Trip 51

September 17, 2025

It’s been a long day of walking, exploring some areas of København where our relatives grew up. I think it was a surprise to them as well, to return to neighborhoods they hadn’t visited in decades, to see how much had changed.

One of the areas we visited was the Carlsberg brewery, founded 1876. The childhood home of one of our hosts was in the shadow of the area where much of the brewery is located and in that time, the brewery tried to buy up the surrounding homes to make room for its expansion. Fortunately for the area, the expansion was stopped and much of the housing remained. The area around the brewery has been redeveloped with offices, restaurants and apartments and co-working space.

Although Carlsberg moved most of the beer production to Fredericia in 2008, beer is still brewed at Husbryggeriet Jacobsen, part of Carlsberg. Jacobsen is the only Carlsberg-brewed beer in Copenhagen. Husbryggeriet Jacobsen is named after the brewers I.C. and Carl Jacobsen. Fredericia is a town located in Fredericia Municipality in the southeastern part of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. It is possible to take a tour here in København , although we did not.

In 1901, Carl Jacobsen, son of Carlsberg’s founder, built the Elephant Gate, intended as an access gate to New Carlsberg Brewery from the Valby side. The elephants symbolise Carl and Otilia’s four surviving children: Theodora, Vagn, Helge, and Paula, whose initials are written on each of the elephants’ blankets. The tower was initially considered a water tower but eventually became a corn silo. Carl Jacobsen got the inspiration for the statue after seeing an elephant statue in Rome. Later, the elephant beer was born and a drawing of the gate was added to the label. Carlsberg Elephant Strong Beer, created in 1959, has an alcohol percentage of approximately 7.2% and is a pale beer.

Carl Jacobsen wanted to prove that a factory’s chimney could be a work of art. He had Carlsberg’s famous twisting chimney built in 1900, and you can still see the 56 metre-high Winding Chimney featuring motifs of Egyptian lotus flowers and gargoyles.

Exiting the brewery area, we crossed into the Sendermarken, a large park leading to Fredriksberg Castle (at one time a summer home for King Frederik IV).

The castle is no longer use by the royal family, but is now used for military cadet officer training.

On the lake and to the right below, there is a small boat house, open on the weekends.

The European beech tree is much bigger in circumference than I could put my arms around.

The gardens, totaling 64 hectares, 158 acres (Frederiksberg Have), laid out in 1804, are now a beautiful city park.

The entrance here would have been his the King’s carriage entered the gardens as he came from the city palace, Amalienborg.

We walked about a mile down the avenue leading away from the gardens to have a “slow beer”.

A dark, slightly sweet beer, with a large foam head, artfully poured from the tap, was a refreshing and original bit of København history. Drawing the beer is an art, as the foam is allowed to slowly settle, before the glass is further filled and again allowed to settle, hence the “slow beer”. This slow process means it takes 12-15 minutes to draw each beer.

Unlike the area where I live in the US, I saw a number of curbside public EV chargers, and since the EU uses 3 phase electric circuits, it’s possible to get higher charge rates with the same amperage than with the single phase power in the US. My charger delivers 11.5kW with 48 amps@ 240V, vs a three phase system that could deliver 22kW (400V at 32 amps). The installations I saw required the user to bring their own charge cable (but it’s a common connector) .