I'd never travelled solo. I've experienced some stressful travel-related adventures - nauseating malaria
tablets, sticking my hand through a rotten log and getting my arm covered in jungle ants, not being able to
find a cup of tea for 3 days in a row - but I'd not once tried to go it alone. I read about women who go to
India, buy a motorbike and a tent when they arrive, and set of for 7 months hoping for the best. That seemed
a bit daunting to start, especially as I don't have a motorbike licence. So instead I asked my friend Keeva
- a seasoned solo and non-solo traveller - what she recommended. She said Copenhagen should be easy. It
fulfilled my only criteria - be somewhere I've never been, and be easy. Bonus - you can get a train from
Copenhagen to Sweden over the bridge from The Bridge. Before this trip I'd never been to Scandinavia and now I've been to TWO
Scandinavias.
I deliberately booked my flight at an ungodly hour because I knew I wouldn't sleep anyway so I set off at
5am for the airport. I spent my airport time obsessively checking all the trains I would need, memorising
the map route to my hostel in case my phone didn't work, and reviewing my extremely strict schedule I'd laid
out so that I wouldn't have a single moment to stop and think about the fact that I was on my own.
Although in my mid-thirties, I decided to stay in a hostel. You don't exactly hear 'social butterfly' and
think 'Anthea', but I thought it might be nice to have the option to talk to people if I really, really
wanted to. It was a far fancier hostel than I remember from my youth. It was enormous - like some sort of
hostel Disneyland. Bars, and laundries, and pool tables, and a cinema room. They also had what they very
generously referred to as a pizza and salad buffet dinner. I ate there on my first night (out of a crippling
anxiety around dining alone in a restaurant). I replenished the requisite amount of calories and that's
probably the best I can say about that.
The first thing on my itinerary was to go to Sweden. So as soon as I arrived, I got on a train to Malmo. By
the way, don't let anyone tell you the public transport in Copenhagen is straightforward. I'd argue that
there's nothing wrong with destination name, platform name, and time. But apparently you need to be some
kind of Bletchley Park codebreaker to decipher whatever the hell is going on with their trains.
Through sheer coincidence, I had my passport card on me. Could have been an abrupt end to my Scandinavian
adventure. Malmo is fine. It's a pleasant little city with nothing vegetarian to eat. I paid to look around
a castle and learned no facts because it was MY holiday and I didn't have to read any placards if I didn't
want to. I could just look at the castle. The girl on the desk had purple hair too and we bonded.
Delightful.
Pleasant square. No cheese toasties.
Could not give you a single historical fact about this castle.
Prompting an unprecedented swerve from my itinerary, I noticed there was no queue at Tivoli Gardens when I
got off the train back in Copenhagen. I agonised, looking at my itinerary and back at the gate. It was 5.30.
I could swap this with my Little Mermaid adventure I'd planned the following day. I did some calculations
and decided, stressful though change is, this would probably be ok. Tivoli Gardens is the third-oldest
amusement park in the world. I'm particularly fond of something being the second-most or third-most
something. At what point do you stop putting it on your sign? I will say, this was the one part of my trip
where I felt a bit lonely. Tivoli is impressive. It's got a kind of rustic charm to all the rides and shops
and pretend streets. And it has an entire Chinatown. There's also an undeniable tackiness - the sort of
tackiness you need to mock mercilessly with your travel companion. But whatever. I walked around, went on no
rides, and took lots of pictures.
Spooky.
Cool, and luckily no meatpacking
After my aforementioned pizza buffet dinner, I went for a walk to the revoltingly-named Meatpacking
District. Thankfully, there was no actual meatpacking. It's an odd area and I wish I'd had time to go back
during the day. There's rows and rows of old industrial buildings that now house sort-of restaurants. I say
sort-of restaurants because lots of them didn't have names, or signs, or any indication that you could go
inside. If it weren't for the multiple tables I'd have assumed I was staring into people's houses. I walked
back in the dark, and worth noting, it all felt very safe. I'm not an idiot, but I have a bit of tendency to
wander somewhere if something catches my eye - like a toddler seeing a balloon. No problems here. When I got
back to the hostel, I debated going down the bar. They had a specific socialising area. But I couldn't bring
myself to do it. So I went to bed and didn't sleep instead.
Freetown Christiania is an interesting place. In 1971, a load of hippies moved into an old military base and
sort of took it over. They turned it into a commune where drug dealing (weed, at least) is largely
overlooked. I'd read that it's very safe, but still best to visit early in the day if you're traveling
alone. Some parts are beautiful. It's covered in plants and gardens and murals and sculptures. There's
decent guitarists dotted around and the slightly ramshackle houses are incredibly charming. There's also a
giant troll statue, which I very much enjoyed. But then there's Pusher Street, where you're not allowed take
photos. And whatever about what Trip Advisor tells you, I thought it was seedy as fuck. I knew you could buy
weed, but I'd assumed it'd be gentle hairy hippies selling it. It's almost all young men, dressed all in
black, with their hoods up. And they come right up beside you while you're walking (presumably just so you
can ask if you want it, but it's not great when you're alone). So, mixed feelings on Freetown Christiania.
Apparently these trolls are all over the outskirts of Copenhagen but you need a bicycle, a car or public
transport to see them. Seeing just the one was fine for me.
Most of it looks like this.
What is a trip to Copenhagen without seeing the Little Mermaid Statue? Fine. Perfectly fine. You'd be
missing nothing. I walked a very long way (mostly because their transport is too scary) to see about 100
Americans looking at the Little Mermaid statue. I put up a picture on my Instagram and my pal said she'd
gone there too, and never had she experienced such an absence of whelm. But that's not what it's all about.
A further 15 minute walk brings you to the Genetically Modified Little Mermaid. Much weirder. No crowds.
9/10.
I walked a long and meandering route back, stopping to sit on benches whenever I wanted because, of course,
I was alone and I could stop whenever I wanted. It was evening when I got back to the hostel and I couldn't
face the pizza buffet again. I'd have to eat elsewhere. Alone. I bottled it and ate a burrito in the Tivoli
foodcourt. One day maybe I'll sit in a restaurant, comfortable in my own company. But not that day. I was
too tired for a post-dinner walk to a revoltingly-named district but couldn't bring myself to sit in my room
all evening so I brought my kindle down to the social area. There was one specific table for solo
travellers. I looked at it. There were about 5 people, chatting, 2 were playing a board game. I stood there,
weirdly, for a good minute, weighing it up. Then I panicked and sat at the adjacent table, where 3 people
were sitting on their laptops with headphones in. I ended up talking to two people anyway - one girl who was
in an almost identical travel situation to me, and a man from Boston who told me at length about how good he
was at ice hockey. After he left, I hastily made my escape, talking to strangers definitively ticked off my
list.
In conclusion, I'd prefer not to go alone, but there's something very liberating about being able to just
sit down whenever you want and spend an hour choosing a cafe that has a good cheese sandwich.