Back in Copenhagen. Back to real life, overpriced coffee, everyone looking beautiful and exactly the same, dark afternoons and freezing nights, quiet streets in the city center and a very low-key ambiance all over the city. No more wonderfully weird New Yorkers, no more exploring new neighborhoods, no more of that breathtaking skyline as a constant reminder of the many different lives in that huge city.
Moving from one place and back to the other hasn’t completely dawned on me yet, and this weekend, I needed a dose of Copenhagen. So I dragged Esben up in one of the city’s main tourist attractions; The Round Tower. He thought I was a little silly, but I needed to see the city from high above to really understand where I was. And doing a touristy thing in our own city did help a little, perhaps making the transition a little easier. Because Copenhagen really is a great city. And the view from this tower built in 1642 and now the oldest functioning astronomy observatory in Europe is spectacular. Built with a spiral walk so the astronomers’ heavy instruments could be transported up and down on wagons, the inside of the tower with brick floors and white walls is quite a pretty sight.
Although it takes a bit of a hike to make it all the way to the top (no elevators!) the view is definitely worth it. It does not compare to taking in the Manhattan skyline from Top of The Rock, but that’s OK. Because the two cities can’t be compared, and CPH does have a lot of good things that NYC lacks. Like most of my friends living in the same neighbourhood just a couple of minutes apart, thousands of bikelanes making it so easy to get around compared to the subway system in NYC, peace and quiet and a whole lot of stunning and historical architecture like this well visited tower in Central Copenhagen.