The Tree of Hearts

Winter rolled around as it normally does at this time of year, but this year for a change, we had a bonus 3rd holiday, just before Christmas, but hold on you may say:
"Didn't you have a 3rd holiday a couple of years back?"
Well, sort of...
"Yes I remember, you went to Bruges, you titled the Blog 'In Bruges'"
Yes, rather witty I thought.
"No, Not really."
A Little bit witty?
"No, not at all."
Well forget you then.
No, that was more of a day trip I went on with my brother, this one was a proper multi-day holiday, with a hotel and everything. I went on this one with Rachael, so it gets a green pin in the map.
We decided that the week before Christmas we should go away somewhere nice, somewhere we had never been before, we decided to take that Scandinavian trip we had been promising ourselves for a while and go to Copenhagen in Denmark.
Before I get into the holiday properly (Look at me, all business, I mean apart from that bit above where I converse with myself, but I could have dragged that out for a lot longer, I must be maturing...) I'll just talk a little bit about how this was the easiest start to a holiday ever, we hit absolutely no traffic on the way to the airport (despite being told that we were going on one of the busiest days of the year), we had one of those tunnels where you walk straight on or off the plane, at both ends! (normally you have at least one walk down to the tarmac and often you have to take one of those buses) The Plane ride was the best plane ride ever (This may just be my bias, but I say to anyone with the opportunity to fly Scandinavian Airlines to do so... You get a free cup of tea on board. Yes, that is worth the ticket price alone), the train station was right in the airport and following a 12 minute train ride, our hotel was pretty much right outside.

Also, what made a nice change was that on giving my name at reception, I was not asked to repeat or spell my name - Just to clarify, this isn't some borderline racist rant about language barriers, this happens all the time in the UK, but there is a benefit to being in Denmark with a Danish sounding name.

December is a nice time to be in any European city, wherever you go, there are going to be Christmas Markets and Copenhagen is no different, the little sheds selling festive trinkets and nice smelling foods were all over the place, including a little ramshackle recycled one.

While walking one day, we overheard a tour-guide complaining that the Christmas Markets were closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he suggested that this made the whole enterprise a bit of a Christmas cash-in, his argument being that tourists might be around over Christmas and might be upset that nothing was open. We obviously didn't confront this man about the comments, but I'm going to argue about this now via the medium of blog.
First of all, who are these tourists going away over Christmas and getting upset that nothing is open? Where people celebrate Christmas, things tend to be closed, you have to be a special kind of selfish to expect other people to forego their Christmas just because you're there. Second, surely by your own argument regarding the tourists, being open over Christmas would be the Cash-in, the fact that they're not open shows that the people running them actually want to celebrate Christmas.
Those comments annoyed me.

Anyway, Right next to the train station is Tivoli, a really old theme park, it still has a couple of rides and at this time of year, it becomes a winter wonderland, it's all decorated and lit up and nice to see in the evening, this is a Tree of Hearts which I hadn't realised before but Hearts are a really Danish thing at Christmas (I think they are the rest of the time too), they have Christmas traditions such as making paper hearts or crocheting hearts and out in the streets there are hearts everywhere, above the streets and here in the tree.

Although, if you look at the tree full of hearts, if you imagine that they are real, human hearts the picture becomes a lot more gruesome, something sat at the bottom of a serial killers garden where he collects the hearts of his victims and they sit there, shrivelled and in various states of decay, you know, until someone looks into his garden and notices his heart tree and he goes to jail.
For the sake of honesty, I should point out that the heart tree bit was from Rachael.