Copenhagen you expensive little part of the world you. It’s just as well my Berlin expenses came in under expected as I more than made up for any saving’s made to date in Denmark.
By now I had become familiar with the Euro so I no longer converted everything back to the Australian Dollar. Unfortunately this left me completely lost in Copenhagen. You see these crafty folk still hang onto the Danish Krone as their currency which was worth a crazy 5 Krone to 1 Aussie Dollar when I was there. All this proved far too difficult to do math on and as such my budget went right out the window.
I always knew it was going to be more expensive here so should have been extra cautious but when I was catching up with Cailin from travelyourself.ca it was really hard to stick to a tighter budget. She was just visiting for a few days so wanted to make the most of the stay before going back to a job while I continued to travel on. The merger of two very different travel budgets, long term vs short term definitely don’t mix as well as you would like.
| Day | Transport | Hostel | Attractions | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner | Misc | Total KR | Total $AU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 57.95 | 180 | – | 33.6 | 33.6 | 25 | 160 | 490.15 | 98.03 |
| 2 | 45 | 140 | 120 | – | 150 | 180 | 45 | 680 | 136 |
| 3 | 150 | 140 | 140 | – | 60 | 230 | 85 | 805 | 161 |
| 4 | 130 | 140 | 95 | – | 52 | 60 | – | 477 | 95.4 |
Transport
Getting around in Copenhagen is all about the Bus unless your fancy hiring a bike. Having been treated to train travel everywhere else I was so not ready to deal with bus tickets and working out the pickup/drop off points. My hostel wasn’t too much of a walk from town but when your out late or going off to explore other parts of town the bus was very much required.
Hostel
At 140 Krone a night ($28 AUD) except the first night which was 180 as it was a Saturday the hostel was certainly pricey. What did I get for that extra expense you ask? Well weak shower pressure and only 4 showers shared between a good 50-70 people. Add in a couple of toilets and your really starting to get the picture.
Honestly thought I met some great folk there and as I spent most of the time out exploring the 14 bed dorm that was back to back wonky double beds became a little less depressing.
Attractions
I covered just about every possible base while here I think. It started with drinks and entering a club (60 Krone) the first night with a couple of Dutch folk and an American. Right on through to seeing The Copenhagen Zoo (95 Krone), Climbing the Round Tower (25 Krone), Tivoli Amusement Park (95 Krone) and the Rosenborg Castle (95 Krone which included photo privileges).
Food
With Cailin to travel with I broke all of my food budgets. Eating out at nice restaurants sure was heaven to my taste buds but golly gosh was it expensive. One night we spent a good 30 minutes walking up and down Nyhavn Street trying to find a slightly cheap restaurant and I still ended up paying 280 Krone ($56 AUD). In Saying that the place was great and rather fun as we chatted to the staff and Cailin tried to learn to count in Bulgarian from memory.
You can get fairly cheap Kebabs (25 Krone) but as soon as you add a drink or some extra to go with it your quickly adding to the bill.
Miscellaneous
It was a bit of a mixture but mainly beer again. The first night I got caught up drinking with hostel folk at a street festival the lead to a club visit. I grabbed a souvenir and then drank lots more beer. I really should just rename this category the beer category at this rate as I know its only going to get worse.
Total Cost for Copenhagen
Four days in Copenhagen came in at a total of 2452.15 Danish Krone or 490.43 AUD (at an exchange rate of 5 Krone = 1 AUD). The average was just on 613 Krone a day which completely exploded by budget I mean $122 AUD a day eek. All along I knew I was spending up big but I was having too much fun to want to stop. Travelling was to be for fun and new adventures, had I stopped myself well I’d have missed some great sights and been a big downer on Cailin’s visit as well.
To compare the costs to today’s exchange rate, leaving Australia now (November 2014) it would cost you $470.84 AUD with the current rate of 5.20 Krone = 1 AUD.
Copenhagen was a lot of fun, mostly as I had someone to travel with that was happy enough to explore as well. The weather wasn’t perfect but neither was it pouring with rain like Amsterdam did. Having come from touristy major cities like Paris and Berlin for example I was shocked getting to Copenhagen.
It just didn’t feel as setup for the tourist like other places had been. There was no great choice of what tours to take in the hostel and everything was just that little bit harder to find. Overall with everything I had seen and done, I left the city feeling like I had missed seeing the real Copenhagen.
