Great Dane

COPENHAGEN quietly donned the mantle of European City of Culture last month, even as it attempted to shrug off the effects of its most severe winter for over a decade.

One of the hazards facing residents and visitors alike in early January was the periodic mini-avalanche, as another lump of snow or ice slid off roofs perhaps storeys above one's head.

The visitor's ear quickly attunes to the noise of an imminent snowfall, rather as visitors to Beirut must once have learned to tell incoming fire from outgoing. But pedestrians who chose to steer a wide berth of these unwanted eaves-droppings risk another of Copenhagen's occupational hazards: death under the wheels of the city's fiercely self-righteous cyclists, who come scything along the cycle lanes, startling tourists with the same glee as Italian motorists.

Dangers such as these aside, Copenhagen is the ideal city for a weekend break.

It's small; it's a convenient two-hour flight from Dublin (longer if you're going via Manchester); the effort of learning even basic phrases from the back of a travel book is excused by the locals' universally fluent English; and, if you confine your visit to a weekend, you might have some money left when you get home.

Which is a little unfair, really. Copenhagen is certainly expensive, by Irish standards. But the level of service offered goes some way towards excusing the differential. And with a bit of effort on the part of the visitor, the hurt to one's wallet can be minimised.

As befits a Scandanavian city, Denmark's capital is well adjusted to winter. But as befits a country without mountains and thus without a skiing industry, the local tourist economy is as fond of fair weather as any other. Hotel prices are therefore considerably cheaper at the moment than during the summer season; on the other hand, the city's second most famous tourist attraction is closed until April.

The Tivoli Gardens (and let's be honest, they have more entertainment value than the Little Mermaid) are a compulsory visit when they're open a fantasy playground for children during the day, with musical and other adult entertainments at night.

But here is one opportunity where a little forethought will save your pocket. The gardens' various amusement rides are costly enough in themselves, but the restaurants can be horrendously expensive, even for basic fare. So a few hours in Tivoli could profitably be preceded by a visit to one of the city's all-you-can-eat-for-95K establishments. For shoppers and browsers, meanwhile, Copenhagen's pedestrianised shopping district rivals the Tivoli as a source of amusement. The main street, Stroget, is claimed to be the longest traffic-free shopping stretch in the world its shops range from the Sostrene Grenes, an environment-and-purse-friendly store which advertises prices from 13 ore (a penny) upwards; to Royal Copenhagen, the self-proclaimed "world's largest porcelain shop".

Even outside the pedestrian haven, the city's traffic moves so lightly (and politely, as far as jay-walking tourists are concerned) that walking the streets is a genuine pleasure. Impressive churches seem to beckon around every corner, and a glass of the city's excellent Tuborg or Carlsberg beer beckons in a lot of the places in between.

To tourists for whom no city visit is complete without a museum or two, the National Museum is a must; its Viking collection has special resonances for Irish tourists. And for resonances of a completely different kind, the Museum of Erotica (a flirtatiously short distance off the main shopping street) is an, er, interesting diversion.

Some of the exhibits (including potted sex histories of the famous dead) have genuine historic interest, but a multi-screen extravaganza featuring the work of some of Denmark's less well-known film stars is more of a challenge to the composure.

Two detours outside the immediate city centre can be easily fitted into a weekend. A short journey on the number eight bus takes you to Christiania, Copenhagen's famed "free state", where those for whom it is for ever 1967 live untouched by authority in a collection of houses that vary from the quaint to the downright strange.

Christiania's main "street" is fringed with stalls selling tobacco products that you won't find in the airport duty-free shop and the flags flying over the place tend to be those of Jamaica rather than Denmark.

The other out-of-town excursion is the 40-minute ferry trip to Malmo. In truth the only justification for it in the course of a short stay in Copenhagen is the novelty of visiting Sweden. If you want to be silly, you can be there and back within two hours. But this (and perhaps the duty-free beer) is sufficient reason for many.

One of the joys of the Danish capital is that its residents seem to combine Germanic efficiency with an almost Celtic outlook. Harassed smokers, for instance, may find the Danish capital an unexpected haven. Although anti-smoking legislation seems to be as advanced as it is here, it is flouted to a degree already unthinkable in Ireland.

On arrival at the airport, our bus driver lit up a pipe. The same man had answered a query about the duration of the journey with the characteristically Danish "about 28 minutes". It took all of 29, in fact.