On to Scandinavia

Leg #8, Prague to Copenhagen. Still clutching her Krtek, Tessie made it through airport security. More helpful and less obnoxious than their American counterparts (but, apparently, equally effective), European airport security personnel were, on the whole, very attentive to the needs of parents with small children. Water-filled sippy cups did not need to be dumped out, as was once required of us on a US domestic flight; I was allowed to carry Tessie through the metal detector without hassle; and security actually verified that Tessie's Mom was Tessie's Mom when she tried to pick her up after I had brought her through. The whole security procedure was still an onerous bottleneck, but at least these people were professional about it, not like the minimum-wage contract employees the TSA uses in the US.

Tessie had some excess energy to burn off before the flight, so she and Hannah took multiple elevator rides:



The flight, on a real, full size jet (737) was an hour and a half of uneventful travel, during which Tessie played with her stickers and books and was on the ground again before she knew it. (Airline: Czech. Freebie: plastic airplane)

Having flown through Copenhagen on our way to Slovakia, we were familiar with the airport, and knew how to get to our next destination, the hotel DGI-Byen, which is just south of the main train station. In Copenhagen, as in other sensible cities, it is quite simple to take a train from the airport to downtown. (In Los Angeles, by contrast, to get from downtown to the airport, one must switch trains twice, Red Line to Blue Line to Green Line, then take a bus from the last stop on the Green Line because it stops a mile or two short of the airport. No, I can't explain the logic behind that, because there isn't any.)

So carrying what felt like all of our worldly possessions, we boarded the train for the ten-minute jaunt to the Hovedbanegården, or Central Train Station in Copenhagen. We had in total eleven items which we frequently counted. Hannah had:

1. Tessie
2. Krtek
3. the stroller
4. the backpack diaper bag
5. her purse

while I had:

1. a big rolling suitcase
2. a small rolling suitcase
3. a garment bag (full of wedding clothes)
4. a camera bag
5. a laptop computer bag
6. a small black pouch with tickets, passports and other vital necessities like snacks.

We really do need to learn to travel lighter, but it's not so easy with a toddler!

We checked in to the hotel and went up to our room, ready to collapse. The hotel is built around a complex of swimming pools so extensive it's difficult to tell if this is a hotel with pools or pools with a hotel. It does seem to attract a clientele based on the swimming alone; this is not a surprise since its other aspects wouldn't immediately recommend it. The room, and the corridor leading to it, were reminiscent of my first-year dorm, and they looked as though they saw a vacuum cleaner on approximately the same schedule as my dorm room had. We would certainly make use of the pools, but after just checking in and getting squared away in the room we decided to head back out into the city to find dinner.

What we found is that Copenhagen is frightfully expensive. We walked the Stroget, peeking into restaurants as we walked. We would read the curbside menus, do some quick mental figuring, and then move one, hoping to discover something more budget-friendly. We discovered that the cheapest meal option we could find were hot dogs (or pølser) from sidewalk stands on seemingly every street corner. Even these were no bargain at 22-26 Dk each. (1 Dk = ~$0.20, so that's about five bucks per hot dog.) We had one each - Tessie really likes hot dogs - and went back to our rather spartan hotel room for the night.