if you do ever make it to Copenhagen, the canal boat company you want is Nettobådene. they have smaller, open boats than the other company, which has large, covered boats. the other company (I forgot their name) has their docking station at the very bottom of Nyhavn so it's the first company you see, and I think many people go there automatically because they don't know there's a second company that does tours. Nettbådene are based on the dark side of Nyhavn (the sunny side is the famous picturesque one) so if you're standing at the bottom, in front of the big anchor and the other canal boat company, you'll want to go right and a little ways down there's the Nettobådene ticket booth and ladder down to the pier. I have loads of tips for Copenhagen so let me know when/if it becomes relevant and I'll give you a list!
I think we must be opposites in this regard! I do completely understand your feelings and where you're coming from. I'm also amused at you calling a 400k city a small city. that city is population wise bigger than all of Iceland, which I think currently sits at about 350k. it's a country of villages. besides the capital region which has Reykjavík the city and several neighbouring towns that have grown massively, I think there's only one other town in the entire country. when I still lived there the population was about 100k in Reykjavík and surrounding towns and 200k countryside, it's now a rough split of 200k greater capital area and 150k countryside. the town I'm from had a population of about 4000 people at the time (it only passed the 5k threshold just before lockdown, which is what the population was before the volcanic eruption in '73 - many people didn't return after the eruption) and we were considered a major village (even though I refer to it as a town - I can only think of two other rural villages with a similarly high population, excluding Akureyri in the north which has about 19k people and so is an actual town and not a village), and also the biggest fishing hub in the country. (in comparison, my mum's hometown, which I usually think of as the place where my grandmother lives even if she passed away almost ten years ago now, has a population number of about 1500 people and is the biggest village in the Eastfjords; it's also where the regional hospital is located).
so in Iceland as a whole, I can do the same exercise you can with Canberra, I'll easily find a connection either through family (not very difficult) or through old friends and classmates (slightly more difficult). and in both my town and my mum's town, if I go there, even if I've been away for decades, people can and will recognise me. I visited my grandmother in 2012 and I couldn't leave the house for running into someone who knew me or who knew my grandmother or mum, and who stopped to strike up a conversation. on a few occasions somebody would stop me and clearly recognise me but not be able to place me and would ask 'and who's your father?' which is the standard way to ask for one's full name to find out the connection, and I'd just reply 'i'm (dad's name)'s daughter, but my mother/grandmother is (their name)' because they wouldn't necessarily know my dad, who's from elsewhere, but they would know my mum's family who are all from there.
I would never move back to my town though, there aren't jobs there for me and I don't want to live somewhere where most of the people my age are people who bullied me severely in school, I don't think I'd be able to look past that to build new connections, so... that's never happening. I *would* move to my grandmother's town if there were any job opportunities there for me. actually about five years back when I was unemployed and had no prospects, I seriously considered it: the local hotel was up for sale and I seriously considered applying for a loan to buy and run it as it wasn't very expensive (at the time, about £300k) and I thought I had enough skills to make it work and turn it into a travel destination as well as a community hub. I made three business plans for three different budgets with three different 3, 5 and 10 year plans. Never went through with it as I would never have been able to get a loan approved. if it comes up as an opportunity again, who knows, I might give it a second thought.
