Another week in Copenhagen

It was time to head out to Copenhagen again, for work (and hopefully a bit of fun, too!). Unlike last time (when it took me about 18 hours to get from Nice to Copenhagen!), my trip was blissfully trouble-free. I met David, who was travelling in from the UK like last time, and we got a taxi straight to the hotel.

After a rather mundane day at the office, we naturally took the bus into town for dinner (the area where our hotel was located isn’t exactly a great area for going out). This time I had the foresight to check Tripadviser for good restaurants, and we decided to go into the most highly-ranked place which didn’t seem like an over-priced gourmet restaurant. Turns out it was kind of, hmm, French. The atmosphere was, ahem, a bit romantic for two blokes on a business trip, but hey, the food was good so who cares (the bill was quite Copenhagenish though – which is to say expensive).

For Tuesday night, I decided to go to Sweden! Yes, I kid you not. As you may or may not be aware, Malmö, the biggest city in southern Skåne, is just across the Öresund straits. We crossed Öresund last year by car by the impressive bridge that spans it, but this time I decided to take the train. The plan was to meet up with Helen, a Swedish lady I knew waaaay back, in 1997, when I was an exchange student in Dublin (jeez, has it really been that long?). I got back in contact with her through Facebook (how else?). Anyways, we spent a rather pleasant evening, having drinks and dinner at one of the squares in the old town of Malmö. A wee bit chilly to be sitting on the terrace, I must say, but hey I’m Finnish right – can’t show any weakness in front of a Swede ? ;-). I even managed to avoid the taxi fare by getting back in time, and getting the last bus back to the hotel.



One of my department’s other team is actually based in Copenhagen, so we decided to meet up with them for dinner after another ”hard day at the office”. Actually it was more of a case of me and David gate-crashing their team meal (their team leader was visiting from the UK, so…). All in the name of networking – I firmly believe that trust and cooperation is earned through the socially lubricating power of alcohol. In spite of this, Simon refused our request to have “beer menus”. But, nonetheless, we had a nice meal and got to know our colleagues that little bit better, so a nice evening out all in all. We decided to take the train back to the hotel this time – which proved more challenging than expected (David had trouble successfully buying a ticket – and apparently even got charged twice…).

Thursday turned out to be a rather productive day at the office, so we were quite happy hitting town in the evening. We were happy to get a text message from Simon, inviting us to dinner again, this time at Hardrock café. This time we were joined by one of our Chinese sub-contractors, who were kind enough to pick up the bill this time. Thankfully, considering Hardrock café prices… It turned out to be quite a good night out, thanks to / in spite of (I let you pick) the Abba karaoke that was taking place. Thankfully (especially for everybody else around me), I resisted the “insistent requests” to go and sing…

Friday wrapped up a nice week – as our Danish partners had their monthly “beer and table football Friday afternoon”. Which basically involved playing table football, eating chips and peanuts, and drinking beer. Nice way to end the working week, and start the weekend . All in all, it was quite a nice week out in Copenhagen, but I was happy to return to sunny Nice!