KULTURNATTEN!: Culture Night in Copenhagen

October 12th was Kulturnatten in Copenhagen - the 20th year that some 250 museums. theaters, libraries, churches, clubs and select businesses across the city have opened their doors to public from 5PM to midnight (or later).  Admission is 90 Danish crowns ( or $15.83 at today's exchange rate) for adults, and free for children. For that price you get a button to wear, a 96 page brochure describing the 970 different "experiences" offered within greater Copenhagen, and a ticket to use until the end of the month for free admission at certain participating museums. Also a free ride on all forms of public transportation all night - even if you are travelling from well outside the city. (In English, see http://www.kulturnatten.dk/en/culture-night)

Kulturnatten is held on the Friday evening before the fall break for all school students, so it kicks off a  week of family activities in town and is terrific advertising for all the amazing museums and cultural sites in Copenhagen.

Fifteen years ago, we had a memorable time with our (then small) children on Kulturnatten, so knew to plan around it. An artist friend from the US was invited to come on that specific weekend, and I read through most of the brochure to come up with a good walking plan. There is so much in central Copenhagen, especially around the Parliament and City Hall, that I have to admit just glancing over the offerings in non-central neighborhoods. Nonetheless, I think we did an admirable job.

Here is what we did, with some asides on things we didn't do.

Copenhagen sky on Kulturnatten 2012, as seen from the Opera House.

It was a cold but dry night with an amazing sky full of cirrus clouds. We took the harbor bus from Nyhavn over to the Opera House at around 4:30, just to get around to the other side of the harbor in a fun way. We peeked into to the windows at the mammoth chandeliers, but did not attend the "sing with the stars" events hosted later on at the Opera House.

From the Opera House, we walked over to the Royal Danish Art Academy/ Schools for Architecture, design and Conservation, and saw an amazing collection of advanced student projects laid out in a big salon, with kids' workshop tables in an adjacent room. I have stopped in here a few times over the years, and there is always high-quality works on view. Memorable displays this time included: a grid of ceramic mushrooms with glaze experiments adorning the hoods; an elegant glass with a wooden bowl fitted to its bottom, forming a sleeve for hot drinks or a bowl for peanuts if you put something else in the glass; a colorful sofa whose modular pillows could be reassembled a dozen ways to make a dozen different sofas; and a remarkable fashion collection that seemed to be made of cut and cleverly braided combinations of industrial fabrics and silk.

Next up was a boat tour of new architecture on the harbor, hosted by the Danish Architecture Center (DAC). The tour was in Danish, so the instruction was lost on my friend, but it was a beautiful time of day (6PM) to see the buildings as the lights came on as well as the many other boats on the harbor.

DAC Harbor tour with Bryggebro (bridge) and Allerhuset (R) lit up.

One activity we witnessed from the boat was "winter bathing" at the Harbor Baths in Islands Brygge - that is, folks in bikinis and bathing suits jumping into the harbor water from a floating dock. Mind you, it was probably 45 degrees at this point and the water was considerably colder, so this was an offering we did not do. Even though it apparently included a sauna.

Once back, we toured the excellent architectural model show in the DAC gallery and took in the related family art projects upstairs. Kids and their parents were building models from dry reeds and pipe-cleaners, cutting bicycle inner tubes and tying them into a webbed city, and building towers with oblong clay bricks and cedar blocks.

Creative kids' activities at DAC, Kulturnatten 2012

After DAC, we walked across the bridge from Christianhavn into the Slotsholmen section of the city which by now was abuzz with bonfires and live music and light shows playing on the facades of many buildings. Right away a pair of friendly greeters invited us into the building(s) housing the Ministries of the Environment, Foodstuffs, Land-use and Fisheries ( which had not been on the list), but which had really interesting informational displays. One display was about how many resources are expended to produce 1 kg of different foods; rice is easy on the planet, butter not so easy. Of particular note was a set of photos showing families from countries around the world - USA, Germany, Egypt, Japan, Peru - posed in front of one week's worth of food. The American family had pizzas and frozen Hot Pockets and all manner of bad food arrayed before them, and we took objection to it, which seemed to amuse some of our Danish co-viewers. Also at this stop we got big colorful bags with partitions for sorting recycling for FREE!