and here's where I think we are opposites: I like being known like that! I don't mind losing the feeling either - I've moved so often and never returned to the previous place that I just see it as an inevitability of life that eventually that feeling of being known *will* go away and I'll find myself in a new place where I'll have to become known/know others all over again. I do find it frustrating but that's mostly because it's a lot of work to build connections and I'm tired, and I want to just stay in one place for as long as possible so I don't have to do it ALL THE TIME. it's why I was in Copenhagen so long, I just didn't want to keep moving and it was as good a place as any to stay, but I also struggled with building connections there because it's a big city and though I kind of knew my local area and the people there, it was like I just couldn't make it stick. I don't know. but I like knowing my community even if I'm not besties with them or even if I don't even know their names, it's just that recognising somebody by sight just because they live where I live is a thing I like in a way I don't know how to explain. the fact that I'm recognisning most of the people at my busstop in the morning, here in Barnet, is genuinely thrilling to me. or the fact that the security guard at the tesco express just up the street now always smiles and greets me when I come in (I suspect this is at least partially because I always bring my basket back to the door where I took it from, it seems all other customers don't bother so leave them piled up by the self check out randomly because there isn't anywhere there to leave the basket, and the security guard usually winds up having to take the baskets back and I'm just... come on, people, it's just rude to leave your basket where you dropped it.) the place I went to high school was a small town of about 15k people and I had a job in the local bakery there for two years, which meant that I knew every single elderly person who lived within walking distance because they all came in early morning on sundays ordering the same thing as always, and that was also genuinely my favourite part of high school. elderly people are the best, they are such gossips, and knowing who it was they were gossiping about because I also knew them through their Sunday routine... it made having been awake since 4am on Sundays tolerable. Even though I knew I'd be leaving the town as soon as I graduated, having that human connection for as long as it lasted was worth a lot to me.
big cities don't tend to have that feature in my experience, and I very very dislike the general anonymity. it's nice sometimes to be anonymous, I like that I can go somewhere by myself and not be bothered and not run into anyone I know, so I can go do things at my own pace. and since cities have all types of folks, nobody ever looks at me sideways for being on my own either or for dressing the way I do, or something else. that's one of few positives I can think of for big cities. but I also often feel invisible in big cities, in a sense that if I were to disappear, nobody would even notice. and that's a feeling that I abhor with every fibre in my body. I don't want to be invisible. I don't want to disappear into a crowd. I don't want to be a nobody on the tube. I want to get on a bus and recognise the busdriver and also the old lady sitting behind him from my shift at the bakery or the teenager at the back because he's my neighbour or his mum is a colleague or whatever, I don't care, I want to have a place and I want to belong.
So yeah, I would be happy in a small place, and if it weren't for the fact my current career makes it very difficult to pull up my stakes and move, I would. I mean, I probably could move to a small town within London commuting distance, but what's the point if I'm spending 2+ hours every day commuting on top of work and so barely spend any time in the community?
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I think we must be opposites in this regard! I do completely understand your feelings and where you're coming from. I'm also amused at you calling a 400k city a small city. that city is population wise bigger than all of Iceland, which I think currently sits at about 350k. it's a country of villages. besides the capital region which has Reykjavík the city and several neighbouring towns that have grown massively, I think there's only one other town in the entire country. when I still lived there the population was about 100k in Reykjavík and surrounding towns and 200k countryside, it's now a rough split of 200k greater capital area and 150k countryside. the town I'm from had a population of about 4000 people at the time (it only passed the 5k threshold just before lockdown, which is what the population was before the volcanic eruption in '73 - many people didn't return after the eruption) and we were considered a major village (even though I refer to it as a town - I can only think of two other rural villages with a similarly high population, excluding Akureyri in the north which has about 19k people and so is an actual town and not a village), and also the biggest fishing hub in the country. (in comparison, my mum's hometown, which I usually think of as the place where my grandmother lives even if she passed away almost ten years ago now, has a population number of about 1500 people and is the biggest village in the Eastfjords; it's also where the regional hospital is located).
so in Iceland as a whole, I can do the same exercise you can with Canberra, I'll easily find a connection either through family (not very difficult) or through old friends and classmates (slightly more difficult). and in both my town and my mum's town, if I go there, even if I've been away for decades, people can and will recognise me. I visited my grandmother in 2012 and I couldn't leave the house for running into someone who knew me or who knew my grandmother or mum, and who stopped to strike up a conversation. on a few occasions somebody would stop me and clearly recognise me but not be able to place me and would ask 'and who's your father?' which is the standard way to ask for one's full name to find out the connection, and I'd just reply 'i'm (dad's name)'s daughter, but my mother/grandmother is (their name)' because they wouldn't necessarily know my dad, who's from elsewhere, but they would know my mum's family who are all from there.
