weekend with the Danes

In order to continue the theme of "Europe is for reunions," after Amsterdam I flew to Copenhagen to visit Mie and Sanne, who (or is it whom? I stink at that grammar rule) I'd met in Laos and then traveled with for the next six weeks throughout Southeast Asia.

While I'd heard many good things about Copenhagen, I can't really give a good opinion of the city as a tourist, because rather than wander around the city, checking out all the museums, etc I was more interested in just hanging out and catching up with Sanne and Mie. However, we did go to the Carlsberg brewery for a very entertaining tour followed by some extremely competitive foosball (I won't gloat by rubbing in the fact that I went 3-1, because that would be rude). We also did a bike tour of the downtown area to see all the major sites. Oh, and random fun fact: bikes are extremely popular in Copenhagen. They have their own lane, etc. Very different from the US, where bikes pretty much have to just share the same lane with cars. . .

Anyways, the point is, I got to see a decent amount of Copenhagen, but more importantly, spend a lot of time with Mie and Sanne, reminiscing about our adventures in Southeast Asia. Good times. And don't worry: even if I wasn't doing much of the tourist thing, I still managed to take plenty of pictures:

artsy shot - blue sky, green roof and statue (I think that's mercury)

cool night shot

me and Mie pose with the world's surliest guard. If you zoom in on the photo, you can see him glaring at Mie. When we went to take the picture he snapped at her for being too close, even though she was several feet away at the time. Well, I guess I'd be pretty surly too if I had to wear that ridiculous hat, stand still for hours on end, and deal with tons of tourists who wanted their pictures taken with me. . .

so many beers, so little time! At the Carlsberg brewery they have the world's largest collection of beer bottles (19,642 and counting). We had fun looking through and pointing out the beers we drank in the different parts of our trip.

now things get serious - foosball faceoff with Sanne at the Carlsberg brewery

I was disappointed to learn that Copenhagen's iconic statue The Little Mermaid had been moved to Shanghai for the 2010 world expo. But luckily for me, they had a copy at the Carlsberg brewery. Problem solved.