Story: The Paris of the North

My father taught me to love Copenhagen before I ever visited. He made his first trip there in the early 50s, not long after the end of WWII. I think he was predisposed to like the Danes because they were so good to their Jews during the war, but the stunning design and the pleasure of traveling on a strong dollar didn’t hurt.
He came back with assorted things. The most memorable to me, although I’ve only seen it once, is a set of hammered silver flatware from Georg Jensen. It lives in a safety deposit box; we never ate off anything but stainless growing up. My father took me and my sister to the bank once for a reverential viewing.
So in short, I had high hopes for Copenhagen, and despite the buildup, I still fell for it.

Copenhagen is a city with a low skyline of stately buildings, seven hours of sunlight in winter months and x in summer, and inhabitants descended from existential princes and medieval heroes. This is not Danny Kaye’s Wonderful Copenhagen where Hans Christian Andersen frolics with little mermaids and ugly ducklings. That woefully misguided 1952 classic may be responsible for a number of subsequent misconceptions, including our persistent inability to correctly say the city’s name—a mistake I relish for making such perfect fun of Americans always trying too hard to appear cultivated.
The a in Copenhagen should be said like the \A\ in pagan, not the \ä\ of Häagen-Dazs or toboggan. (Though if you want to shop for the popular Danish watch brand Skagen while you're in Copenhagen, don’t be misled. It's pronounced "skein," as in wool.) I was looking online for some better explanation behind this mispronunciation than chronic spontaneous national error, and I came across a clip from the song “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen.” Just listen to the first line. It’s not implausible to conclude that Americans derive their cultural knowledge from Hollywood.

Copenhagen is a city like Milan is a city. It’s sophisticated, and hip, and it oozes history with the understated confidence of a place that dates its founding to the 1100s but isn’t stuck in an epic past. The modern side slips right in, and is all the more appealing for its resistance of the uniculture creep making its way across Berlin, Prague, Rekjavik and other northern European stalwarts.
In fact, the city accommodates all its eras and sensibilities seamlessly and gracefully. Walk past the colorful row houses of Nyhavn (“New Harbor”) that line a canal to rival Amsterdam’s and you’ll see why classic LEGO houses look the way they do. Or visit Copenhagen University and the skeleton of a palace where wayward students were once cellared. The artsy-fartsy Fox Hotel shows off its ultra-modern chic with rooms individually decorated by different artists in simplistic pastel nature patterns and anime-inspired murals.
Bicycles are ubiquitous and rental is free. As far as hippie culture goes, San Francisco has nothing on Christiania. Copenhagen’s famous or infamous—depending on your outlook—“free city” is starkly unglossed, no tie-dye boutiques here.

But back to the hipness. Copenhagen is unselfconsciously and nonchalantly hip. You feel it everywhere—in the architecture, the bars, the restaurants, and certainly in the people. Copenhagen is the birthplace of Peter Martins and Lars von Trier, the resting place of Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr, and sometime home of the Raveonettes and Janus Friis of KaZaA and Skype renown.
It’s also ground zero for Scandinavian design. Think Georg Jensen, Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen. It’s impossible to disassociate design in all senses of that word from the zeitgeist of the city. However passé or commonplace you may consider the shtick of “Danish Modern,” and however immune you think you are to its lures, Copenhagen will seduce you despite yourself. You can’t help but leave with Hans Wegner and Stelton in your vocabulary of household words and more sets of salt and pepper shakers in your suitcase than you know what to do with. (They make good gifts). The huge Illums Bolighus (“By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark”) department store is practically a design museum in itself. Also, pay attention to the excellent window hardware.
I was so taken with an ashtray I saw that I bought it even though I don’t smoke and don’t want others to in my house. It’s currently packed away in the closet, still wrapped in its plastic bubbles. I’m thinking of renting a safety deposit box for safekeeping.