My Final Day in Scandinavia

In traveling to Malmo, I couldn’t help noticing the massive boulders and poor land which drove millions of Swedes out of their country.  Without the sun, it’s really bleak and cold.  Today tourists don’t have to take the ferry to Denmark because huge bridges have been built.  When I crossed over from Malmo and landed, I noticed a lady who was frantically telling the porters on the train that her suitcases were missing.  Everyone saw her; she was wearing all sorts of jewels.  I struck up a conversation with her.  In my travels I’ve met kids who were running away from their parents.  In Zurich I met a kid whose parents had sent junior away.  They were running away from him.  In Innsbruck I met an older fellow from South Africa who was running away from his wife, but the lady with the big diamonds was a first for me.  She was running away from her husband.

I arrived back in Copenhagen for the flight back to the United States at night when the prostitutes were all over the place.  It’s a major port with destroyers and huge cargo ships cluttering the background of the tourist snapshots of the Little Mermaid.   At my hotel I went to the lobby and sat for some time and had a nice international conversation with an Egyptian, an Iranian student, and a rich Kuwaiti who acted as our interpreter.  Since we were all of the same age group, the conversation inevitably got around to women.  He said that all the whores in Copenhagen were Finnish.  In fact, he said, many of the Danish population are Finns who have fled their country.  The Iranian fumed about the Shah of Iran and how they wanted to overthrow him and did in 1979.  I countered with how much the Shah had improved Iran.  I’ve learned to never underestimate the value of first hand opinions.  The Egyptian was pretty much reserved.

 

The Citadel is close to the harbor where the Little Mermaid is and I took a photo of the Gefion Fountain which is a major tourist site.  If I haven’t mentioned it, downtown Copenhagen is pedestrian only which helps to keep the streets clean and safe so that the tourists can spend their money.  At night nearly all the vices you can imagine come out in neon.  There are posters in store fronts during the day that are XXX disgusting.  Of course, as I’ve mentioned before Homoland franchises are everywhere.  Dagmar’s Hot Pants Inc.was alive and kicking.

My three week vacation to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden was not one made in the typical tourist mode.  I spent a little more money and had a better time; no more youth hostels and grapes and crackers for supper.  Scandinavia has good accessible food; I could always find it and I could eat when I wanted to.  The cities are clean and so are the bathrooms.  The Scandinavians are a cut above most Europeans.  I found them to be calm, un-pretenscious, well mannered, pragmatic, and disciplined (very little crime and I didn’t notice any graffiti).  Borrowing from Will Rogers; I never met a Scandinavian I didn’t like.