Copenhagen - Langelinie Water Front

Just after check in, I thought that I would explore my surroundings. I discovered that the back entrance was leading right onto the water front. And what a grand sight it was. There were two schooners docked right there. The water in the harbour was clean with no oil slicks or junk floating around. The opera house on the opposite side looked grand. I just walked along the broad wharf admiring the boats. I was greeted by friendly joggers or cyclists.

Suddenly, I came upon a small park with fountains, interesting vegetation and sculptures. This park is known as Amaliehaven, a small park located between Amalienborg palace and the waterfront. A relatively new park, it was established in 1983 as a gift from the A.P.Moller  and the Chastine McKinney Møller Foundation. Amaliehaven is a rectangular park built to a stringent, symmetrical design centred on a large fountain to respect and accentuate the Fredriksgade axis which unifies the entire area. On both sides of the central fountain, the gardens continue on two levels, with shrubs and walls enclosing it from the waterfront on one side and the street on the other. The garden abounds with different varieties of plants and fragrant flowers whose colours and natural shapes creates a contrast to the geometrical layout of the park. Japanese cherry tress, blooming in April, plays a particularly distinctive role among the parks vegetation. The Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro has created various sculptures for the park, including four large abstract columns and two sun-like water features which from each their end of the park sprinkle it with their jets of water.

As I walked along I could appreciate the Fredricksgade axis, with the Fredrick (marble) church and the Amalienborg palaces at one end and culminating in the newly built opera house across the waters. It was all so symmetrical.

The Gefion Fountain is a large fountain on the harbour front ,in a corner of Churchillparken. It is one of the largest monuments in Copenhagen. The sculptures were created by Anders Bundgaard (1864-1937) - featuring a large group of naturalistic strong oxen’s pulling the plough of legendary Norse goddess Gefion. Gefion Fountain was donated by the Carlsberg Foundation as a gift to the city on the occasion of the Carlsberg brewery’s 50 year anniversary in 1897. The entire fountain with the basins and sculptors were completed and revealed in 1908 to the public. 

According to an ancient legend, Gefion was the goddess who ploughed the island of Zealand out of Sweden. The Swedish king Gylfe offered the goddess Gefion as much land as she was capable of ploughing within one day and one night. She transformed her four sons into immensely powerful oxen and had them plough so deeply in the ground that they raised the land and pulled it into the sea. This is how the island of Zealand was created. The lake Vännern in Sweden approximately resembles the shape of Zealand, proving that there must be some truth in the story. The fountain underwent extensive renovations starting in 1999. The fountain was out of commission for many years, and was re-inaugurated in September 2004.

Next to the Gefion fountain is St. Alban's Church, locally often referred to simply as the English Church, an Anglican church in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was built from 1885 to 1887 for the growing English congregation in the city. St. Alban's Church is designed as a traditional English church by Arthur Blomfield who also designed a number of parish churches around Britain and received the  Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal in 1891.

The Little Mermaid (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a bronze statue by Edvard Eriksen, depicting a mermaid. The sculpture is displayed on a rock by the waterside at the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen, Denmark.[a] It has a height of 1.25 metres (4.1 ft)[2] and weighs 175 kilograms (385 lb).[3]
Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and has been a major tourist attraction since 1913. In recent decades it has become a popular target for defacement by vandals and political activists. The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the ballerina, Ellen Price, to model for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. The statue's head was modelled after Price, but as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor's wife, Eline Eriksen, was used for the body.  

The Copenhagen City Council decided to move the statue to Shanghai at the Danish Pavilion for the duration of the Expo 2010 (May to October), the first time it had been moved from its perch since it was installed almost a century earlier.

