Actually, it's impossible to find a "cheap" bed because I've found that you can't find anything in Copenhagen that isn't relatively expensive. I'm sure you've heard of the Economist's famous "Big Mac index" which charts the price of a Big Mac in various countries as a way of comparing relative costs in a country. Not surprisingly, Switzerland and Denmark are at the top, followed by Sweden and England. This exactly correlates with my perceived ranking of the most expensive countries. (BTW, Japan has a relatively low Big Mac ranking because the yen is undervalued against the dollar while all of the above currencies, plus the euro, are all overvalued.)

This might help explain how I got stuck in one of those horrible "sleep-ins". This is a concept with sado masochist implications. Here, an old gymnasium was stacked with hundreds of bunk beds. It's only open in the summer (I was there until it's last open day) and they pack them in like farm animals. Indeed, it smells like a zoo, a very smoky zoo actually. There are only a handful of toilets. The acoustics are amazing -- every footfall, late-night conversation, snore or burst of flatulence is plainly heard. Rickety beds creak with every movement and the upper bunk mattress sags down almost to your nose. It's truly dismal. Only the very drunk, insanely tired, or all-too-road-hardened traveler can find any rest here.

Bad nights aside, Copenhagen is a lovely city, great for strolling and with plenty to see. I do my usual tour of museums and botanic garden -- another excellent national museum that requires two trips; a good but not outstanding National Gallery, the better art choice being the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The Carlsberg brewery is well worth a visit and the bar at the end seems to be something of a hangout. Tivoli is good for a stroll but you'd be foolish to spend money there. I wound up going through two Copenhagen museum cards and I believe I saw everything on it in the area, including goofy things like the Worker's Museum and the Wax Museum. I even went to the zoo and aquarium.

Many people are disappointed by the tiny Little Mermaid statue, but I think it's charming. Not long after I left here, some vandals dynamited the statue into the ocean, but it's been fished out and put back in place. I had a perfect sunny week during my stay and spent as much time outside as in. Cute buildings, lovely waterfront, now if only I could find a way to teleport here while sleeping somewhere else... .