Adventures in Scandinavia 1977

Five years later, after my first trip to Europe and making relatively modest money as a humble clerk, I decided to go to Northern Europe to see where my pre-English ancestors came from.  By the time I came home then, I was streetwise and knew what I was doing in just about any western country.  Now I had a little more money in hand, a really good Minolta 35mm camera, and the all-important 21-Day EurailPass to the trains of Europe.  Staying in youth hostels this time was not a consideration.

In September, 1977 I flew out of Chicago and had a stopover in New York's Kennedy airport where I saw an excellent example of East Coast Paralysis (ECP).  For example, our bus, bulging with people, ran into a traffic jam at the airport.  Our flights were to leave in just a short time and the people wouldn't just get off the bus to walk one block to keep them on schedule.  I told a couple of them that this was really crazy and that I was going to get off and walk.  They were absolutely astonished.  New Yorkers seem to have corned the herd mentality.

 

 

I flew SAS over Greenland, Iceland, and saw England in the wee hours of the morning after about eight hours.   That was the easy part.  I consider the East Coast people very lucky to have their flights free of connecting flights and airports that are in town.  (Thank goodness for Chicago).  This time I wasn’t going to be sandwiched between two fat bodies.  Those seats by the exit doors are prime destinations for tall people.  I don’t care what anybody says, the in-flight food was great and those steamed towels were wonderful.  When we landed in the Netherlands passengers were searched by officials in white gloves. My Boy Scout knife caused some discussion, but it was no big deal then.  Most of the male backpackers I knew carried knifes for protection.  When we landed in Denmark, I wasn't impressed by the Danish capital's airport, in fact, it was rather obscure looking. 

The SAS airport bus took me downtown past tidy conservative hotels with multinational flags fluttering all around them.  My plan of travel was mapped out in the form of a standard circular route from Copenhagen around to the southern Island of Fyn to the North Sea, over to Sweden, up to Oslo, over to Bergen, back to Värmland and Lake Vänern, east to Stockholm and south to Väaxö and back to Copenhagen.  The time allocated for each stop usually depended on the interest of a particular city and the distance already covered because I had only three weeks’ vacation this time.  I was glad to leave “The Man” for a while.