This statue has been damaged and defaced  many times since the mid-1960s for various reasons, but has each time been restored. In 2006, Copenhagen officials announced that the statue may be moved farther out in the harbour, so as to avoid further vandalism and to prevent tourists from climbing onto it.
On April 24, 1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the situationist movement. The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue. On July 22, 1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men.In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left a cut in the neck 18 centimeters (7 in) deep.
On January 6, 1998, the statue was decapitated again; the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby TV station, and re-attached on February 4. On the night of September 10, 2003, the statue was knocked off its base with explosives and later found in the harbor's waters. Holes were blasted in the mermaid's wrist and knee.
In 2004, she was draped in a burqa as a statement against Turkey joining the European Union. In May 2007, she was again found draped in a Muslim dress and head scarf.
Paint has been poured on the statue several times, including one episode in 1963 and two in March and May 2007. On March 8, 2006, a dildo was attached to the statue's hand, green paint was dumped over it, and the words March 8 were written on it. It is suspected that this vandalism was connected with International Women's day, which is on March 8


For more photographs of Langelinie water front
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118371169888441072879/albums/5925389911835176433

The Admiral Hotel at Copenhagen, Denmark

I have always had a fascination for Scandinavia and always dreamt of visiting those countries, and unexpectedly, the chance popped out of the blue. I was included in a delegation to visit copenhagen in a professional capacity in the first week of September.

We landed in Copenhagen at mid afternoon and the weather was bright and sunny. We transferred to Admiral Hotel on the waterfront. At first sight the exterior didnt look like any other hotel. It was made up of drab bricks with tiny windows. The lobby held a very large model of a viking ship encased in glass. The reception area was narrow with wooden pillars and exposed beams along its entire length. We were then told that this very building was 200 hundred years old and it was a granary which was converted into a star hotel. The building has been awarded the Europe Nostra award for its contribution to the preservation of cultural heritage. This was one of the first indications of the importance given to the preservation of past culture in the entire city. Later as we moved around the city, I found that most of the buildings were from the 18th century. There was not a single skyscraper. There wasn't a single building beyond three floors. I found hundreds of cyclists at any given point of time. Young or old everybody were cycling. I felt that I had gone back in time. The only indication that we were in the 21st century was when I spotted some sleek BMW's and Mercedes Benz cabs. I didnt encounter a single traffic jam. I just fell in love with Copenhagen. People too were happy and laid back. Nobody seemed to be stressed out. Apart from the cyclists everybody seemed to be exercising- jogging or cycling. I didnt encounter a single obese person during my entire stay in Denmark. Amazing.

In the 18th century the Admiral hotel happened to be a warehouse, storing thousands of barrels of grain. The warehouse was originally built as a granary for the trading company Pingel, Meyer, Prætorius & Co.in 1787 and, thanks to its architectural beauty, the building bears witness to the wealth generated by late 18th century trade. The warehouse started life at the time when all shipping was under sail. In those days, the harbour was a hive of bustling activity and the warehouse was a focal point for the shipping trade, not only to other parts of Denmark but to the danish colonies and the rest of the world. On April 2nd 1801, the Danish and English fleets fought the renowned war "Battle of Copenhagen" right outside the warehouse windows. Anyone who had sought shelter behind the massive warehouse walls might have witnessed the admiral putting his telescope to his blind eye in order to avoid acknowledging his commander's permission to withdraw. On September 3rd 1807, the wings of history passed over the warehouse once again. During the second Battle of Copenhagen, a huge English fleet besieged Copenhagen and bombarded the city. While cannon fire flew over the warehouse, the streets filled with the homeless, the wounded and the dying. What is now the hotel's lounge and where the old grain drying oven once stood, was then used to provide shelter for the many wounded. In the days when the warehouse was a granary, up to 30.000 barrels of grain could be stored and a grain drying oven was commissioned by and installed for the monarch. The warehouse was originally two separate buildings, which were connected by a mid-section at the end of the 19th century. The building was acquired by private investors in 1973 for redevelopment as a hotel. The architects Flemming Hertz and Ole Ramsgaard Thomsen undertook the conversion which was rewarded with an Nostra diploma from the Eu. The hotel opened its foors in January 1978. It was refurbished in 2004