioned earlier that I had wondered how seriously Latvians take Good Friday. When I walked back into the Old Town there was actually a procession of sorts going on which stopped at the Dom Square. The Dom is the Cathedral in the Old Town. Is that name because of the German influence on Riga’s past? I only ask because I recall it’s what the huge Cathedral on Museum Insel in Berlin was called , or rather the Domkirche.

Those of you who know me well will probably know that I am easily worried and when I get a bee in my bonnet about something I can’t rest until I get it sorted out. This is why I hastened back to the room. Honestly, in terms of location close to where I want to be in Riga, you couldn’t have done much better. However. . . there is the little matter of the 70 odd steps on the winding staircase to get up to it. Oh well, good exercise I suppose. Mind you, I’ve always thought that good exercise is an oxymoron. Anyway, back to the story, and what was bugging me. Tomorrow I’m flying home at 14:10. Unless you’re paying extra to choose a seat, you cannot check in online until 24 hours before the flight is due to take of. And it really is true. I tried at 14:09 today and got nowhere. A minute later – Bob’s your Uncle.

So, after awarding myself a large pat on the back, it was back out again. There was one particular landmark that I wanted to sketch. I like clocks, you see. I like bridges too, and have seen a couple of rather nice ones since I’ve been here, but hey, the clock was nearer.

If you look on the sketch you should see that the letters down the side spell Laima. Laima is the largest producer of chocolate in Latvia. And Laima are very, very proud of the fact that unlike similar firms in the Baltic and Scandinavia they have never been taken over by a giant conglomerate like Kraft foods and are still a private company. As you should be able to see from the sketch it stands close to the Freedom Monument. It was erected in 1924, but during the Soviet Period all reference to chocolate was removed and instead it was used as a political propaganda stand. Tells you all you need to know about the Soviet period really. Why feed the people with chocolate when you can feed them lies instead? It was put back to its original design in 1999, although it didn’t actually ring again until 2012. And I can vouch for the fact that it has a very nice, mellow ring as it chimes the hour. – If you look at the time on the hands of the clock in the sketch, which were amongst the first part of it I drew, then think that I was still there when the hour chimed it should give you an idea how long it took to make. Well, good people, that’s just about it for this episode. Last night’s disturbed sleep has just about done for me, and I have a long day of travelling tomorrow. So I’ll wish you good evening.

Riga Episode 2

 Hello, and welcome to an English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook, Spring 2023 Edition. Episode 2. Right, do you remember that I signed off yesterday telling you how extremely tired I was? Well, not that long after posting I lay down on my bed, and started reading. My eyes closed. Next thing I knew the phone was ringing. Now, I had to drag myself back into consciousness from way, way deep in slumber. It was my middle daughter Zara. I was about to ask her what she thought she was doing ringing me at this time of night, but then I though I’d better see exactly what time it was. Half eleven Latvian time to be precise, or 9:30 pm at home. So the rant I had ready on the launch pad was stood down. To be fair to Zara she wanted to tell me that my Mum and Step Dad are fine. She and partner Matt have been visiting, so it was nice of her to let me know. She did say that my Mum had shown her a poem I wrote about my nan some years ago, and that reading it had driven her to tears. I didn’t think it was THAT bad, but there you go.

So, then, back to sleep it was, and I woke again about 6am – which is actually quite late for me. Now I don’t think that I mentioned the showers yesterday, did I? When I arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning the guy on the desk did tell me 2 things about the showers. One was true and the other wasn’t. “When you first switch them on, they will probably be very cold.” That was true. “If you wait for a few minutes, then they will warm up.” That was not. Look, these things are sent to try us. The way I look on it when you put that in the negative column against everything about the trip so far that has been in the positive column, I reckon I’m still well ahead.

I did confess yesterday to having a McDonalds breakfast. Yeah, I know, eating in McDonalds is not big and it’s not clever. So at about half past eight I wandered to the tram stop and took the tram to the market. Cheese pancakes and a good cup of coffee thank you very much. I mentioned yesterday that there’s a Maxima Supermarket which is part of the market complex, and so I picked up a few bits and pieces, and had a rather unpleasant experience at the checkout. My purchases came to exactly 9.99 Euros. I produced a 10 euro note. The lady on the checkout, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the late German actress Ilse Steppat (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) looked at it as if I had just spat on her hand. I’d guess that what she said to me was – haven’t you got the change? –. She then proceeded to say something to everyone else in the queue, and there was much tutting until one of them changed the money for her. “Danke, Frau Bunt.” I said to her in my head and left.

While in the vicinity of the Market/Station area I’d set myself the goal of finding where the airport bus will leave from on Saturday. I achieved my target – blimey, listen to me. Achieved my target? I’ve been teaching too long if I’m even starting to sound like one. So the next thing was to head off and start sketching. I mentioned Milda, the Freedom Monument, to you yesterday, but I didn’t sketch her, so this was something I wanted to put right today. As I was walking , I noticed that I was passing by the Latvian National Museum of Natural History. It was closed, but opened later, and so I made a mental note. I won’t go on about Milda, but there’s something about her face which put me in mind of Christ The Redeemer in Rio.

