By Max Hartshorne
GoNOMAD Editor

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Watch Out for Speeding Bikes!

It was a very warm and sunny day in Scania. Here is a bike parking lot near the train station in Lund, a city of about 40,000 where they have preserved buildings that you can explore and see just how people lived back in the 1700s.

I often wish that the US would be as aggressive in promoting bicycle use, it's such a sensible and friendly way to get around. With bike stoplights and dedicated lanes on nearly every street, it's plain easier to rely on a bike to get to work.

Sailing Like the Vikings in Roskilde

It's another sunnyhot day in Denmark, and we sailed a Viking boat in Roskilde, just outside of Copenhagen. Our captain spoke in a low voice, telling us to row starboard, or row port, or rest. We made our way out of this harbor. We could see the Viking ship museum on the shoreline.

Tall picture windows framed the relics of the six ships that have been recreated here. A man with a stylus traces the shapes of each plank recovered from the sea, and one-tenth size miniatures can be created. They've built a replica of the 30-meter (98-foot) vessel and this summer will sail from here all the way to Dublin!

Then we had a Viking meal using wooden spoons and forks, simple foods that our host at Cafe Snekkan said were from a menu derived from researching the Viking's diet. Salmon, roast chicken, salads with seeds and nuts.

"The Vikings, as you probably know, weren't the nicest people... They marauded, sacked and took neighboring peoples as slaves," said our guide Rikke Johansen. "We don't glorify them or try to say anything different."

The museum includes a rack full of Viking clothing that people can try on, and pose with swords and long pikes. I took a rare shot of Paul festooned with his cape and sword looking like a fierce marauder himself.

We learned that Danes and Swedes have a word for something that's very important here. To have a long coffee and conversation, that's called a fika. I hope that there are many fikas going on right now in the GoNOMAD Cafe!

Friday, June 08, 2007

The Torso Twisted, Where Mystery Drinks Are Served

This oddly shaped skyscraper is the tallest part of the city of Malmo's amazing transformation. The closing of a Saab plant and a shipyard threw 29,000 out of work. So the city built this new area of parks, connected housing and common areas, environmentally cutting-edge building and development right in this area where the sea laps the shore. It's a beautifully designed place for living and like so much in this part of the world, just makes sense.

We had dinner in a restaurant near the bottom of this tower, and they have a two sided menu. One side is white, and is a normal menu. On the back is a black menu that tempts diners and drinkers to 'visit the dark side,' and allow the server to choose what you'll eat and drink. "But if you just want to order a vodka tonic, go ahead."

Saturday, June 09, 2007

In Copenhagen, US Policies Don't Stir People Up

It's our last full day in Denmark, and today we'll drive up the coast to Elsinore and Kronborg castle, the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Being in Scandinavia has made me think a lot about the priorities here versus what I am used to in the US. I've had this same feeling traveling in Europe from time to time, where I felt that the things that matter most to people and government here are closer to my heart.

The people put the priority into transportation systems that are truly sustainable and reasonably clean for the environment. They pay taxes of about 50% here in Denmark, but get back free health care, university, subsidized daycare, a system of railways, buses, bike paths and trams that makes having a car unnecessary. Their government is not leading them with out of synch war efforts in faraway lands, but instead, spending their tax money in far less objectionable ways.

Despite what our US administration is doing to make us cringe, and wish we didn't have to answer for them, no one here has said a thing about GW Bush or our war folly. Not a peep, not even an offhand remark. As has been the case so many times in Europe, whatever sentiments against our government may be on people's minds just isn't polite to share with us. We find ourselves bashing Bush but no one rises to take the bait.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Inside the Ice Bar, Copenhagen

You enter into a freezer chamber and don this huge furry cape with gloves. Then you order a drink that comes in a piece of frozen ice shaped like a glass. You drink it in the Ice Bar, where everyone is bundled up and it is about zero. After one, you're ready to move to the next bar, which will be a little warmer.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Gold Coast to Elsinore and Kronborg Castle

We drove up the Danish coast today. It was a gloriously sunny day, a good day for the beach. The houses here on the gold coast toward the city of Elsinore were stately and set back from the road. It was, as our guide told us, the high-rent district.

