Cryptic Meg

Last year, I went to the Movement Disorders conference in Madrid, to present my PhD work as a poster. This year I took a poster to the same conference which was being held in Copenhagen, and I took Nicholas with me!

Sunday

We set off for the train station with a little trepidation, as there had been strikes the previous day, and we didn’t have a lot of wiggle room if there was hangover disruption… Fortunately our train arrived on time (it got later as we went along, but thankfully only by half an hour), and so we arrived at Gatwick with plenty of time to spare. We then had a slightly disastrous experience at an airport restaurant – the food took so ridiculously long to arrive that we had to shovel it into a takeaway box and rush off to our gate! Then our flight was delayed… So it wasn’t a stress-free journey, but we made it to Copenhagen (albeit in a thunderstorm), where we were only a short train ride and walk away from our hotel. (I had economised and got us a room with bunk beds!!)

Monday

On Monday morning I left Nicholas to his own devices (which turned out to be exploring nearby wetlands and riding on lots of trains), while I went to the conference. I explored the venue, attended the presidential lectures, and met my supervisor for a chat.

In the afternoon I reconvened with Nicholas for some exploring of Copenhagen! My goodness, what a great city (with great public transport!). We got the metro into the city centre, where we popped out at the City Hall Square.

Then we went to the Museum of Copenhagen, to educate ourselves about the city (and where I saw a quote which reminded me of academic peer review!).

After that we went to Copenhagen’s cathedral: the Church of Our Lady. This has been a church with a lot of iterations (mainly due to fires) – this latest version is from the 19th century.

Next up was one of my favourite places we went to: the Round Tower. This is a 17th century observatory tower with the most incredible walkway winding up the inside, and great views from the top. It’s so unusual and striking – I loved it.

Next up was the moated Citadel, where we had an ice cream, warily passed the armed guards, and I admired the ADORABLE Danish postboxes!

Then it was a walk along the waterfront, where we found the famous Little Mermaid statue (the only thing I knew about the city before we went). I didn’t realise how small and close to land she is! Based on the tale by Hans Christian Andersen, she was unveiled in 1913 and has become a national symbol. (As such she has become a target for vandals, and has even been decapitated twice! One time they couldn’t find her head so she had to have a new one…)

We needed to get back into the city centre for dinner, so we went via Frederik’s Church (known colloquially as the Marble Church, for obvious reasons!). Much prettier than the cathedral…

For dinner we met up with Nicholas’ cousin and family, who live in Copenhagen. It was so great to see them, and we spent a lot of time enthusing about the city! They took us to Broens Gadekøkken – a fantastic street food place (which was so good, we would return every night). We passed through Nyhavn – a beautiful area of Copenhagen with brightly-coloured buildings.

Tuesday

I knew I was going to have a very full, very relevant day at the conference on Wednesday, so I took Tuesday as my main exploring day. (I know we’d already managed a lot on the Monday afternoon, but there’s so much to see in Copenhagen!) First we went to the Botanic Gardens and the Palm House, where there was a particularly impressive butterfly room. My favourites were the glass-winged butterflies.

After that we headed to the 17th century Rosenborg Castle where the Crown Jewels are kept. It was pretty unbearably busy – not my favourite thing we did…

Our lunch consisted of Danish pastries (delicious), before we headed off to do a canal tour, which was excellent! We got to hear lots of interesting information about Copenhagen, and saw the freetown of Christiania, which we hadn’t seen yet.

A friend had seen on social media that we were in Copenhagen, and sent me a message to say that we had to go to the National Museum of Denmark. So we did! It was getting towards the end of opening hours, but we saw the section on Danish prehistory (complete with bog people), and the section on the Vikings (complete with a very long longboat). These were the correct priorities, according to my friend.

In the evening we spread the love of Broens Gadekøkken, and met my supervisor and one of his colleagues there for dinner. As we were walking back through Nyhavn (again) we saw a shooting star!

Wednesday

Wednesday was a busy conference day for me, while Nicholas met up with his cousin again (to eat pastries and see the graves of Hans Christian Andersen, Niels Bohr and Søren Kierkegaard!). Meanwhile, I attended sessions on imaging in Parkinson’s (very relevant to my area of research), and stood by my poster for my two-hour poster session. Gratifyingly I had a lot of interest, and received some really helpful insights into my project!

I met Nicholas for dinner in the evening (guess where?!), before heading back for an evening event at the conference. This was the “video challenge”, where a panel of experts were shown videos of unusual cases of movement disorders, and they had to talk through what tests they might have done and suggest a diagnosis, before it was revealed what the diagnosis actually was. It was a fascinating event, even for a non-clinician like me!

Thursday

On Thursday we rose bright and early to get to the airport and home. That all went pretty smoothly, and we were rewarded with a welcome from a loudly purring cat at the end. A great conference, a great time, and a great city (I think now my second favourite, after Venice). We’ll definitely be going back!