I felt like I’d been abroad for ages. We’d only been in Copenhagen for two days, but not having slept very much made it feel like longer. But the trip was coming to an end, and our flight home was from Malmö, so we headed back across the Öresund. Malmö is not nearly as fun as Copenhagen, and we didn’t do much except find our way to a coffee shop and chill out there. In the evening, Andrew left to get a night train to Berlin. He was just at the start of a longer trip. For me and Eldrik, though, this one was over. We got the bus to the airport, and headed home, shattered after a great weekend away.

The next day was so beautiful and sunny that we were up by 9am even though we’d only got in from the club four hours before that. With Shelley and Monica who we’d met in the club last night, we headed out in the direction of Christiania, a self-declared independent state which has occupied a former military barracks since 1971. Always teetering on the edge of a viable existence, Christiania has so far just about survived despite repeated government attempts to crack down on its various subversive habits. One of the main things that people have objected to is the open trade in drugs in Christiania. We wandered in to the free state and onto its main street, Pusher Street, and found a staggering quantity of hash on sale. Christiania is generally about love and tolerance and being free from unnecessary restrictions, but they definitely don’t love or tolerate the taking of photos on Pusher Street. Huge signs make this very clear. I kept my camera in my bag. We spent a long time in Christiania. It was a hot summer day, and the anarchic community was a good place to be. What I didn’t appreciate for a while was [...]

In the evening the plan was to go out. Andrew had slept at the airport too but he hadn’t had the day to recover that Eldrik and I had had. He decided to have a pre-going out power nap which ended up lasting for 14 hours. Eldrik and I hung around in the hostel for a bit, accruing a crowd of people who fancied some clubbing action. We headed to the bars of Nørrebro first, and then towards Rust, which we’d heard was the best club in Copenhagen. We got in with no problem, and it was fantastic. When we finally decided to leave at 5am, we emerged from the club to find that it was already daylight – the perfect way to end any night out. We decided we needed some post-club food. We weren’t sure what would be open at this time of the morning, but only a few doors away from the club we found a 24 hour Danish pastry shop. It was the best thing that could have happened to us at that point, and if I had liked Copenhagen a lot already, now I loved it. At the hostel we were staying in a dorm [...]

We headed into Denmark the next day. The plan was to meet my brother there – he’d flown out a day after us instead of taking a cheeky Friday off work, and he’d flown straight to Copenhagen. We hadn’t made any firm or reliable plan to meet up, so it was incredibly good luck that when the train we were on stopped at Kastrup, Andrew got on. The three of us went to have a look around, and found our way to the Rundetårn. We went up to the top, and despite the grey day, the views over the city were pretty good.

I started this trip in a state of extreme tiredness. In a move of spectacular stupidity, the Stansted Express had decided that the May bank holiday weekend was a great time to cancel all the trains to do some maintenance work, and so to catch the early flight we’d booked, me and Eldrik had to sleep at Stansted airport. We didn’t think there would be that many people there, but by the time we rocked up at midnight, every bench and every seat had been taken. Sleeping on the floor was far from ideal. So, aching and exhausted, we flew to Sweden. It was raining heavily as we began to find our way to our hostel. I’d recently watched Lilya 4-ever, a masterpiece but probably the most depressing film I’ve ever seen. Part of the film was shot in Malmö, and as we neared our hostel we recognised some locations. The hostel itself turned out to be right next to the most depressing location in a depressing film. Luckily the sun broke through the rain. We headed into town, wandering randomly and stopping for coffees and hot dogs on the way. We ended up at Västra Hamnen, where grey skies [...]