The Ruffian

The Ruffian

Postcard From Copenhagen

City of Chill

Ian Leslie's avatar
Ian Leslie
May 31, 2025
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I haven’t had time to write a full-fat Ruffian this week because I’ve been on holiday here in Denmark, having arrived by train from London via Brussels (perfectly nice, I’m not sure we’ll make it to a second date) and Cologne (that cathedral, phwoar).

Copenhagen is delightful. I could happily live here. Elegant, friendly, human-sized, but with a sense of scale and grandeur. It’s full of streets like the one above: urban masterpieces in the art of packing people together in a way that creates beauty rather than crushing it. Like any city, it is a mix of good, bad, and ugly, but there is much less of the latter than in most comparable towns.1 Even the bins are chic.

I love that they care about this sort of things, a big contrast with London (those unforgivably ugly drinking fountains).
A relic and somewhat dilapidated, but isn’t this the cutest junction box you’ve ever seen?

I’ve only been here a few days but here are some things that have struck me about Copenhagen:

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