another perfect day here in Copenhagen..

My day began as all good days do in Denmark-- on my bike and at Grod, a porridge restaurant in Norrebro.

With a list of flea markets to hit, my friends and I hopped between several of the city’s trendy neighborhoods, ate crepes by the scenic Nyhaven canal, and sat outside the harbor at Paper Island—an old paper warehouse turned hip food market. 

{Assistens Cemetery-- where Hans Christian Anderson is buried}

{Nyhaven}

{Paper Island}

{Paper Island food stalls built into old trucks}

In 2013, Denmark was named the world’s happiest nation. Recently, I had a conversation with one of my Danish professors about the title.  He claimed that the rating had a lot to do with the way that Danes define the word “happy”.  He suggested that they defined the term more as a profound feeling of contentment, rather than as the intermittent, manic high that we often expect from the feeling in the US.            

Today, riding around the beautiful and archaic streets of Copenhagen,with the sun shining and the company of my new friends, I can think of no better way to define the way I felt, other than with the way the Danes describe happiness-- a profound feeling of contentment. 

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,

To gain all while you give,

To roam the roads of lands remote,

To travel is to live.” 

–Hans Christian Anderson