I’d really like to go back again with less newbie goggles on to get a second impression but only after I’ve seen more of Europe. That higher cost is still going to be there and I have too many other places to see and even others I’d like a second helping from.
Note: Some costs for the first day were converted from Euro’s for uniform pricing.
Hi Chris! I always wondered how many people keep a detailed tab of their expenses, broken down by type and even making pie charts and bar graphs at the end….:D My take away from this table is that I certainly have to couchsurf in Copenhagen…
Thanks for the post! Priyank
Hey Priyank. Had I not intended to do a write up on everything I spent there is no way I would have kept a record like this. It really is a lot of work to sit down at the end of each day and record it all. Even then as I read over what I wrote down I remembered things that were missing and needed to be added in.
Couchsurfing in Copenhagen would be fun I think, let me know how it goes.
Thanks for sharing your budget, it’s very helpful!
Hot damn Copenhagen is expensive, knocking that one off my list!
haha Ayngelina, yeah it is and next time I visit I’ll be sure to skip the fancy restaurants and the like and look at couchsurfing to bring the expenses way down.
Ouch, yeah that’s a budget breaker. To be honest, I found Copenhagen relatively cheap, but that’s only because I was arriving from Norway where everything was brutally expensive.
Food was pricey but I mostly ate hot dogs or like-kind budget food, which made for a much cheaper go of it/were fairly cheap. It’s definitely not a city you can eat (or drink out) in much. Though with the open container policy, and my friend who served as local tour guide we’d grab a beer at the 7-eleven during the walk to the pubs and then a periodic one inside which cut the cost way back.
Then again, the old city/downtown is also far more expensive in general, which I guess isn’t any big surprise, but i didn’t find it that much worse than London.
Alex I can feel you there as after Denmark I went onto Sweden and well yeah it just got worse.
I remember those hotdog guys and yeah they were super cheap although not that filling unless you had a couple of them. Oh and the open container policy is great, the first night I was there had me at a street festival where they were just pouring beers right there on the footpath. Good times indeed.
Scandinavian countries require one word: couchsurfing…otherwise, your budget is dead!
Matt they sure do hurt the budget thats for sure, luckily I came back down through the baltic where I more than made up for the costs of Scandinavia.
Scandinavia is one of the places in Europe I haven’t been to. I guess I should have gone when I was single or it was just me and the wife. The cost of living and visiting is very expensive there but would still love to see Denmark and Norway!
Jeremy even with the cost its worth going for a look. I’d love to go right up north and see even more of Scandinavia at some stage.
Biggest traveling conundrum. You want to have people come visit you while you’re traveling, but when you’re on a budget, the biggest bank drain often comes by traveling with or hosting people who are only traveling for a week or two because they have big fancy incomes to go home to and generally love to do all the super touristy expensive things. Plus the beer (my my the beer). I guess the only way to remedy the hosting money leak is to just starve yourself the rest of the time. Or make like you did and save a bunch of money somewhere else. Still not ruling out Copenhagen. I have high hopes, just need to make a bit more dough first.
Abbey you are so right. Having friends with you means you are more likely to want to go out and have fun. If you were solo a cheap meal and chilling at the hostel is far more common so you save a few dollars.
I hope you get to Copenhagen at some point as its an interesting place, not as tourist as many other countries.
I didn’t realize we spent so much! haha I think my hostel cost more than yours too, but I was more central so didn’t have to take the bus as much, so that might of evened it out.
It was odd though, none of the hostels seemed to have good reviews online and mine for being the price that it was was still crap and I was in a 14 person room and the shower down the hall was literally a closet with a light and shower head, no where to put clothes or even a towel to keep dry while you were using it!
I did really like Copenhagen though it was really pretty. I will definitely have to go back sometime to see more of it, and to actually see the freetown because we apparently only saw the tiniest bit of it when the drug dealers scared us away haha
lol Cailin we spent pretty damn hard. I am sure my hostel was much better than yours even given its location and I have since heard after TBEX Europe that the hostel I stayed at has opened another building that is much nicer.
Perhaps we need to make a copenhagen revisited video now that we are more skilled in its ways.
I’ll have to stay with friends or couchsurf when I go…