In August 2024, as the third-place contestant at the IBS World Tour trivia competition, I had the chance to spend a weekend – by the generosity of the IBS, eventually three nights, four days – in Copenhagen. I chose my mother as my travel companion, since the last time she had taken a flight was in 1983, forty-one years earlier. In the afternoon of the 16th of August, we arrived in a rainy Denmark – thankfully, the weather had cleared up by the evening, allowing us to take a stroll in the area around our hotel: on the island of Christianshavn and in the artistic district of Christiania.

On the 17th of August, we awoke early because we had planned to explore, strictly on foot, the whole city centre and the most sights possible in Copenhagen. In the morning, we walked to the National Museum of Denmark and Christiansborg Palace – which, at present, houses the Danish parliament – and through Kongens Nytorv square, to the famous Nyhavn harbour, Amalienborg Palace and Frederik’s Church, and eventually, through The King’s Garden, to Rosenborg Castle. We had bought tickets to the castle in advance, and we were not disappointed: we had the chance to discover a beautifully kept and restored 17th-century building and to get a glimpse of the lives of King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway’s family and their descendants, who used the castle as their summer residence. After our visit to Rosenborg Castle, we continued our journey to The Natural History Museum of Denmark’s botanical garden and palm house – a 19th-century glasshouse with unheard-of exotic plants and potentially, unusually, a cooler temperature than in heatwave-stricken Budapest at the time. In the afternoon, having eaten traditional ‘smørrebrøds’ for lunch at Torvehallerne market, we visited The Round Tower (Rundetaarn) – offering spectacular views of the city –, the Kastellet fortress, and the statue of The Little Mermaid – and ended our day at Strøget shopping street and the annual Pride festival near the City Hall and Tivoli Gardens.

On our third day in Denmark, we decided to take a train to the nearby Frilandsmuseet, one of the oldest and largest open-air museums– despite spending our whole day at the park, we barely managed to visit everything. Upon returning to the capital city in the evening, we only had one item left on our bucket list: to survey the Copenhagen skyline once more, for the last time, from the top of the baroque Vor Frelsers Kirke. We spent an incredible vacation in Denmark, all thanks to the International Business School of Budapest.