Copenhagen, the standard-bearer for both design and New Nordic cuisine, offers other creative endeavors, from enticing shops to cozy bars.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. People from Copenhagen live in the streets.
2. It is allowed to drink in the streets.
3. Visitors find it difficult to figure out what kind of store Playtype is.
4. The Lousiana Museum was founded in 1948.
5. The Danish try to balance outdoors and indoors in their lifestyle.
6. People do wakeboarding right in the city center of Copenhagen.
7. The sandwich is a traditional dish in Denmark.
8. The market we see has been running for centuries.
9. People go to the market because of the prices.
10. Denmark has a tradition in beer drinking.
11. In Olsnedkeren they offer different kinds of beer every week.
12. In Lidkoeb customers find a different atmosphere on each floor.
The most striving thing about Copenhagen to me is that you have everything Paris, London, Berlin as well combined in one.
You can do all sorts of things in a quite small town.
You live on the street, so to say, you know, you hang around on all the corners and squares.
The people of Copenhagen are cool.
There’s so many people doing what they want.
It’s allowed to drink on the streets, which… we do.
We have this word hyggelig which means kind of cosy but it really means it’s kind of like chilling and having a good time.
People are happier here. It’s the hidden gem of Europe, for sure.
Playtype is a… it’s a typography concept store. People who have never been here before can stand outside for a while and are like to come in and what, what is this? It’s really hard to explain a great design when it comes to just layer because you just know like a ‘B is just a B’ with so many layers, and there’s so many expressions in a really simple way.
The Louisiana Museum was founded in 1958. The founder, some of the founders villa and they immediately saw that the setting was perfect for a museum. They wanted a place where people could meet art in a new way, in a very direct way.
I believe that it epitomizes sort of the Danish mentality and it’s particularly the connection between the indoors and the outdoors. Danes always need to have a connection to the outdoors.
Out here we do wakeboarding right in the heart of the city two miles from downtown Copenhagen. The appeal is that you enjoy high speed on the water and if you’re really good you start doing rails, kick-ups, all kinds of funny stuff which you find normally in snowboard parks. They just love it.
If you come to Copenhagen you should really rent a bike.
I think bike culture is very tied to Copenhagen, it’s very much a part of our identity. We like to take it easy. It’s like you put your kids in, you put your grocery shopping in, you put whatever you buy and I think there’s some of that spirit in the cliché of bikes.
Food catering in Copenhagen is exploding. You can tell that people know a lot more about food, they’re more interested in food.
Almanak is all about open sandwiches for lunch.
It’s a tradition in Denmark to serve open sandwiches and we try to update the classic versions. For example, our, our version of a tomato sandwich is one that I remember from when I was a kid, and we try to update it with the use of green tomatoes and pickled tomatoes and even with a gel on a pickled and brine, having respect for the old sandwich but updating it so people are a bit whoa about it as well.
We have a four-course menu changing with the seasons really, and we have some more challenging things maybe in the snacks we’ve been doing some crispy pig heads and lamb head pancakes. One of the highest-selling snacks I’d say that we have is the bull testicles.
By the end of the meal they are still like whoa, they were really tasty, really cool.
The market here started back in 2011. It’s the only market like this in Copenhagen.
We have a lot of different stalls and a lot of variation.
Ko(cow going out on a limb here) Dairy craft beer, cheeses from small dairies, flowers.
You can find fish, you can find meat, wine, beers.
A lot of things that you can find only here in Copenhagen and the surrounding area, so people come here from everywhere.
They start out getting a coffee or eat something. Then they do their shopping. And when it’s done, they sit down again.
It’s always been a beer-drinking town. We wanna offer something better because the standard of beer is really tame, so with this we want to offer the opportunity to try a beer that has flavour and depth and that sort of vibe that we offer that’s our beer and stuff.
In the beginning it was founded like a means to brew beer and make this bar. We have two or three new beers a week. We never do the same beer twice. We keep moving on. Most people don’t really realize that we brew it in the basement but they just go oh, ah, and they’ve never seen those beers before. You can come here without knowing anything and so have a good time.
We have a golden age of cocktails in Denmark. Lidkoeb is a bar in an old chemist laboratory. I like each floor to sort of represent a different atmosphere, so this floor is quite airy, next floor up is a bit more lounge-like and then on the top floor we’ve got a whisky bar and a OP(observation post) loft which is catering to the caveman envy.
There’s something about way of life in Scandinavia that promotes drinking I think. Maybe it’s something inherited Viking thing, I don’t know.
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