I would never move back to my town though, there aren't jobs there for me and I don't want to live somewhere where most of the people my age are people who bullied me severely in school, I don't think I'd be able to look past that to build new connections, so... that's never happening. I *would* move to my grandmother's town if there were any job opportunities there for me. actually about five years back when I was unemployed and had no prospects, I seriously considered it: the local hotel was up for sale and I seriously considered applying for a loan to buy and run it as it wasn't very expensive (at the time, about £300k) and I thought I had enough skills to make it work and turn it into a travel destination as well as a community hub. I made three business plans for three different budgets with three different 3, 5 and 10 year plans. Never went through with it as I would never have been able to get a loan approved. if it comes up as an opportunity again, who knows, I might give it a second thought.
and here's where I think we are opposites: I like being known like that! I don't mind losing the feeling either - I've moved so often and never returned to the previous place that I just see it as an inevitability of life that eventually that feeling of being known *will* go away and I'll find myself in a new place where I'll have to become known/know others all over again. I do find it frustrating but that's mostly because it's a lot of work to build connections and I'm tired, and I want to just stay in one place for as long as possible so I don't have to do it ALL THE TIME. it's why I was in Copenhagen so long, I just didn't want to keep moving and it was as good a place as any to stay, but I also struggled with building connections there because it's a big city and though I kind of knew my local area and the people there, it was like I just couldn't make it stick. I don't know. but I like knowing my community even if I'm not besties with them or even if I don't even know their names, it's just that recognising somebody by sight just because they live where I live is a thing I like in a way I don't know how to explain. the fact that I'm recognisning most of the people at my busstop in the morning, here in Barnet, is genuinely thrilling to me. or the fact that the security guard at the tesco express just up the street now always smiles and greets me when I come in (I suspect this is at least partially because I always bring my basket back to the door where I took it from, it seems all other customers don't bother so leave them piled up by the self check out randomly because there isn't anywhere there to leave the basket, and the security guard usually winds up having to take the baskets back and I'm just... come on, people, it's just rude to leave your basket where you dropped it.) the place I went to high school was a small town of about 15k people and I had a job in the local bakery there for two years, which meant that I knew every single elderly person who lived within walking distance because they all came in early morning on sundays ordering the same thing as always, and that was also genuinely my favourite part of high school. elderly people are the best, they are such gossips, and knowing who it was they were gossiping about because I also knew them through their Sunday routine... it made having been awake since 4am on Sundays tolerable. Even though I knew I'd be leaving the town as soon as I graduated, having that human connection for as long as it lasted was worth a lot to me.
big cities don't tend to have that feature in my experience, and I very very dislike the general anonymity. it's nice sometimes to be anonymous, I like that I can go somewhere by myself and not be bothered and not run into anyone I know, so I can go do things at my own pace. and since cities have all types of folks, nobody ever looks at me sideways for being on my own either or for dressing the way I do, or something else. that's one of few positives I can think of for big cities. but I also often feel invisible in big cities, in a sense that if I were to disappear, nobody would even notice. and that's a feeling that I abhor with every fibre in my body. I don't want to be invisible. I don't want to disappear into a crowd. I don't want to be a nobody on the tube. I want to get on a bus and recognise the busdriver and also the old lady sitting behind him from my shift at the bakery or the teenager at the back because he's my neighbour or his mum is a colleague or whatever, I don't care, I want to have a place and I want to belong.
So yeah, I would be happy in a small place, and if it weren't for the fact my current career makes it very difficult to pull up my stakes and move, I would. I mean, I probably could move to a small town within London commuting distance, but what's the point if I'm spending 2+ hours every day commuting on top of work and so barely spend any time in the community?