2003 Scandanavian Circle - Bakken And The Drug Squad

Departing JC Nimbus we caught the train to Klamenborg where there is the Jaegersborg Deer Park. From the train station a visitor can ride in a horse drawn carriage, or walk the small distance to Dyrehavsbakken, Bakken for short. This was our port of call as this is the retreat for many inhabitants of Copenhagen, being an amusement park that is over 400 years old. There is no entrance fee for this and is open from April to the end of August. At the start and end of the season there is a large motorcycle ride out to Bakken as shown in the two clips below.

The main attraction of the visit for us was an old wooden roller coaster. Guzzisue and myself went for a very bumpy ride on this while Ian had to miss out due to his dodgy back.

Having spent a very enjoyable afternoon watching people on the various rides and managing to see a red squirrel, but no deer, we headed back to Copenhagen where Ian spotted a green Nimbus. It didn’t take him long before he was chatting away to the owner. It appears that many Nimbus riders around the area appear to know each other.

As we were watching an activity across the waterfront from ourselves things went a little weird. An Italian approached Ian and asked him to take his photo, which he obliged, taking two, one landscape and one portrait. He jokingly offered to take one diagonally before passing his camera back.

The Italian asked us if we knew of any cheap hotels, but as we were on a campsite a few kilometers away and not being local we could not help him out. The Italian then departed only to be back with us accompanied with two very large men who proceeded to flash their police identity cards at us speaking to us in German. They were a little taken aback by the fact that we could not understand them, so in English asked if we had exchanged money with the Italian and where were the drugs!

Ian explained that we had only taken the mans photograph of him with his camera. All passports then had to be examined and wallets and pockets emptied to see how much money we were carrying. Further questions were asked like how long we were staying in Copenhagen, which hotel were we staying in etc. The answers that we gave certainly were not what they expected as we explained that we were staying on a campsite outside of the city and that we had been to a motorcycle shop.

Eventually the policemen wished us a good holiday and gave us a lecture about not exchanging money on the street! The rest of the afternoon was spent looking over our shoulders to see if we were being followed. The strange thing about this incident was that the Italian when he emptied out his pockets was very nervous as he had a large roll of US dollars in his pocket and when we all went our separate ways he was followed!

To this day we are unsure as to if we had walked into a setup. Lesson of the day is do not take photos of people with their camera!

After this the rest of the day was an anticlimax as we just wandered around aimlessly before catching the train back to the campsite and picking up some food for dinner and breakfast.