Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lated, most literate, most prosperous, most demographically homogeneous, most socialist-
ic, and least churchgoing corner. This most highly taxed corner of Europe likes its system.
An exceptionally affluent society, it chooses to sip rather than to gulp. It's a traditionally
blonde corner of Europe that struggles with immigration issues. And Copenhagen's fam-
ous hippie commune, now more than 40 years old, is standing strong against a rising tide
of free market trends.
There's plenty in Denmark that Americans who travel as students of the world can
ponder in order to spice up their take on well-worn social and economic issues back home.
This chapter delves into a few of the joys and challenges of Danish life. It also serves as a
practical example of how one European country embraces that continent's more socialistic
system and faces the immigration challenges that I discussed in Chapter 3. This snapshot
of Danish life is a reminder that you can glean powerful lessons even when you travel to
more comfortable countries that don't seem so different from back home.
Wherever you travel, you encounter societies that are driven by a desire for their people
to live well. Denmark seems particularly adept at this feat. In survey after survey, when
asked whether they're content with their lives, the Danes are routinely found to be among
the happiest people on earth. With each visit to Denmark, it's become my mission to figure
out: What makes those Danes so darned happy?
Expensive, highly taxed, and highly efficient Denmark confuses me. The affluence of
Denmark's Scandinavian cousin in Norway can be explained by their North Sea oil bon-
anza. But the Danes' leading natural resources are wind power, pigs, and pickled herring.
Considering the very high cost of living here, the Danish lifestyle seems richer than their
modest after-tax incomes would suggest. In fact, the Danes live extremely well. Traveling
through what seems to be a fantasy land, you keep wondering, “How do they do it?”
First off, there's the obvious: Denmark is, simply, pleasant. I'm impressed by how se-
rene things are, even in the bustling capital of Copenhagen. Their subway is silent, auto-
mated, on the honor system (with random ticket checks rather than turnstiles), and fre-
quent—trains go literally every two minutes. The streets are so quiet (thanks to downtown
pedestrian-only zones) that I don't yell to my friends from a distance… I walk over to
speak to them in a soft “indoors voice.” On my last visit, I saw an angry young man at the
Copenhagen train station barking into his mobile phone—and it occurred to me that in a
week in the country, that was the only shouting I'd heard.
When you get beyond Copenhagen and travel into the Danish countryside, you find
yourself saying “cute” a lot. Thatched-roof farms dot a green landscape of rolling hills
and fields. Sailboats bob in tiny harbors. Parents push kids in prams along pedestrian-only
