Tivoli

Three Decembers ago, an hour or two after our very first arrival into Copenhagen, my wife, tired by the drive, drowsed away into a nap in our hotel-room. I, at a loose end, ventured out into the unfamiliar streets and walked and walked, following the bright lights and the flow of the crowds as far as the main entrance to Tivoli, Europe’s oldest amusement park…

I have seldom been more enchanted: the place was festooned with a million white lights, its centrepiece a stately weeping-willow beside an ornamental lake whose every tiny twig had been strung with brilliant lights, making for a spectacular cascade of illumination whose reflection shimmered in the calm water below.

Squealing kids rode the rollercoasters, couples skated on the rink, families neatly bundled in coats and scarves and gloves went from stall to stall in the Christmas market, from which were peddled all manner of seasonal toys and trinkets, and sweet confections, and cups of hot gløgg. I stopped for a drink of julpunsch topped off with a warming shot of slivovica. It was a crisply frosty evening, and it seemed that ten thousand thrilled exhalations were clouding the clear, cold air all at once. I felt within me a wide-eyed childlike excitement of a kind I’d hardly felt in years.

When I returned there two evenings later with my wife, and our friends Mr T_____ and Mrs M______, it was still beautiful, of course, but it seemed as though some of the magic had evaporated - this latter evening was overcast, for one thing, and it was nearer closing-time, so there were fewer visitors, and, consequently, the atmosphere was rather more subdued.

We were back in Copenhagen last Thursday, although, sadly, it was just for a few hours which were almost wholly taken up with a shopping-frenzy at the stores along Strøget. Our taxi-ride into the centre of the city did, however, take us close by one of the entrances to Tivoli, but the brief glimpse I caught of the white lights brought with it only a weak and indistinct echo of the joy of three years before.

Note that I copied the photographs above from the official Tivoli web-site and that they are Copyright © Tivoli A/S. Clicking on the images will open larger versions of the same.