We pulled into where a ferry docks that goes back and forth between Denmark and Sweden. They were going to build that big connecting bridge between the two countries here. It would have made sense since it is about a third of the distance of the longer span further south. But the currents of the water somehow made this too difficult. In the distance we could see Kronborg Castle, a huge square edifice with towers... This was the famous castle where Hamlet was set.

Inside we saw what you'd expect inside a castle -- a vast courtyard, tapestries, paintings and old furniture. But in another wing there was a maritime museum that fascinated me, though I was the only one of us who wanted to see it. The museum showed lifesize depictions of what cabins on freighter ships looked like and some of the models showed modern containerships, groaning with hundreds of stacked containers. They fall off the ships in heavy seas, I've heard.

Ship models of all shapes and sizes waited inside glass boxes. I read a story about Jonas Bronk. In 1639, he bought a 40-square-mile tract of land from the local indians. It was later known as the Bronx. More than 300,000 Danes emigrated over to the US during the heyday of crossings. It reached its peak in 1910, when one million immigrants came to the US.

Some of the ships in the museum were built just to carry this massive wave of humanity. The flow of people continued until about 1921, when quotas began to be put into effect. The ships carried fewer and fewer immigrants and tried to revive their business by taking immigrants back the other way. By the mid-thirties the ships were sold off, there was not enough traffic to keep them going. I also learned that early in the 20th century, the Danes sold the island of St. Thomas to the US for $25 million. Without slaves their businesses there were not worth pursuing.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Dinner at Jacob and Pia Marie's: The Art of Conversation

Our last night in Copenhagen was our best. That's because we met such interesting people and learned all about their lives at an intimate dinner party held in a spacious art-filled apartment in the city.

Jacob Termansen and Pia Marie Molbech are a glamorous and successful couple who photograph top hotels together around the world. They create coffee-table books showing luscious photos of the properties and of high-end homes. He shoots the photos using a 6 x 8 format camera and Pia Marie styles the sets. It's a wonderful arrangement that brings them to Singapore, the US and to this art-filled apartment at different times of the year. They also visit hotels on islands around the world for their shoots.

I sat next to an architect named Torsten who designs buildings in Denmark, Greenland and Kuwait. He told me about the 18 families who run the gulf country -- there are only about 700,000 natives and more than two million guest workers who handle the work. He said the competition is tough -- there are a lot of hungry architects from Egypt, Pakistan and other places so he has to work for much less there. But he likes the work and has many projects under way. He does city planning and large developments.

Jacob, a tall bearded man with an easy smile, showed us around his the large apartment where original artwork filled every wall, and the ceilings were about 12 feet high. On one shelf stood an assortment of phaluses, from nine inches all the way up to three feet. Down on the floor was a cast of an upturned pudenda, looking appropriate there with all of the penises on the shelf above. In each room the artwork called out at you, it was attention grabbing and one-of-a-kind throughout.

We also met a woman who works at a Copenhagen free daily newspaper. It's one of four such freebies in a viciously cut-throat market where the press not only gives the papers away, but home delivers more than 500,000 copies to nearly every household in Denmark. "We are losing about $200,000 per day on this," she said, "but we have to do it so that the outsiders (a company from Iceland) doesn't gain a foothold here."

The mark of a good dinner party is how long you stay seated at the table. With our vigorous conversation and the interesting company, we sat from 8 pm til 1:30 in the morning. It was a fine way to end this visit to Denmark, a country whose people have proved to be among the most dynamic and interesting in the world!

Read more about Max's adventures in travel and in running GoNOMAD and the GoNOMAD Cafe on the Readuponit blog. Visit our Max Hartshorne Page with links to all his stories.

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