September 2, 2024, 3:51 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
Most visits to Copenhagen look like this: Shopping on Strøget, strolling around Christiania, and a selfie in front of the Little Mermaid. But where do the young, hip Danes find themselves out and about? In the trendy Vesterbro district with its Meatpacking District.
Almost every metropolis has a hipster district, trendy places that were often disreputable areas for a long time: London has Shoreditch, Stockholm Södermalm, Berlin Kreuzberg or Neukölln – and Copenhagen has Vesterbro. Here, you will find the latest fashion trends on the sidewalks, young restaurateurs with ambitious visions, and a flair of subculture that is already threatening to disappear with the hype.
Vesterbro begins just west of Copenhagen Central Station, where the red light district is located. But after just a few minutes’ walk along Istedgade, the district’s lifeline, visitors are already in the gentrified part of Vesterbro. There are stylish cafés, chic wine bars, and expensive furniture stores.
The Meatpacking District, Copenhagen’s food and nightlife district, is also located here. The district consists of just a few streets and used to be a working-class area. A few years ago, bars, restaurants, clubs, and galleries moved into the old slaughterhouses. There was a similar development in the in-district of the same name in New York.
As befits a trendy district, there is also a burger joint that doesn’t just fry up any old meat patties but confidently sells a hip lifestyle product. “What other restaurants make steaks out of, we make burgers out of,” Hasse Mogensen, the chef at the Juicy Burger snack bar, says proudly. The meat is like tartare; you can eat it raw. Just a hundred meters away, there is another burger joint, Tommi’s Burger Joint, which also has a branch in Berlin.
“Epicenter of the hipsters”
The big urban trends can be seen in a neighborhood like Vesterbro. “Being vegan is a huge thing,” says Nadja Touzari, who works at Café simpleRAW. The Danish woman says veganism has only taken off in the last year. “Buying healthy food in Vesterbro used to be almost impossible.”
Designer Maxjenny Forslund also raves: “I’ve lived here for a long time, and I’ve never been bored of the district,” says the designer, who has a fashion company in the Meatpacking District. “It’s the epicenter of hipsters. Nobody here wears socks, but everyone has cool bikes,” says the designer about Vesterbro.
Hardly any underground scene
In fact, the example of Vesterbro raises the question: how hip is a district if only chic people are still out and about there? “There’s not much underground here anymore,” says Nadja Touzari. But there are still businesses, such as Jacob Kongsbak Lassen, a traditional Danish fishmonger.
The fact that Visit Copenhagen’s tourism marketers advertise as “Hipster Vesterbro” is an unmistakable sign that the district has long since established itself. But that doesn’t mean it’s overdone yet.
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Vesterbro & the Meatpacking District
Destination: Vesterbro borders the Tivoli amusement park and Copenhagen city center to the east. The Meatpacking District lies to the west of the neighborhood.
How to get there: Several airlines fly to Copenhagen from various German cities—a return flight on a budget airline (with hand luggage only) costs just over 50 euros.
Accommodation: Hotels in Copenhagen are not exactly cheap. A double room in a central three-star hotel can cost 100 to 150 euros per night. Private accommodation such as Airbnb or Wimdu can be an affordable alternative.