Copenhagen

Summary

• Photo Album

Key Ideas

• Stefano at the Stella Rosa Bike Shop
  • Bike Shop Address
    • STELLA ROSSA CYKLER - CVR 35082859
    • Oehlenschlagersgade 26, kld.tv.
    • 663 Kobenhavn V
    • stefano.clari@gmail.com - Tel. +45.60641523
  • I had such a wonderful discussion with him
• Kastellet
• Experimentarium
• Amager Bakke / Copenhill
• Thomas Dambo Trolls
  • Captain Nalle

Resources Mentioned

• Public Transportation
  • Skånetrafiken:
    • Train from Sweden → Copenhagen
    • Mobile App: Skånetrafiken - Apps on Google Play
    • I had to get a Swedish number through Twilio to get this to work. It would not send to my US number and it was required for verification. Buying tickets at the station might have made more sense

What We Did

• Visited the Castelet
  • A star fort like all of these

Future Activities — Wiking’s Hygge Safari

Added 2026-09-25 by Claude (source/ai/claude) from The Little Book of Hygge (“Hygge Safari”). Your note: “Add these to my Copenhagen note as activities to do in the future.” Each place was checked as still operating on 2026-09-25.

• Nyhavn (New Harbour) — Wiking: pickled herring and schnapps at one of the restaurants, or do as locals do: buy beers from a shop and sit on the quay edge. Still the city’s main waterfront strip (Wikipedia).
• La Glace — cake. Founded 8 October 1870, the oldest confectioner in Denmark, still open daily (laglace.dk).
• Christianshavn canals by boat — Wiking says rent a rowing boat and bring blankets, wine and a picnic. ⚠️ Rowing-boat rental wasn’t found; today’s version is GoBoat: self-drive electric picnic boats for up to 8 people, from 549 DKK, with routes along the Christianshavn Canal (goboat.dk). That fits a family of five.
• Gråbrødretorv — old square named for the Grey Friars’ monastery (founded 1238, per Wiking). Peder Oxe does classic smørrebrød by the fireplace; it opened in December 1975, so it’s an old-looking room rather than an old restaurant (Peder Oxe).
• Værnedamsvej — short street on the Frederiksberg/Vesterbro border, once the butchers’ street, now cafés, florists, wine bars and design shops (Wikipedia).
• A smørrebrød lunch — see Food to try below.
• Library Bar, Plaza Hotel (Bernstorffsgade 4, by Central Station) — sofas, wood panelling, leather-bound books; still open nightly, with live jazz on Fridays and Saturdays (ligula.se). Wiking says it opened in 1914 and at Christmas hangs the tree upside down from the ceiling. ⚠️ The bar’s own site doesn’t give an opening year, so 1914 is Wiking’s claim.

Food to Try — Denmark

Added 2026-09-25 by Claude from two Wiking highlights (Superlist tasks: smørrebrød; pork and potatoes).

Smørrebrød with Herring or Leverpostej

Meik Wiking

Traditional Danish lunch includes a budget version of smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches) on rye bread with pickled herring or leverpostej (liver paste – a spreadable mixture of baked, chopped pig’s liver and lard).

• Smørrebrød is buttered rugbrød (dense sourdough rye) with toppings (Wikipedia). Leverpostej is pork liver and lard (plus onion, flour, egg and spices) baked in a loaf tin. You eat it cold on rye or warm with bacon and mushrooms (Wikipedia). The warm version with bacon is the easiest way to get the kids to try liver.
• Where: Restaurant Schønnemann, founded 1877, one of Copenhagen’s oldest lunch restaurants. Book ahead (restaurantschonnemann.dk). Aamanns is the modern take, with several branches (aamanns.dk). Or Peder Oxe (above). The budget version Wiking means is supermarket rugbrød, a tub of leverpostej and a jar of pickled herring, eaten on a bench.
• ⚠️ Restaurant Palægade and Told & Snaps are also often recommended, but I didn’t check that they’re still open.

