Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen

Here is something I wrote on our return from Copenhagen in March...

Getting from the airport to the hotel by train was dead easy. With one exception, everybody we met spoke fantastic English...All you have to do is say "Hej (Pronounced 'Hi' with an extra 'ee' on the second part of the dipthong), do you speak English?" and you're off. I did manage to get in a few vaersgos, taks and taler de Engelsks and other bits and pieces I'd learned before the trip, but no many people understood me!!!

The Palace Hotel was nice...Elegantly tatty. The room was nice and large with dark wood pannelling...It was a bit like living in a victorian railway carriage.


Raadhuspladsen and The Palace Hotel

We met our distributors who were very funny and charming and really knew their stuff business-wise. After a chat at their office, they took us for a quick tour of the sights of Copenhagen by car....A fantastic way to see it, as the traffic was very light. It's a lovely city...Lots of high pitched roofs...Very Scandinavian looking. At 6pm on a Friday evening, the roads were virtually clear!!! We then went for dinner. Our new friends had found a fantastic buffet vegetarian restaurant called Riz Raz (Kompagnistræde 20, 1208 København)which I can thoroughly recommend to all. We went back a few times during our short visit...It's fantastic to find a restaurant which dishes up such tasty vegan and vegetarian food.

On Saturday, we did some sightseeing on foot and had a coffee and beer at one of the cafe/bars in Nyhavn. There are lots of butane heaters around and also the cafes have a blanket on each seat to wrap yorself up in...Very cosy!!! I noticed people were having a lager with a little shot glass of something. I asked the waitress what it was and it turned out to be Gammel Dansk, a bitter...I decided to give this a go soon!!!


Nyhavn

On Sunday, we went to Malmo by train over the Øresund Bridge which links Denmark to Sweden. Malmo is much quieter and more spread out than Copenhagen. It was also bloody freezing!!! We met our friend who has moved to Sweden with his new Swedish wife to start up his own music business there (His claim to fame is that he was Chesney Hawks' bass player). I havent seen him for about 10 years, so it was great to meet up. We drank Swedish pear cider...Very tasty, but very sweet. In the evening, we met one of our composers in Copenhagen for a chat.


View from the Øresund Bridge

On Monday, our final day, I finally got to try Gammel Dansk and beer. The Gammel Dansk is VERY bitter and strong, but sipping the beer after is like drinking liquid gold...Delicious.

So, Copenhagen...I can thoroughly recommend it. Prices are more or less the same as here in the UK. I have to say that sitting in Nyhavn wrapped in a blanket watching the world go by with a beer and Gammel Dansk, I was as happy as I've ever been.

No peace for the wicked!!!

Well, I was hoping for a bit of a rest after the last job, but I got a call from a director I've worked with many times before who needed some music for the show he's working on. I had to make a flying visit to the edit suite in the city to see some clips. The idea of the show is that they train up celebs SAS style and have them do 'missions.' Looks like a really funny show actually!!! I'm not complaining about the work, though...I know I'm lucky to have it!!!

So, I've been busy over the weekend (And I'll be working on the Bank Holiday tomorrow too) to get as much finished before our visit to France on Thursday. There was also a couple of tracks to finish off for the DIY show I've been working on.

We also had to dispatch our latest disk to France and w had a call from someone who is starting a production music distribution company in Israel. He has a library of his own, so we may be able to distribute him in the UK. For those who don't know, production music is where CDs are produced and sent free of charge to producers/directors and if they use a piece of music on their show, the library gets a royalty.

We have distribution all around the world...In fact I called our French, Danish and South African distributors last week and I hope to catch up with our Spanish company next week.

I'm looking forwrd to the French trip...I've been practising the language for months, but still find it a bit daunting. We were lucky on our trip to Copenhagen in march, because our distributors spoke superb English...In fact English was spoken very well by all of the Danes that we met. I'll write more about the Copenhagen trip when I get time...Jane and I had a fantastic time and we really enjoyed the company of our new friends, our Scandinavian distributors.

Anyway, back to making noises!!!