Prague and Copenhagen. Two cities, and two countries, that we are seeing for the first time on this leg of the trip. And after a few fascinating days in the former, we’re ready to move on to the latter.

Up before dawn, we say goodbye to our cozy apartment in Prague and catch an Uber to the airport, with an interesting driver who hails from the Congo. And to think he came all the way here just to give us a lift.

Flight from Prague to Copenhagen

At the airport, we have plenty of time before check-in. Normally we’d have to wait for a counter to open in order to check our bags. But this airline in Prague has a state-of-the-art high tech system whereby you check your own bags. If you do it carefully. Kimberly checks hers in okay, but then she starts to do her husband’s and pushes the wrong button, and it causes HAL to get confused, and the conveyor belt freezes up, and we have to wait an additional 40 minutes after all.

After that, things go rather smoothly soaring from one European Union nation to another. In fact, it goes more smoothly and comfortably than usual, because we have a little trick in booking seats on a plane that has paid off this time. Kimberly likes to be by the window so she can take photos. Dennis likes to sit on the aisle so he can get to the bathroom easily without having to scale a seatmate sleeping while slouched over the table in front.

So our ploy is to book those two seats in hopes that (since most passengers don’t travel alone) the one in the middle will remain vacant, and we won’t be crowded by a person who flops over the armrest or spills over with oversized baggage of the hips. This seems to work out to our advantage about one time out of three, and this is that one. Shh!! Don’t tell anyone.

When we land in Copenhagen (our first time ever to be in Denmark), it’s still fairly early in the morning, and our Airbnb will not be ready until early afternoon. So, with a few hours to kill, we catch a metro part of the way there, and lay over in a mall, where we buy some supplies with Danish krone (crowns), this being the third consecutive EU country we’ve been in (after Poland in Czechia) that has not converted to the euro.

En Route to Copenhagen AirBnB

And there we receive the first pleasant surprise: free bathrooms. Not just in the mall, but all over the city. Copenhagen boasts more than 70 of them altogether. And “boasts” is an appropriate word, since some of them are actually sites of historic value.

At the appropriate time, we catch a metro to Central Station, which is a classic train station in the heart of the city with a genuine Old Town vibe. Constructed more than a century ago, mostly of brick, with a high arched ceiling sporting wooden rafters, it looks as if it just popped out of the pages of a Harry Potter book. At any second, we expect to stumble onto platform nine and three quarters, and be whisked away on the Hogwarts Express.

Instead, we almost stumble onto a regular ordinary (though antiquated) Muggle platform, through no fault of our own. As we’re descending the escalator, a man in front of us stoops to retrieve a cigarette butt that someone else has discarded. Apparently, it has enough of a chunk of cigarette still remaining, and he is desperate enough for nicotine, and depleted enough in the pocketbook that he’s willing to abruptly halt the flow of passenger traffic to retrieve it. Or else he’s just off his rocker.

Our destination is the city of Hvidovre, a name that looks as if it’s missing a vowel or two, but maybe vowels don’t grow very well in this climate. Since Copenhagen is the most expensive city we’ve visited yet (and even at that it’s considerably cheaper than just about anywhere in the U.S. these days), we were unable to find accommodations within our budget in the city itself. But Hvidovre is only about 7 miles away, so good enough.

The second largest suburb of Copenhagen, Hvidovre has a very long history in its own right. Long as in all the way back into the Bronze Age, as attested by artifacts that have been uncovered. These days, however, the city is best known for its achievements in sports — especially football, or soccer as we uncouth outlanders call it. The local team has won the Danish national championship several times. More to our taste, the city is also home of a film production company.

For now, it’s just home. And after we get off the train at the Hvidovre stop, we walk a short distance to our Airbnb, but have a hard time finding it. As we’re walking with phone in hand, comparing the photo to the houses we pass, a local lady comes along and asks if she can help. We show her the photo and she says, “Oh, that’s Brian’s house. I didn’t know he did Airbnb.”

Well, we hope that doesn’t mean Brian is doing anything against the rules of whatever the local equivalent of a homeowner’s association is — though this doesn’t seem like a neighborhood that would be governed by such an organization.

Anyway, with her help we locate the house, which we’d already walked past. And we meet our host Brian, a congenial fellow who works in cancer research, Along with his teenage son Amil, who is a musician/ composer. And we get settled into our room, and are relieved to find that the two household dogs, which we had been concerned about, are quite mellow.

So we’re all set for the next day to start tackling Copenhagen, the capital and largest city of Denmark, and the home of Tivoli Gardens, Hans Christian Andersen, and gateway to “Hamlet’s Castle”. You’ve eluded us long enough, Copenhagen. And now we have arrived and are about to dig in.

Events occurred: 4/05/2025