CPH

Reflecting on 2019 - now.

The Copenhagen I was flying into felt immeasurably different from the one I landed in back in 2019.

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In 2019, I took two flights to get to Denmark from Paris. Flying through Amsterdam was the cheapest of what was an already expensive plane ticket and I’d been attempting to make my savings stretch for six months in Europe (while finding myself constantly justifying pastries and eye-wateringly expensive coffees out).

I was meeting two friends in Copenhagen for a concert – we were each studying in different European cities and had booked tickets to an artist that we don’t listen to now, but that we first discovered and collectively fell in love with at a music festival the year before. The fact that it was in Copenhagen didn’t mean much. It was a new country to cross off, a chance at a weekend away. And we were 20, which meant we had a devotion to live music that we hadn’t quite managed to keep hold of the older we got.

We arrived there at the end of November when the weather was getting cold and dark. My memories of my 48 hours in Copenhagen looked like thick scarves, Christmas lights, hostel bunks and mulled wine. We were young, on a budget and it felt enough to be together. We also weren’t on TikTok, which was a blessing and a curse. It didn’t occur to us to look up trendy cafes or wine bars or neighbourhoods. We did a free walking tour in the morning, wandered aimlessly and ate at bad, overpriced places. As saccharine as it sounds, we were together and the best memories of that weekend take the shape of the two of them, not so much the place itself. Copenhagen was little more than the backdrop to our trip.

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Now, I was arriving in Copenhagen five years later and five years older. The city wasn’t bracing itself for winter – the opposite, actually. It was May. I’d packed winter coats, thermals and knitwear, possibly because I was unable to imagine the city as anything but freezing. The first day was windy, rainy and grey – and each day since was increasingly warm and golden. It wasn’t getting dark until 9pm and people had started to sit outside at cafes and suntan in bikinis at the park. Everyone seemed eager to venture outside the minute the sun shone, and the city felt charged with what was to come: summer.

This time I’d also landed in Copenhagen having come from Melbourne not Paris and having hugged my now-partner of four years goodbye and leaving him to finish unpacking our new apartment while I boarded a plane with my mum for a three-week trip together.

I was now armed with a series of recommendations, from friends and acquaintances but mostly from TikTok. Visit this bakery for the best cardamom buns, this cafe for the aesthetic, this bar for the courtyard, this library for the view.

I felt driven by a desire to have the right kind of trip, absolutely, but I was also driven by the desire not to waste the week. I wanted to milk the city for all I could, and part of that meant pre-planning, of knowing which neighbourhoods to wander and how to get the bus there.