Back, then to the Museum of Natural History. Look, it’s like this. I owe it to the 7 year old boy inside me who was mad about dinosaurs to go into every Natural History Museum I come upon. I have to say that – and I’ve been enjoying Riga so much that I don’t actually want to say anything negative – it’s okay, but not much better than that. Somehow I felt that it contrived to be less than the sum of its parts. Although there are four floors, the rooms on each are pretty small. I didn’t see a great deal more than stuffed and mounted animals – birds and mammals for the most part. Mind you, I did get the impression that the Museum is not going all out to attract and cater for international tourists, Nothing at all was subtitled in English. Even the Natural History Museum in Kaunas had English subtitles – and that and the Vytautas the Great Museum were the only places that did. Still, at least I did find an impressive skeleton to sketch. Bearing in mind there was a model of an orca underneath it, I’m guessing it was a skeleton of an orca, anyway.

Even taking time to make the sketch I don’t think I could have been much more than an hour in the Museum, which is a bit of a shame. I always think that the mark of a good museum or gallery is that you suddenly realise that you’ve already spent two hours in there.

Onwards, then and back into the old town. I did think twice about this bearing in mind how hard I found it to get back out of the old town yesterday, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. There were two places in particular that I wanted to see, both of which I was sure that I’d walked straight past yesterday without noticing. The first was the Swedish Gate. I haven’t sketched it yet. The Swedish gate is the last of the original 8 gates to the city which is still standing. There’s rather a gruesome tale attached to the name. back in the 17th and 18th centuries Latvia found itself caught up in the conflict between Sweden and the Russian Empire. Apparently around the time that the gate was constructed young ladies were forbidden from dating Swedish soldiers. One unfortunate girl was found breaking the prohibition, and she was allegedly bricked up inside the wall where the gate was being constructed. Nonsense? I hope so.

The other place in the Old Town I did make a sketch of. This is the famous Cat House.

Now, if you’ve ever read John Steinbeck’s “of Mice and Men” let me tell you straight that what Steinbeck meant by the phrase ‘cat house’ was a very different kind of establishment to the one in Riga (probably. I didn’t actually go in.) The Cat House is so called because of a pair of very prominent cat statues on the roof – one of which you can see in the sketch. There are two versions of the story about them. One says that the man who had the house built had been turned down by the Merchants’ Guild opposite, and so the cats originally bared their bums to the house to show displeasure. The other version is that it was the Town Hall the builder was displeased with. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

Oh, you want to know whether I got lost again today? Well, yes, I did, although not in the old town. As you can see from the fact that two of today’s sketches show statues, I was having a bit of a sculpture day today. Near the Freedom monument runs the Riga Canal, and I’d read that on one of the banks there are several sculptures. Indeed there were. One of them depicted three young women, each of whom had forgotten to put their clothes on, doing a version of what looked for all the world like a game of ring-a-ring-o’ roses, facing inwards and baring their buttocks towards the casual viewer. The title of it was “Peace Dance.” Now, I’m not a good enough accent spotter to be certain whether the couple looking at it the same time I was were American or Canadian, but the man, who seemed to be of a similar vintage to me, made the comment, “Peace Dance? Piece of Ass Dance more like.” I do apologise for ruining your enjoyment of this episode with crudery, but you already know my fondness for schoolboy humour.

What, trams? Yes, of course I was riding the trams again. I was particularly enjoying some of the destinations on the headboards. Let’s play word association. If I say the destination name – Pinki – be honest, did the word Sminki also come into your head as well. If not, then maybe you weren’t a fan of the Fast Show. You probably won’t be surprised if I tell you that I got on a tram today with the destination Jugla, just so I could say that I was going for the Jugla.

There was no snow today and I dare say that it was a little bit milder than yesterday and certainly milder than Tuesday night when I arrived. Nonetheless, by the time I’d made the trolleybus sketch I was feeling the cold. Yes, I did try to do it on the spot, but I used a photograph on the Kindle to help me finish it off. When I did finish it off I was comfortably ensconsed in a Costa. And do you know the thing which struck me about Costa in Riga? It’s this. They don’t call Millionaire’s Shortbread Millionaire’s Shortbread. They sell it, but they call it Caramel Shortbread. More accurate but somehow lacking in poetry, I dare say.

You’ll be glad to know that there’s not a lot more for me to say today, other than to mention my second Museum disappointment. I did say yesterday that I was going to look in on the Museum of the Occupation. Well, I tried. It was closed to day. So I had to find something else to occupy myself with. Pizza as I recall. Well, there we are. Tune in for more of this nonsense tomorrow. See you.