Odense; Saturday, 06 October, 2018

After breakfast I headed out of the Hans Christian Andersen Hotel and around the corner to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, where I brought my ticket not just to the museum but to the Hans Christian Andersen Birthplace museum, the Hans Christian Andersen Childhood Home and a printed map with a Hans Christian Andersen walk marked on it. Not that Odense is making the most out of its most famous son.

The museum tells the story of the man from his birth in the city through to his death and then the lasting impact of his works. There are also some mock ups of key scenes from some of his fairy tales, such as a pile of mattresses on top of a pea.

After looking round the museum I walked the short distance to a small house in the old part of the city which is purported to be HCA’s birthplace, though there is no confirmation of the fact. Whilst there is no evidence it was it birthplace there’s also nowhere else claiming to be it, so it has assumed the role and consequently you can see the room where HCA was (probably) born.

From the birthplace I headed back across the main market square to the Møntergården, a museum dedicated to the history of the city including a number of historical buildings that are open to look around to see how people lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. There are also a couple of other small museums in the Møntergården and the HCA ticket included entry to these, so I made full use of my ticket to look around these.

Having finished looking round the Møntergården site I again headed back to the main market square, but this time to pick up the HCA walk that takes you on a circuit round the centre of the city, taking in many of the sites related to HCA, as well as past many of the HCA fairy tale themes statues and artworks that have been erected around the city.

About two thirds of the way round the walk you end up at the HCA childhood home. This is where Hans spent most of his childhood before he moved to Copenhagen in search of fame and fortune. Its a tiny house, so it doesn’t take very long to look around, but it shows the conditions that Hans escaped.

The next stop round on the walk is the Cathedral and impressive city hall. As the church was still open I headed inside for a quick look around, I didn’t have much time as the cathedral was due to close, but I was able to take in the building, including the weird split level alter up half a flight of stairs and crypt down half a flight from the main body of the church.

I finished off the walk, passing the city’s palace and close to the station before heading back to the main market square and my hotel. Perhaps the most impressive part of the walk is that it managed to completely avoid the works in the city centre!

As I’d done quite a bit of walking I didn’t really feel like heading out for dinner so I decided to bite the bullet and just eat in the hotel restaurant. Normally that would be expensive, but given how expensive eating out in Denmark is anyway it comes a bit more relative.