It’s been about 10 days since I came back from Denmark.
My return flight was through Zürich, so I went for the 2nd time downtown, where I visited ETH and University of Zürich and I had a coffee at the very nice Cafe Zähringer.
Following are some facts about Denmark and Copenhagen.
One of the most interesting things in Denmark is the love of Danish people for the bicycle.
You can see literally hundreds of thousands of bikes in Copenhagen and the rest of Denmark.
Bike lanes are everywhere, and Copenhagen is flat, so the best option for small-medium distances traveling is the bike. There is a cultural tendency towards stealing bikes. Everybody lock their bike with an interesting mechanism that only blocks the rare wheel, since you want to avoid people using your bike, but nobody is going to take it and sell it. So you shouldn’t leave your bike unlocked at anytime since there is a good chance that a drunk guy will make his ride home easier with it. From time to time, and if you are lucky, you can find the “free bikes”. These are bikes that are locked in various places around Copenhagen (that no local knows where they are 
) and you can use them with 20 Kroner which you get back when you return the bike. However, they are really crappy and rare, so you don’t want to count on them to go home.
Apart from this, Copenhagen has a really extended network of train, metro and bus which can get you everywhere. It is fast, clean but (at least for my standards) super expensive. Each ride costs about 30-50 Kroner (4-7 Euro), however you can use special tickets that can bring the cost down to about the half.
Since we are talking about the cost of living in Denmark, I should mention that most things are more expensive than other countries (about 1.5 – 2 times the prices in Athens) but the salaries are much higher.
This is a rough estimation, but most of the people make more than 2000 Euros per month, while the basic salary in Greece is about 650-700 Euros. It is interesting that the taxes there range from 48% to 60% and the VAT is 25%. This is reflected to the quality of life and the public services there, but it still sounds high.
Another interesting fact is the tax applied to the car ownership.
When you buy a car, you have to pay about twice the price of it as a tax. This means that if you buy a car costing 20.000 Euros, you will pay 60.000 in total. However you can still find a lot of cars in Copenhagen.
The food in Denmark is absolutely great. They have some super tasty breads and cheese, and nice wine.
People there know how to eat well, but you can still find hot dogs at a pølsevogn, Smørrebrød (Danish open sandwich) and falafel almost everywhere.
You can find my photos from Copenhagen, here.
Things to do in Copenhagen (and around)
This is a not-exhaustive list of things to do.
1) Go to Christiania (talk to people, walk around and see the houses – not only the Pusher Street and the cafes).
2) Walk down Strøget (the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe).
3) Go to Tivoli Gardens (amusement park – didn’t try it).
4) Hang out at the peaceful garden of the Decoration Art Museum.
5) DO NOT visit the little mermaid. It just sucks. But I know you will, everybody does!
But you should also visit the very nice fountain near the mermaid, with the 3 bulls. This is impressive.
6) Go to Sweden (either to Helsingborg with the boat or to Malmö by train)
7) Visit the Karlsberg brewery.
8 ) Visit the areas near Copenhagen (e.g. Dyrrehaven & Baken, some parts of the beach, the lake of Lyngby and so many others).
I will end my stories from Denmark, with this representation of the Petersen graph (the smallest bridgeless cubic graph with no three-edge-coloring), discovered by the prominent Danish mathematician Julius Petersen
