(Sorry for the quality, it was done in Paint)Fortunately for us and the world, all of those mullets are real. For the back story of how this infamous Euro Mullet found its way to Alex’s head, I’d like to first explain what a Euro Mullet is. Like its relative across the pond, the Euro Mullet is every bit as fashionable (if not more) as a classic American/Canadian Mullet. The difference between the two exists with how much of the mullet is made up of party, and how much is made up of business. Like the American Mullet, the Euro Mullet has just as much party in the back. It is up to the owner of the mullet as to how big of a party they want to throw back there, but each hairstyle has the potential for a large fiesta. The Euro Mullet differs by keeping t he party going on the top or in front. This could be compared to a nice after or pre party, which the American Mullet lacks. The American Mullet is all business in the front, while the Euro Mullet is only business on the sides. The hair is a bit shorter on top in comparison to the back, but it’s definitely not all business like its American Counter Part.
Now, the Euro Mullet plan has been talked about since the early stages of our trip. The original idea was for Alex to allow a culmination of our mullet dreams to occur on his birthday, which was celebrated in Vienna. However, the idea had nearly faded by that time and he was not up for the task. To our surprise and delight, the talks began once we arrived in Berlin and it was then decided that the Euro Mullet would happen. Unfortunately, we decided to pursue the mullet too late for salons to be open on Saturday, and sadly, nothing but restaurants are open in Germany on Sundays. This was quite sad and I felt that this demoralizing chain of events might Alex to have a change of heart. Luckily for us, not more than 100 meters from our hostel, a salon appeared and it appeared that my mullet prayers had been answered. Once we got to our hostel on our first day in Copenhagen, we immediately rushed back to the salon to make an appointment for Alex’s date with mullet destiny. And thus, this was foundation for the new wave euro mullet joining us for the tail end of our trip.
We got ourselves out of bed and made our way to the Berlin train station for our early 7:45 train to begin our journey to Scandinavia. The Berlin train station is important to point out due to the fact that it looks like a space station. It is 5 to 6 stories tall with a large glass dome over the main part of the train tracks. Everything is very new and clean, and the ticket office (as well as in Munich and Hamburg) happen to have the friendliest and most helpful workers. Now, our train ride from Berlin to Copenhagen was not entirely exciting besides the fact that half way there, we were surprised to see our train riding into a massive ship. It was then that we overheard the train conductor tell us that we needed to get off the train and go above to the deck of our ferry. This was a bit surprising since we had no idea this would happen, but it was a neat experience all the same. We enjoyed the quick 30 minute boat ride from Germany to Denmark, and then headed back down to the train for the remainder of our trip.We arrived in Copenhagen and had to take a subway about 6 stops out to the suburbs. We then made a 5 minute walk to our hostel, which was the basement of an Old Danish couple’s house. We were greeted by the lady who lived there and her old dog Kekka, and she showed us our room that was in a separate door leading down to the basement. The entire basement was made up of a small kitchen, a large bathroom, and two rooms connecting to the kitchen. Our room which had 3 beds (two twins and a full sized bed) and the other room had 2 beds in it. It turned out that a couple stayed in the second room for the first night, and then we had the place to ourselves for the last 2 nights. Our room also had a refrigerator and a television with MTV Germany. Even though we weren’t in the middle of the city which we usually strive for, we all enjoyed the hostel since it felt more like a home, since it was someone’s home.
