Tuesday, 18 October 2016

Land of Fairy Tales - Denmark VI

Moving back to Copenhagen City in a way marked the last segment of our Denmark trip. In fact, it was supposed to be the focus of my itinerary - I didn't know much about Denmark or Copenhagen and my wife did much research to excite our journey.

We didn't realise that there were Sakura trees in Copenhagen, and we started our craze again. We did some surfing via net and realised that there were sakura trees in two sites that we wanted to explore - one park and one cemetery. 

The first venue - the Langelinie Park, where the Little Mermaid statue is situated.  We took a bus there and it was easy journey.  We strolled and saw some Sakura trees and we started getting close and snapping photos. As there was supposed to be a park with about 100 Sakura trees, we ventured further to look for them.  I suddenly remembered our Japan trip where I took my wife to see similar number of flowering trees in an "ulu" town and ended up with no trees and no tourists. 



Bingo! After viewing the very famous little mermaid statue, we found a park full of Sakura trees. I wasn't sure how many trees were there but it was definitely more than what we have seen so far. I like parks in Europe - locals really make good use of the park for picnic, chatting and gathering. It feels different to the way we treat parks here. We would usually sit down on the grass and under the sakura trees to enjoy the fresh air and at times flowers around where we sat. Of cos, my wife would "feedback" that I am not a "nature" person. Why? Cos I would always ensure "no ants, no bees, no insects" on where we sit. We used to collect the flowers for scrapbook. Maybe we had seen the trees in Japan and they were supposed to grow in Japan and we had collected the flowers before. So, we didn't do so in Copenhagen. Similarly, we didn't do so in Beijing. 



Besides this park, there were some other venues for Sakura viewing.  Yes, cemetery. It was a famous cemetery - the Assistens Cemetery.  It was also the resting place for many famous Danish people including HC Anderson. 

It was a good read in the net to realise that Danish people go to the cemetery for picnics and excursion. Very different from our culture here. We took a bus to the Assistens Cemetery and missed a stop and had to u-turn. 

The place was quite huge with paths and directions to different graves.  It was a tourist place too for people to pay respect to HC Anderson. In fact, there was a directional sign to lead the way.



My wife loved to take close-up shots of flowers. She took one with a bee but she didn't realise that the tree was full of bees buzzing. It was quite scary to see so many bees and she also a bit "scared" after I told her about it. Haha. But it was nice and pretty place.  Locals will paddle with bicycles through the tracks in the cemetery. There were people paying respect to their loved ones.



We saw one lady with a wooden basket attached to the bicycle. This was quite a different type of bicycle that my wife had tried to cycle previously at Coney. Yes, but it matched the whole ambience and I proposed for her to take a photo with the bicycle and the background. After a few shots, the owner asked us if we wanted to take a couple photo together. My wife told her "I am shy" to ask and then the owner helped take a few shots for us.  Very friendly locals.

I guess it is in their culture and way of living. So far, we have met interesting and friendly people in Denmark. Frankly, I started to like the country. It is definitely one place for retirement living. Haha. 

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