Today's Tribune column: "One fine weekend in Copenhagen."

BAYLOR: One fine weekend in Copenhagen

It is convenient geographical shorthand to refer to Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland as Scandinavia, but it isn’t entirely accurate to lump all four together as one. While there are cultural commonalities to life in Northern Europe, one sees myriad differences, too. The Finnish language alone is enough to give pause, as it’s just as likely to confuse a Norwegian as an American.

Look at a map, and you’ll see that the mass of Denmark is a big peninsula jutting northward into the Baltic Sea, and yet still attached to “mainland” Europe by a common border with Germany.

Is Denmark a part of Scandinavia? Given its Viking past, is it Norse? Should it be considered primarily Baltic owing to the body of water that surrounds it? Or, is it generically European, with further qualifiers being redundant?

Beats me, but it’s a fine place for a holiday.

----

In 1985, I learned that the Danish capital of Copenhagen (population in 2009: 1.1 million) lies on an island. An overnight train from Brussels suddenly halted somewhere in Germany, jostling me awake, and I was able to watch as the entire train rolled forward on tracks built into the bowels of a sizeable ferry boat. Rail passengers promptly hurried upstairs for nocturnal duty-free shopping (primarily liquor and cigarettes) and a few well placed drinks at the bar as the ferry quickly traversed the waters to Denmark.

The train then pulled back onto land-based tracks, and an hour later I was in Copenhagen searching for the temporary summertime youth hostel located in a converted ice hockey rink. After check-in, a locally brewed beer seemed in order, but the only choices seemed to be Carlsberg and Tuborg.

I chose one of each, sipping them straight from their returnable bottles while seated quayside in the old harbor, where dozens of other people from all walks of life were doing exactly the same thing in a laid-back municipality utterly lacking open container laws. The chilled lagers were accompanied by brilliant red-skinned hot dogs from one of the ubiquitous, mobile street stands.

Only later did I discover the joys of pickled herring, but nonetheless, a love affair had commenced, and slowly I became enamored of this thoughtful, well organized urban civilization. Numerous return trips followed, and then an inexplicable decade passed between tastes of Danish hospitality. That unfortunate hiatus ended last month, and the Baylors enjoyed four marvelous days in clean, friendly and rewarding Copenhagen.

Copenhagen stands on its own merits as a tourist destination, with top-of-the-line museums, architectural treats from past and present, eye-catching shopping, diverse dining, an exploding craft beer scene, leafy parks, the requisite nightlife, and much more, but my enjoyment of the city goes well beyond these, because my three best European friends are Danes.

Two of them currently reside in Copenhagen, although their ports of call change frequently. I met two of them in the USSR in 1987, and the third in Copenhagen later that summer. All three have visited New Albany and survived the inherent culture shock, and we’ve met in numerous European locales for fun, conversation and good beer. All three speak perfect English, and between them, there is added fluency in Russian, German, Spanish, Swedish, and even pidgin Japanese. One’s a high tech corporate operative, another is an art dealer specializing in Soviet-era Russian paintings, and the third a journalist.

Going out on the town with these well-traveled, informed gentlemen is a mind-expanding trip irrespective of continents, and the simple act of being acquainted with them always reminds me that while Denmark remains imbued with a Nordic sensibility, it can be flagrantly cosmopolitan while retaining an almost Bavarian gemutlikeit when it comes to eating, drinking and enjoying life’s rich bounty.

----

I’ve no real intention here of recapping Copenhagen’s tourist sites. You can read about Tivoli, the Little Mermaid, the stunning new opera house and the Stroget shopping street at the library or on line. For me, it’s always been about wandering the streets, sniffing around, and trying to sense the pulse of a place. The most recent journey was no exception.

I found it noteworthy that in Copenhagen, two-way “arterial” streets, traffic calming, bicycle lanes, bikes, sidewalks, pedestrians and public transport (buses, which replaced the trams a quarter century ago) all exist on the very same grid.

While a handful of noisy and misinformed New Albanians insist that such a scenario is unimaginable, inconceivable and threatening, right there it is, working exceptionally well in Copenhagen – and shouldn’t New Albany’s much smaller size make such co-existence more achievable, not less?

Then there’s Freetown Christiania, formerly a military area phased out by the government in the late 1960’s, and subsequently occupied by counter-cultural types, squatters and a goodly number of marijuana dealers in search of a commune. Christiania remains a semi-autonomous neighborhood of around 900 people sans comprehensive ordinance enforcement and consistent taxation, occupying roughly 85 acres of what is becoming prime real estate along the rapidly gentrifying harbor area.

To stroll through Christiania is to see that there actually is order and a healthy dollop of self-government, with children playing, a bicycle assembly shop, gardens, cafes, pubs, theater, and music. Will the thirty-year social experiment continue, or can we expect to see the commune re-absorbed into the fabric of Copenhagen?

I don’t know the answer, although the moribund M. Fine building on Main Street in New Albany is now speaking to me in an entirely different way than ever before.

Freetown New Albania, anyone?