After we got settled in the hostel, we went and made the aforementioned appointment for Alex’s mullet, and then headed into town. It was once we got into town, that we found out that Copenhagen is pretty damn expensive compared to other places we have been. We explored the downtown area of Copenhagen and the various walking streets with oodles of shops lining them. Once we had a good tour of the center of the city, we decided we’d find somewhere to eat. The only problem was that it was hard to find any restaurant that wasn’t less than $20 bucks a person for an entrée. With our hunger pains growing and our patience dwindling, we decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant advertising an all you can eat buffet for only 100Danish Kroners (about $18). We didn’t have a lot of other options so we decided to go for it. The food was about what you’d expect to find at a $5.99 all you can eat American Chinese Buffet, but we won’t complain because if there’s one thing we’ve learned about international cuisine here in Europe, is that Asian food tastes about the same everywhere we go. After dinner, we took the metro back to our hostel and stopped at the grocery store to grab a few beers to try to avoid some of the high prices of the restaurants. We then saw the sun go down at around 9:30 and enjoyed some German MTV before calling it a night.
Day 2 in Copenhagen started with us eating some breakfast that we bought at the grocery store. We then prepared for Alex’s appointment with the hair cutter that would cut about half of his hair off. Luckily for us, we noticed that the two people working in the salon spoke English very well when we made the appointment the day before. The only thing left for us to do was figure out exactly how to tell her what Alex wanted his hair to look like. We managed this by simply taking a picture with our Iphone of the perfect Euro Mullet and showing it to her. The lady cutting Alex’s hair took a quick look at it, and assured us she knew exactly what to do. Alex looked a bit nervous as the lady proceeded to cut large quantities of hair off of his head, quickly. She definitely didn’t start off slow by cutting little bits off. Well her technique worked like a charm because in 45 minutes, she had cut Alex’s hair almost exactly the guy in the picture.
Once Alex’s hair was complete, we decided to go on a tour of the Carlsberg Brewery. This turned out to be a fan favorite for all of us as we started the tour off by viewing the world’s largest beer collection (around 16,000+ different beers). Once we got through viewing that, we followed the history of beer, Carlsberg in general, and how the company has grown and the techniques for brewing have changed. We also got to see their Clydesdales (which look like Budweiser horses but are champagne colored and their tails touch the ground) in the Carlsberg stables. The entire tour was very educational and entertaining. After the tour, we got to go to the brewery’s bar and enjoy 2 free beers, which many selections were brewed there. We all enjoyed our selections and had a fun time enjoying our early afternoon.
After the brewery tour, we made our way down to a small section of Copenhagen on the south side called Christiana, free town. Free town was known for its lenient policy on drugs and political views but in 2008, new laws restricted how free, free town was. It is some small islands with canals going all along the middle of streets and has a lot of Dutch architecture. It is very beautiful. We were just walking around when all of a sudden we heard shouting and yelling and all sorts of ruckus about. Alex and David ran towards the street, as we could see riot police and crowds of what looked like Turks yelling back and forth to each other, while Brittany yelled to get back. We all felt a little uneasy when we saw tons of police running every which direction and TV cameras trying to catch all the action, as well as police pulling a rioters shirt over his head and throwing him on the ground on the same sidewalk we were viewing it from. It got a little too real at that point so we decided to bail around the block and make our way back, but we all had our first experience of civil unrest. We then took a metro back, after a tedious ordeal with the tickets, and had a pasta party for dinner inside our bomb shelter basement.
On our third day in Copenhagen, we decided to take a short 30minute train ride to Malmo Sweden for the day. Malmo ended up being a lot like Copenhagen which I guess isn’t surprising. We explored the city to its dumpy castle it bragged about in the guide book (which looked more like a medieval textile factory) as well as the lone existing windmill of 11 or 12 of the originals that were built years and years ago. After we got done exploring a bit of the older section of Malmo, we decided to go explore the newer parts. We came across a very cool square that had lots of appealing restaurants with tons of tables set up outside on a day with good weather. We then made our way through town that, like Copenhagen, had a large walking street area with its fair share of stores and shops. After we got done exploring, we went back to the restaurant square and picked the one that looked the best to us and sat down to eat. To our surprise, Malmo was a bit cheaper than Denmark. We enjoyed a delicious meal of seafood at the main square and decided to head back to Denmark. We packed up and got ready for an early train ride to Hamburg.
Pictures up!
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