When you see Copenhagen postcards, a calendar featuring Copenhagen or Denmark, or pick up a guidebook dealing with the place there is a strong likelihood that you will see one of only three pictures. That’s a shame because there is so much beauty here. I particularly like the brick buildings and architecture of which you’ll see much more of here on this blog during the next few weeks.

For today, we’ll quickly move you through the three postcard shots, with a minor twist. The twist is that you’ll see these postcard shots with people and/or from a slightly different angle.

The above is Stroget, a street almost a mile long that is only for pedestrians. There are actually many shopping streets that run parallel or almost parallel to Stroget that have little, if any, automobile traffic as well. The typical photograph of Stroget (actually Strøget) is early in the morning with little, or no, foot traffic or bikes. The reality is that there are usually lots of bikes and people on Stroget. Also, the normal camera angle is from further to the right and elevated. I think they take that shot from above a restaurant that you can’t see in the above picture that I took.

I have a mini tripod, but I don’t use it much. Therefore, we usually only get family portraits when someone sees me taking a picture of the rest of my family and offers to take our picture. So far no Dane has offered to do so. When I was taking a picture of my wife and kids a student from Singapore (from Copenhagen Business School where I am teaching) offered to take the above shot. Nyhavn is the place that our friends from Norway that we met at the White House said we should not miss. They were right. Nyhavn is a very picturesque harbor/canal that we enjoyed.

The most popular picture in Denmark, though, is the one I’ve saved for last.

There she is–The Little Mermaid. This isn’t how you usually see her though. Every photo I have seen of her has been from the land. The above picture I took from our boat so you get more of her backside, and you can see what is going on on the land (tourists photographing her). You only see the two guys in this picture, but there were actually about 30 or 40 people on the land taking her picture. She really isn’t that spectacular and isn’t worth the trip on land. You’ll end up with nothing but the same picture that can be downloaded off of a million sites on the internet. There is nothing else to see or do at The Little Mermaid statue location.

And there you have it–three postcards from Copenhagen. We saved a bundle on stamps and real postcards doing it this way. Actually, we just sent off several real postcards. If you made Ellie’s short list then you can expect it to arrive in the next few days.

Posted on July 10th, 2008 under Denmark • Tags: copenhagen, hans christian andersen, little mermaid, nyhavn, pictures, stroget. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed