Rundetaarn

Last Saturday we had the good fortune of having both nice weather and a lazy day with no real plans (ignoring the ever-present spectre of Danish homework). We’ve been waiting for clear days to start working out way through the various towers in the city where you can get a good view out over the rooftops.

Presented with a brisk, sunny day and no pressing engagements, we seized the opportunity to go be tourists at the Rundetaarn (the Round Tower).

I’ve been really looking forward to visiting ever since I found out it has an ‘equestrian staircase’. Built in the mid-1600s as a church, library and observatory, they designed it such that a horse and carriage could haul books and astronomical instruments up to the top of the tower. The end result is a very photogenic, and very easy to climb, path up to the top, which has apparently been used by Russian Czars on horseback, cars and bicycle races.

From the top you get a view over the centre of town. In hindsight it’s been good holding off for a few months before starting to visit these towers because it’s more fun looking out when you have a better idea of the city and its landmarks.

The Rundetaarn is technically still a functioning observatory, although it is only used by amateur enthusiasts.

It’s also an exhibition space, and a travelling exhibition from the Museum of Broken Relationships has just opened. The Museum of Broken Relationships is an art project-turned-museum based in Zagreb, Croatia, where people can divest themselves of symbolic items from past relationships. It is equal parts moving, crack-pot, tragic and banal and I really recommend it. Some of the more poignant items and accompanying explanations represent the demise of decades-long relationships, with or without a sense of closure and/or lingering anger. Others are more tragi-comic, when you realise that the histrionic text relates to a two month on-off relationship someone had at the start of this year – you will probably learn to live and love again, buddy, just hang in there…

To end on a slightly more upbeat note than the detritus of failed couplings, we learned a great Danish phrase this week:

“Hvem har tisset på din sukkermad?”

Sukkermad, as I understand it, is a kids breakfast treat made of bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on top – so essentially the Danish version of fairy bread. The phrase is used to indicate someone has got out on the wrong side of the bed, and translates as follows:

“Ok, who has pissed on your fairy bread this morning?”

I find this phrase endlessly amusing – feel free to drop it into conversation wherever applicable.