Tivoli Park in Kobenhavn (1) - Sept 23

One of my Danish colleagues at school has a part-time job at Tivoli and was kind enough to give me two free passes to enter this amusement park located in the center of downtown Copenhagen. Tivoli is named after the Jardin de Tivoli in Paris, which is named after the place called Tivoli in Italy just outside of Rome. Not sure how an amusement park in anyway resembles an old palace with lots of fountains (like the one outside of Rome where I have visited) but that's where wikipedia said the name comes from...

When I visited my friend Kata here nearly 7 years ago we went to the park but I thought it would be fun to go again anyway. A German woman who I met here recently at a Peace Studies conference joined me. We strolled around for a bit before settling down at a restaurant/bar on the water. We were at one of the places on the right in this picture.















Like many parks Tivoli attempts to bring together a mish-mash of different cultures with some buildings having arabic style and some (like this one) displaying an Asian flair. I haven't seen a pagoda since leaving Japan. This part of the park with its architecture and kanji (Chinese script) written everywhere made me natsukashii (nostalgic) for Japan and the life I had in Tokyo.

















Since this is an amusement part there are of coruse rides. I just liked the look of this picture, though didn't get on this ride.






















Natalie and I only bought tickets for one ride (entrance fee and tickets to board rides are seperate fees and like EVERYTHING in Denmark the tickets to get on the more interesting rides is also pricey from $8-$12 per ride!), the oldest one in the park. This rollercoaster was built in 1914 and is controlled by a human being (now thats strange) who manages the brakes, like this guys does.















We were hoping to get on his train (coaster) because we figured he is older and responsible (yes we were being age-ist). Instead we got a young guy - but he did great - we lived to tell this tale after all!