A three-week insider’s guide to Copenhagen: Food, vintage, events, and transport in the city

Transport

The first thing I can recommend for you to do in Copenhagen is get a bike. You might be intimidated at first when you see rush hour bike traffic, but once you give biking a try, the city becomes far more accessible as a whole.

Faster than walking, driving, or using the metro, biking through the city quickly feels normal and easy. You still very well might fall at some point, or swerve a little more than you otherwise would want to, but if disaster strikes (which it has a couple times already for me) the locals have always stopped to help me or my friends back up and riding. Of course, always wear your helmet!

Pro tip: DIS is paired with a company called ABC bikes which offers student discounts per session and has parent/guest rentals for free for up to a week.

The metro is also a SHOCKINGLY great option. Every station and bus I have been in has been clean, quiet, efficient, easy to understand, and generally a great experience at all hours of the day. Although the metro and buses run 24/7, do be aware that past 12 many of the transit rails slow down and you might be waiting for longer than you would during the day.

Pro tip: Although you get a commuter card through DIS to use the metro for the entirety of your session, be aware that if you bring your bike onto the metro, you MUST buy an additional bike ticket using the DSB app for that bike, or else you will be met with a hefty fine (My friend Ava learned this the hard way so you don’t have to). 

Food and café culture

Copenhagen is synonymous with its food culture. A culture they are rightly very proud of. Although dining out in Copenhagen can be pricey, the Copenhagen food scene is especially unique, with Noma’s influence bringing the best chefs in the world to this one city. Because everywhere seems to just be so good, there are no distinct agreed-upon favorites in the city. However, here are a couple of mine!

• Reffen: As soon as you get to Copenhagen, someone will mention Reffen. A food market the size of an amusement park, Reffen has every type of cuisine, music, bar, and activity you could think of. Plan on spending a day there and the surrounding neighborhood, which includes rock climbing, contemporary art, and the Noma gardens which you are free to walk throughout!

• La Banchina
• Et Cetera
• Fabro
• Ch’o Fame
• Broens Gadekoekken
• Surt
• Poulette
• Hooked
• Beit Salma
• Doomsday Deli
• Ismageriet Ice cream
• StudioXKitchen
• Nihao Yao
• Barr
• Warpigs
• Selma
• Hidden Dim sum

Cafés:

• Lido: A small and brand new japanese-scandi café that I feel happy to call myself a regular of. Lido opened about a week ago… I have been 4 times.
• Apotek 57
• Ø12
• The Living Room (has a DIS discount)
• Lille Bakery
• Atelier September
• Hart
• Juno
• Andersen and Maillard
• Packhouse
• Prolog coffee
• Lille petra café
• Sonny

Shopping:

Vintage: The vintage scene in Copenhagen is highly curated, with trendier neighborhoods like Nørrebro and Fredriksberg hosting hubs of vintage shops and boutiques. Massive flea markets happen most summer weekends, so be sure to keep an eye on smaller pop-up events across the city. Copenhageners love Facebook, so you can often find events posted there!

• Thrift Planet: Just a 2-minute walk from the DIS student hub, I visit Thrift Planet more often than I go out to eat. Everything in the store is entirely sourced from Berlin or Milan, and is restocked daily.
• Chamoi
• Keiko
• Pattern 26
• Paloma Vintage
• The Krypt
• BauBau
• Wilen
• Goods
• Jerome
• O-S-V
• Crush
• Wilde
• Kabomani

New: Copenhagen is full of boutiques, designers, and creatives, so there’s no shock the shopping scene is great. The longest shopping street in the world actually lies in central Copenhagen, where high-end fashion lives at malls like Illum (Take a break on their 4th floor rooftop café), furniture design and décor sourced from one of hundreds of showrooms like Frama’s across the city, and perfume staples like Le Labo or small boutiques like Crime Passionel make the city a very hard one to not spend money in.

• Hay House
• Illum
• Naked
• Storm
• Ganni postmodern
• Frama
• Mads Nørgaard
• New Mags
• Crime Passionel
• Le Labo
• Studio Stars
• Lagune
• Fritz Hansen
• Linie
• Art and Frame

Events and activities:

When it comes to finding events in Copenhagen, the main way that I have interacted with the city is through the posters plastered across city streets. I have gone to film screenings, concerts, and gallery events through paying attention to the posters. All the different activites and events happening are one of the greatest advantage to being here in the summer.

Although some highlighted events are annual, others are permanent staples of Copenhagen’s cultural landscape. If you’re interested in museum-hopping at all, try to look at which are free on Wednesdays, which offer student passes, and other budget-friendly hacks.

• 3days of design: A design lover’s dream. Over a hundred free installations and exhibits pop up across the city from the top design firms in the world. Free design books, tote bags, food, and drink are typically provided per exhibit
• Distortion: A free street music festival, different stages pop up across different neighborhoods of the city
• Cinemateket film series with the Danish film institute: everything from post-portugese-revolution horror to the Oceans’ Eleven trilogy can be found in their series, with special events like Pitch Black Playback album listening parties or knitting cinema events happening every month
• Goboat
• Kayak the canal with Kayak bar: Kayak bar offers a free kayak rental in exchange for your time helping clean up the canal
• The Contemporary Art Center
• The Black diamond
• The Louisiana museum
• Gront farmers market
• F.C København games
• The Botanical gardens
• Live music: check for shows at venues like Vega or festivals like Roskilde, Syd for Solen, or the Copenhagen Jazz festival

My type-A guide to the city

Before arriving in Copenhagen, I went through hundreds of lists, posts, and travel accounts to prepare myself with a giant curation of possibility in the city. Although I don’t think I could visit every market spot even in my few months here, I linked it below! Otherwise, some blogs I love are Scandinavian Standard (their monthly events calendars are particularly helpful), Nordic Nomad, Monocle, and Wordofmouth.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1kQmGOsFSEv6kogUuGW9cGlYIptU91Ko&usp=sharing