Hamlet's Castle: Not in Sweden, I Checked

For our last day, we (my friend and fellow conference-goer from Chile and I) decided to head over to see Hamlet's Castle, supposedly the castle that inspired Hamlet / Hamlet would have occurred at. It definitely aims to get the tourist dollars by hyping the Hamlet connection, but the castle was really cool anyway. I've seen quite a few Japanese style castles at this point, but not so many European ones.

We set off after the conference lunch. We had to get to Helsingor, the terminal stop on the train line, which lets off in the town that houses the castle. Upon getting to the station and finding a train about to depart to Helsing... we grabbed seats and enjoyed the train ride. We passed through countryside and then started crossing over some water.

The water kept going...and going...and we looked at each other, thinking that perhaps this was rather more water than we should have had to cross to reach our intended destination.

Our fears proved well founded. Unbeknownst to us, the other end of the train line terminated at Helsinborg, which, incidentally, is in Sweden. That's right, I managed to visit a whole 'nother country by accident. We got off at the first stop in Sweden, which seemed to just be a sports arena of some sort, took some pictures, and hopped the next train out of there going the right way.

When we finally made it to Helsingor, we discovered that it's really a cute little town, with a nice plaza and a delicious Thai restaurant. Of course, with the 2-hour detour, we made it there just after the castle closed for the day. We were still able to walk around the grounds, but could not go into the castle or check out the artists who have shops in the old stables and other buildings on the castle grounds. The foundations of this castle date back to before 1420.

Whether or not it is in fact the castle that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet, a troupe of actors comes to perform the play on the castle grounds in the summer. I would enjoy going back to this castle to take a look at the artists' wares and to see the actors performing. Also to go inside the castle.

Of course, what the helpful people on the train didn't tell us was that it would have been faster to continue on in Sweden to Helsingborg and then take the ferry across to Helsingor. We found this out when we were at the castle, looking across at Sweden, where we almost ended up:

It certainly was a good time, and the castle was pretty cool. I really enjoyed going there, since I probably would have just hung out at the Ben & Jerry's stand all day otherwise! That about wraps up my adventuring around Denmark. Check out the Flickr set for more pictures of the castle!