Next up we kinda wandered around the Stock Exchange and Parliament Buildings, where there were all sorts of medieval-style cloth tents selling beer and wine and hearty food. There were long lines to get into Borsen, the old Stock Exchange building with the dragon tail spire, and the longest line was to get into Parliament, where apparently the politicians were on hand to meet and greet. These are things we did not do, Although my Danish husband committed a chunk of his evening waiting on line for tour of the Finance Ministry, which is housed in the oldest administrative building in the city (1715-21) and only open to the public on Kulutrnatten.

Bonfire and culture-hounds on Slotsholmen

What we did do was to drop in on the Tojhusmuseet (Military Museum), which was in between jousting exhibitions, but still a good spot to buy a miniature trebuchet. (Such a great word and perfect for launching small objects over your carrel walls and onto your co-workers). Also checked out the Royal Stables and said hi to the majestic grey Czech horses that pull the royal carriages on ceremonial events. The stalls are built with real marble and faux marbre pillars. Some of the carriages were on view as well, and we saw young women soldiers shovelling royal horse manure.

Royal Stables at Christiansborg 

By now, we were in need of serious refreshment, so we made a serious stop at Kanalcafeen for Danish smorrebrod, beer and snaps. This is a classic cellar restaurant where a lot of politicians meet and greet (and leave a picture on the wall). I have been wanting to visit this restaurant since Sarah Lund ate here in the first season the Danish TV series, the Killing (Forbrydelsen).

Fortified, we pushed on to the National Museum, where a Plains Indian Pow Wow was in progress. Again, I felt slightly embarassed about how Americans are presented to Danish society. I'm pretty sure that a real pow wow is a very serious and sacred thing. There were many 20 "Indians" in full regalia pulling visitors into a dance ring, but maybe 2-3 looked like they had any Indian blood and the rest looked like the type of folks who are into Civil War enactments and volunteer to dress in colonial garb at your local historical society. All fine activities, but not enough to hold us for long on Kulturnatten.

Pow Wow in the foyer of the National Museum

Next up was the Danish Design Center, which was totally packed and between sets of live jazz music. It was too confusing a scene to look at the exhibition, but I did get a bargain (just 50 kroner!) on a really good book about Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, and a few more of their free postcards.

We proceeded through the busy, music-filled streets to the Copenhagen Firestation, which is a very interesting old building that looks like a medieval Italian fortress. In the courtyard, they had firetrucks and equipment on view. Little boys were sitting behind the wheels of the big trucks while their dads checked out the cool tools and chatted up the firemen.

And on to Copenhagen Cityhall, where the floor of the grand salon was covered with an enormous Tyvek aerial map of the city. As we walked in, friendly greeters gave us a little red sticker that read "We live here" and we searched the map to find our street. This was a fun way to look at the city and involved a lot of bumping into all the other people who were walking around with their heads down.

Oversized aerial map of Copenhagen and my sneakers.

All around the perimeter of the room there were booths set up for all the different offices that make up the Copenhagen Municipality. The Copenhagen Cykel Forbund  was giving out bicycle route maps of the city. Also stopped at the booth for the city's parks, where I got a map of all the playgrounds in the city.

We made one last stop at the little gift shop just inside the door of City Hall, where we had earlier picked up free gift paper with the logo of the city. This place is a real find and has very inexpensive and well-designed wares like messenger bags and umbrellas and water bottles with the city logo. Also free maps and tourist info.

It was getting on 11:30 so we headed out for one last stop at Rundetaarn. For some reason, I decided against walking down the main pedestrian street, Stroget, and chose instead the roughly parallel street, Studiestraede. Here my friend got a full view of Copenhagen youth standing in line for bars while barfing into the shrubbery and picking fights with each other. Not a pretty sight for a mom like me, whose just-turned-18-years-old daughter was at large in the city that evening, but a memorable scene nonetheless. We did not select any bars along this route for our last beer of the evening.

By the time we got to Rundetaarn they were just closing the doors, but our final eyeful of Kulturnatten was the wonderful lightshow playing on the walls of the observatory. This picture doesn't do it justice, but you will have to take my word for it that it was on a par with the evening as a whole.

Light show on the walls of Rundetaarn,  Christian IV's observatory tower.