Travel Blog

 On our first morning in Copenhagen we walked to the hotel that we had booked for our last night. (We had arrived on the train from Sweden, where we were staying with a friend in Lund.) The receptionist, checking on the computer, assured is that our online reservation had been made, and then, as we were leaving, said, “You’re from Fort Lauderdale.”

 “Yes,” we said.

 “I lived there for 13 years,” the woman said. “Near Pier 66.”

 Hania asked if she could make sure that we got a good room.

  “With a view of the city,” I added.

 Out on the street, it took us a while to get our bearings. There was a lot of construction, and occasional screaming. (Our hotel was not far from Tivoli.) We eventually found some busy pedestrian streets – pinpointed by a large fountain of storks – and followed one of them to a grand, desolate square. From there we walked to a boarded up square. The amount of construction made the city look as if it were getting ready for the Olympics.

 We eventually found the street with the colorfully painted houses, and tourists, and sat down next to a young Chinese couple at an outdoor cafe, where I ate an open-faced sandwich piled with smoked salmon.

 The next day we took the train in from Sweden and then got another to Louisiana, the museum of modern art, where we were introduced to the impressive and often troubling work of Daniel Richter. Walking back to catch the train, we stopped in a store that advertised salt and caramel chocolate-covered licorice. This too sounded troubling until the saleswoman gave me a sample. The small ball of dusty chocolate eventually melted away to reveal a subtly salty caramel gloss that surrounded a saltier nub of intense Danish licorice. It was like a confectioner’s version of Churchill’s definition of the Soviet Union: a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I bought a jar of the stuff.

 The following morning we took the train in from Sweden, this time with our luggage, and walked to the Mercur Hotel. The Fort Lauderdale receptionist had been replaced by another, who was telling a man “Nie ma problemu.”

 “Nie ma problemu, Pani?” Hania asked her, smiling. The new receptionist was from a small town outside Poznan. Hania told her, in Polish, that we’d been promised a good room and, checking on the computer, the woman informed us that we were on the top floor, with a balcony overlooking the city. I would have offered her one of my candies but I knew that Poland is an anise-averse nation. It seemed a good advertisement for Copenhagen that it could attract even immigrants who don’t like licorice.