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eating and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. I always wonder in Copenhagen what they do with
their old people - they must put them in cellars or send them to Arizona - because everyone, without
exception, is youthful, fresh-scrubbed, healthy, blond and immensely good-looking. You could cast a Pepsi
commercial in Copenhagen in fifteen seconds. And they all look so happy.
The Danes are so full of joie de vivre that they practically sweat it. In a corner of Europe where the
inhabitants have the most blunted concept of pleasure (in Norway, three people and a bottle of beer is a
party; in Sweden the national sport is suicide), the Danes' relaxed attitude to life is not so much refreshing
as astonishing. Do you know how long World War II lasted for Denmark? It was over in a day - actually less
than a day. Hitler's tanks crossed the border under cover of darkness and had taken control of the country
by dawn. As a politician of the time remarked, 'We were captured by telegram.' By evening they were all
back in the bars and restaurants.
Copenhagen is also the only city I've ever been in where office girls come out at lunchtime to sunbathe
topless in the city parks. This alone earns it my vote for European City of Culture for any year you care to
mention.
I dined in a crowded, stylish basement restaurant halfway along Nyhavn. I was the only person who
didn't look as if he had just come from the set of
Miami Vice.
All the men wore shirts buttoned to the throat
and the women had big earrings and intentionally distressed hair, which they had to shove out of the way
each time they went to their plate. Every one of them was beautiful. I felt like Barney Rubble. I kept expecting
the manager to come to the table and say, 'Excuse me, sir, but would you mind putting some of this mousse
on your hair?' In the event, the staff treated me like an old friend and the food was so superb that I didn't
mind parting with the six-inch wad of banknotes that any meal in Copenhagen occasions.
When I climbed the steps to the street, darkness had fallen and the air had chilled, but people still sat
outside at tables, drinking and talking enthusiastically, jackets draped over their shoulders. I crossed
Kongens Nytorv, one of the city's principal squares, sleepy and green, passed beneath the soft lights of the
Hotel D'Angleterre, full of yet more happy diners, and headed up Strget, Copenhagen's main shopping
street. Strget is the world's longest pedestrian street. Actually it's five streets that run together for a little
over a mile between Kongens Nytorv and the city's other main square, Raadhuspladsen, at the Tivoli end.
Every travel article you read about Copenhagen talks rapturously about Strget, but I always feel vaguely
disappointed by it. Every time I see it, it seems to have grown a tiny bit seedier. There are still many swish
and diverting stores down at the Kongens Nytorv end - Georg Jensen for silver, Brdrene Andersen for
clothes, Holmegaard for china and glass - but as you pass the half-way point Strget swiftly deteriorates
into tatty gift shops and McDonald's, Burger Kings and other brightly lit temples of grease. The whole thing
could do with a lot more in the way of benches and flagstones (it's all patched asphalt now) and even - dare
I say it? - the odd tub of geraniums. It's a shame that in a country as wealthy and design-conscious as
Denmark they can't make the whole street - the words tumble involuntarily from my lips - more picturesque.
Still, it is pleasant to walk from one end of the downtown to the other without encountering cars, and just
as you reach the western end, when you think that this is too, too dreary and you really should turn back, you
step into the large and colourful Raadhuspladsen, or town hall square. One of the things they do in Europe
that has always impressed me is let advertisers put colourful neon signs all over the roofs and top floors of
the buildings around their main squares. You don't notice the signs in the daytime because they are so high
up, so the buildings preserve that air of stern magnificence appropriate to their function, but when darkness
falls and you could do with a little gaiety, the same buildings suddenly light up with bright advertisements that
illuminate the square and colour the faces of the people below.
I walked across to Tivoli, even though I could see from a distance that it was shut and darkened, as if
under dust sheets. A sign on the gate said it wouldn't open for a couple of weeks. As I walked back across
the square towards Strget I encountered a small crowd by the town hall and stopped to have a look.
Two police officers, a man and a woman, both young and blond and as gorgeous as everyone else in
the city, were talking softly and with sympathy to a boy of about seventeen who had clearly ingested the sort
of drugs that turn one's brain into an express elevator to Pluto. Disorientated by this sudden zip through the
cosmos, he had apparently stumbled and cracked his head; a trickle of blood ran from above his hairline to
his downy cheek. The police officers were wearing the smartest commando-style uniforms I have ever seen
