Ok, so I am in India now, but am behind in blogging. Hence you'll hear about Copenhagen today and more about the conference in the next post before any India stuff.
Unfortunately, because the conference was so time consuming (in a good, fun kind of way) I really didn't get to soak in Copenhagen as much as I would have liked. Even so, here are some quick thoughts:
-It seems like everyone in Copenhagen is friendly. Usually, with most cities you run into a real jerk within an hour of getting in to town. Not so here! Right from the airline to the taxi to the store owners, everyone seemed genuinely happy to see and help you. Rock on.
-Walking and biking is highly institutionalized. Seriously, there are separate bike and pedestrian lanes with their own respective signals. And its super easy to bike around since:
-You can rent a city bike for 20 DKK (about $3.50), ride it around, and recover your money when you are done. Let's just say I took full advantage of this and went on a Hudspethian adventure the day the conference ended.
-The prevalence of obesity is low. This is probably because of the first three points. After all low stress, easy and cheap to walk and bike make a person health, wealthy and wise....or something like that.
-Harbor cities with canals are beautiful. I'll put up the canonical Copenhagen picture in the next post. Monarchies help, too, as the palaces are often striking.
-Copenhagen is expensive! Finally, a negative! One survey ranks Copenhagen 8th among all world cities in cost of living. With the plummeting dollar (or the strengthening Euro or DKK) you get flummoxed if you are an American
-If you haven't eaten at the Addis Mesob Etiopisk Restaurant on the corner of Ryesgade and Fredensgade, you haven't eat Ethiopian food. No joke. Its cheap, all you can eat and the owner, Abdullah, is a nice bloke with a keen business sense.
-Almost all taxis in Copenhagen are Mercedes. There are several cab companies. The taxi drivers buy their own cars at a subsidized price (I think they pay significantly less VAT) and are able to sell their cars back two years later at the market price (which is often more than what they payed initially). I don't know why I put that in there, but it was interesting to me.
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