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I just landed in Copenhagen and got a rousing welcome. This week Denmark’s streets are filled with graduating university seniors filling WWII-vintage trucks, waving beers, and hollering above the traffic. (Don’t they know they’re about to leave the wonderland of childhood and enter the work force?)
It’s a progressive beer party — the trucks take them from the graduation ceremony to each house, where the parents serve them beer…and things just get sloppier and sloppier. (Danes statistically finish university later than other Europeans, typically taking several years’ break — the government is pushing them to get through the education system faster.)
My friend, Richard, dresses up like Hans Christian Andersen to lead walking tours. He saved a day just for me. Walking through the city with HCA in a long coat and top hat is a bit strange. (Richard becomes Richard again each winter and flees “cold, dark, rainy, and expensive” Denmark with his Icelandic partner to dance the tango in Argentina.)
Kelly Clarkson is coming to town — she’s on posters everywhere. Richard explains that the Danes have their own “Danish Idol”-type TV pop craze, and the created Danish icons are local stars — but Kelly Clarkson is big league.
We climb the highest church spire in town and look across the strait to Sweden. Through the modern windmills on the Danish horizon, Richard points out a Swedish nuclear power plant in the hazy distance. He explains, “They put it 600 kilometers from Stockholm but only 20 kilometers from Copenhagen. Danes threatened to bomb it. Swedes threatened to retaliate by setting up catapults and lobbing in their national dish — a lutefisk-style fermented herring.” The stand-off was defused. Today the plant is closed.
Signs of progressive Denmark are everywhere. The basement of the Danish Design Center is now the Flow Market (www.theflowmarket.com), a supermarket of sustainability with squeeze tubes of empathy, tins of commercial-free space, syringes of tolerance, and buckets of inner calmness. The slogan: Be not “best in the world” but “best for the world.”
Hi Rick, I have only been to Copenhagen once but really loved it and it’s people. Thanks for the update. John
In Denmark, we spent at least one night in Arhus, Copenhagen, Fredrikshaven, Fryshav, Helsingor, and Horsens. When my Sweetie and I traveled in Europe we just wandered here and there. We traveled by RV, and sometimes visited with Emmy’s cousins. When we started out in the morning we often didn’t know which country we would be in that night. We rarely stayed in a hotel or ate in a restaurant, and never had reservations for anything. Our Travel concept includes: If we have no schedule, we aren’t late. If we don’t care where we are, we aren’t lost. If we have no itinerary we’re just where we ought to be. If we can’t see IT this trip, we’ll see IT next time. Each evening my Sweetie noted the odometer reading on the RV, and noted the town name. If you care to see the names of the nearly 400 towns, in about 30 countries, where we spent at least one night, visit Towns and Countries
Lutefisk Oh, the humanity!
I’m still sighing after my husband I spent an incredible two weeks in Europe in May…definitely through the back door. Between Edinburgh and Prague, we spent an incredible 4 days near Arhus staying with friends from when my husband was an exchange student there in 1977. I’ve heard him talk about Denmark for years, but only now do I understand all that he loves about the Danish spirit. The joking, the community, why “cozy” is central to their culture, and even the relaxed attitude about sex and cohabitation. I just didn’t buy it until I talked to them all. And oh…the 65% taxation rate? Shocking at first glance until I saw it for myself..all his friends live better than we do with a beautiful home, healthcare, university education and a pension…not to mention 6 weeks to vacation around Europe annually. Perhaps most impressive was their sense of contentment..very un-American.
Nice preview to a couple of days we’ll spend in Copenhagen late August before a cruise through the British Isles. How do we find Richard for a walking tour?
Not that it matters much, but the students on the photo are not graduating university seniors, they have graduated from “Gymnasium” (Danish – similar to UK Grammar School), you can tell from the colour of the band around their caps, and the graduation ceremony you have described is that of “Gymnasium” graduates not university.