Pork and Potatoes — stegt Flæsk Med persillesovs

Meik Wiking

For dinner, 50 Shades of Meat and Potatoes would be an apt title for a traditional Danish cookbook. Danes are meat lovers and, on average, every person consumes around forty-eight kilos of meat per year – with pork being the nation’s favourite.

• The dish to order: stegt flæsk med persillesovs (crisp fried pork belly slices, boiled potatoes, parsley sauce). In 2014 it was voted Denmark’s official national dish in a public vote run by the Ministry of Food (Fødevareministeriet), out of eight finalists that included smørrebrød. A YouGov poll of 1,000+ Danes beforehand already had it ahead, 28% to smørrebrød’s 25% (Landbrugsavisen; DR headline “Stegt flæsk er kåret til Danmarks officielle nationalret”). ⚠️ The final vote count wasn’t retrieved.
• The Christmas one: flæskesteg is roast pork with salted, scored rind cracked into crackling, served with boiled and caramelised potatoes (brunede kartofler) and red cabbage. It’s the centre of Danish Christmas Eve dinner, and leftovers go on smørrebrød (Wikipedia).
• ⚠️ Wiking’s “forty-eight kilos of meat per person” wasn’t checked against Danish statistics.

Done-when for both tasks: eaten, or on the itinerary. The checkboxes above are the itinerary. Eating it is up to you.

Related: Denmark · Glühwein — Mulled Wine (Wiking’s gløgg recipe) · Trip Ideas

Kierkegaard’s Copenhagen

Added 2026-09-25 by Claude (source/ai/claude). Superlist task 94082b35-0cd4-42db-876e-7cf602ba1574. Your note on the Wanderlust highlight: “Add to Copenhagen note to find some notable connections to Kierkegaard. A walk, cafe, etc.”

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust

One of his nieces says that the streets of Copenhagen were his “reception room,” and Kierkegaard’s great daily pleasure seems to have been walking the streets of his city. It was a way to be among people for a man who could not be with them, a way to bask in the faint human warmth of brief encounters, acquaintances’ greetings, and overheard conversations.

(Readwise highlight)

A walk, roughly in life order (all in or near the old centre except the grave):

• Nytorv: birthplace (plaque). His family house stood here until 1908; he lived in it until 1848. It’s now a Danske Bank branch with a memorial plaque (VisitCopenhagen · Copenhagen Post).
• Helligåndskirken, his childhood church, where he was baptised. Vor Frue Kirke (the cathedral), the family’s church. Trinitatis Kirke (by the Round Tower), where he preached in 1844 (Copenhagen Post, above).
• The statue in the Royal Library Garden (Bibliotekshaven), Slotsholmen: bronze, from Louis Hasselriis’s 1878–79 statuette, unveiled 1918 (Wikipedia). The garden is a quiet stop between Christiansborg and the Black Diamond.
• Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Nørregade 10 (University of Copenhagen), with a reconstruction of his personal library (teol.ku.dk). ⚠️ Whether visitors can drop in wasn’t checked.
• His grave, Assistens Kirkegård, Nørrebro. The cemetery is also a park where locals picnic and cycle; Hans Christian Andersen is buried there too ⚠️ (Andersen from general knowledge) (VisitCopenhagen).

Ready-made routes:

• “The Philosopher’s Last Walk”, a self-guided audio tour on VoiceMap ending at his grave (VoiceMap).
• Hans Halvorson’s (Princeton) self-guided Kierkegaard map (hanshalvorson.com).
• An ArcGIS StoryMap, “Kierkegaard in Copenhagen” (StoryMaps).

The café: ⚠️ no named café or konditori he frequented was found in these sources. Don’t trust a “Kierkegaard’s favourite café” claim without a source. For the right atmosphere anyway, La Glace (1870, above in Future Activities) is from just after his death (1855). What to read before going: see Read Book.