About this experience
Many of Andersen's fairy tales are unthinkable without Copenhagen - not only 'The Red Shoes' or 'The Drop of Water', where the city is the plot, but also 'The Tinderbox' and 'The Snow Queen'. Andersen knew the city thoroughly and loved it, as well as the country - a country without mountains, forests, but with many islands, seas, and blond Danes, and with more towers, steeples, and bell towers than houses. A walk through Andersen's places will help you clearly imagine the life of the storyteller who lived in daily amazement at the surrounding world, and will reveal the fairytale side of Copenhagen.
'In a big city, where there are so many houses and people that not everyone has enough space even for a small garden, and therefore most residents have to content themselves with potted houseplants, two poor children lived, and their pink garden was a little bigger than a flower pot. The roofs of the houses came together, and a gutter ran between them. Here is where attic windows from each house looked at each other. How wonderfully they played here!'
Hans Christian Andersen, 'The Snow Queen'
What to expect
We will walk along the old stone pavements, some of which have been preserved, step on the slabs of sidewalks that Andersen walked on. And of course, we will visit the house where the great storyteller lived. We will pass by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which overlooks the romantic old harbor Nyhavn. On the waterfront, colorful houses from the XVII-XVIII centuries are lined up, closely pressed against each other. They are cheerful not only because of their coloring, but also because almost in every one on the ground floor or in the basement there are seamen's pubs, bars, taverns...
Leaky old schooners with carved bowsprits, rusty anchors, faded sails, and tall masts stand at the docks, smelling of sea and fish... On Nyhavn embankment, on house No. 67, there is a memorial plaque: 'Here for several years, until 1867, lived H.C. Andersen'. A bright tidy house, windows with flower vases, porcelain figurines, cozy curtains hanging... Ordinary people live here now, accustomed to this house and no longer thinking that a great storyteller lived and worked in these rooms one hundred twenty years ago.
On the opposite shore of the harbor, there are two houses side by side: No. 18 and No. 20. In house No. 20, Andersen wrote his first fairy tales in 1835, and in house No. 18, he spent the last years of his life. From his windows, he saw the trawlers arriving with their catch, heard the sailors' songs... and this helped him create his fairy tales. Let's imagine him coming out of house No. 18, walking along the waterfront. The townspeople respectfully greet the writer. Many know and respect him. Children's faces peek out of the windows, and you hear: 'Good morning, Mr. Andersen!'
