Discovery of the Sea

After Christmas holiday back in the States, I have been slowly getting back into the groove back in Copenhagen. Last week, this entailed listless nights while suffering from jet lag, resulting in my appearance at work at 10 or 10:30 AM each day. I felt very guilty about it, but when you have a job that doesn't require you to be present at any certain time, you get over that guilt pretty quick.

On my first weekend since coming back to town, I was determined to get out of the shell of just living everyday life in Copenhagen - which meant finding some blog-worthy experience to write another entry. As we try to deal with the trials and tribulations of life, we can fall into a routine. What would happen if we changed up that routine? Turned right instead of left? For me, I took that quite literally, and I discovered the sea. To my surprise, I never realized that I live just half a mile to sea side, the straight of Øresund that leads to the Baltic Sea. I have always turned left coming out of my apartment to head to the main street that I never realized that if I turned right I would arrive at the waterfront. Unfortunately, the waterfront of Copenhagen in my area is mostly quite ugly - an array of shipping ports, warehouses, and docks. The sea itself is pretty much like Copenhagen weather - cold, gray, and makes you wish you were in Florida.

Note here the wind turbines in the background, behind the factory. Despite working for a company that manufactures and sells wind turbines, this is actually the closest I've ever been to a turbine. I don't think there are any polar bears in Denmark, so I don't know what the deal with this statue is about.

Hans Christian Andersen is a god around here. He's probably one of the most famous Danes there ever has been. People are super proud of him, and he has a street named after him, too. "Who's Hans Christian Andersen?" you may ask. Well, he's the guy who wrote the Little Mermaid. Wait...Walt Disney didn't come up with little Ariel? Well, no, but I'm pretty sure they came up with the idea of singing crustaceans. Walk far along the seaside and you'll get to a nicer area (which just means no warehouses) where you will find this beautiful statue of the Little Mermaid that invokes the sudden urge to say, "What? That's it?" The picture lacks a point of reference to judge size, but the Little Mermaid is about half the size of a small human. It's a huge tourist attraction, with tour bus access and tons of people visiting to take pictures, which just blows me away as to why. For me, I was told by two friends to not waste my time by going to see the statue...which of course piqued my curiosity to find out why it was such a big waste of time. Interesting factoid, the Little Mermaid was recently vandalized when someone cut off her head. Probably disappointed a lot of tourists.