Always on Vesterbro - local historical city walk in Copenhagen

Always on Vesterbro — this is how the answer sounded when Henry Emil Larsen in the years 1912-1916 periodically had to inform the police about his circumstances. That, of course, was a lie. He had lived several years in the murkiest streets of the Inner City, but apparently that didn't add up.

On the whole, Henry had a somewhat free relationship with the facts. He often gave up addresses in which he had never (at least not officially) set his feet. He was soon working one place, soon the other, but never very long at a time, and in some places they had never heard of him, even though he had apparently worked there for years.

One thing Henry was good at; he could charm the young ladies of the neighborhood. The maids threw themselves into his arms on the strip -- and just as quickly fled again. For there were many things that did not quite work out for the young Henry.

Eventually the pressure got too much, and then what do you do?

You can learn more about that -- as well as a good deal of the neighborhood's early history -- on this tour. It is a universal story about poverty and misery, love, urban development, but above all about drunkenness, adultery and stupidity.

Guide on the city walk is Mads Kristian Mikkelsen, storyteller, city walker and school teacher - and Henry's great-grandson. The trip is based on barely a decade and a half of genealogy.