I immediately described the city as “quaint”, with the windmills in the ocean as we were flying in, the brightly-painted apartments lining the cobblestone streets, and the narrow roads filled only with small cars. However, due to my limited knowledge of Europe, I was unable to determine if the quaintness came from my familiarity with countries like Thailand or an actual quality that Europe, in general, possessed. Luckily, Karl and I took a trip to Berlin and I was able to sort it all out.
My conclusion: Copenhagen= quaint; Berlin= historic.
While it may sound like either these two things are basically the same or they don’t have anything to do with each other at all and can’t be used as contrasting adjectives, describing the two cities in this way has let me wrap my mind around how Western Europe as a whole is so different than Southeast Asia (where the majority of my exotic traveling perspective has come from so far).
Copenhagen and Berlin are both filled with beautiful, old buildings that are used for everything from museums to apartments to grocery stores. However, where Berlin proudly displays all of the flags of the city, region, country, and a few other things outside of these buildings to exhibit a nationalism that can only be explained by decades of history, Denmark plops only the Danish flag everywhere it can find an empty space merely because Danes like the novelty of the decoration.
Copenhagen is a small “big city”, where Metro rides take only a few minutes and each neighborhood looks more or less like the surrounding neighborhoods. Berlin, on the other hand, has a vast Metro system that will take you from the wealthy business districts to the alternative neighborhoods and back again over the course of 20 minutes, while only actually traversing less than half of the city.
The closest you’ll find to a park in Copenhagen, because it is a fairly small, condensed city, is an ice skating rink right in the middle of a busy intersection. Nevertheless, with Christmas lights filling the trees and the glow from the streetlights illuminating the skaters, you feel like you’re in a Hallmark Christmas special. Meanwhile, Berlin is filled with vast parks, with war memorials scattered around the area (don’t miss Treptower Park if you ever get to Berlin).
The big clincher of this theory, however, is this: Denmark has hearts, of all things, all over its coin money. Berlin is almost entirely covered in graffiti that is, if not encouraged, at least clearly accepted in the city. A better contrast, for a first-time Europe visitor, could not be found.
-Luthien
Posted by luthienlee 
