Burt's journey to Scandinavia

July 1-July 14, 2004

          Thanks to my daughter Samantha for making it possible,              Dorothea from the tour for help in identifying some pictures. The map below identifies where I traveled with the group. There are seven pages of pictures and comments. The tour group operator is not identified for security reasons.                 

                    

After flying all night on a plane with no sleep, arrival in Denmark

                       Since the hotel was not ready, sleep was put aside and we took a walk through Copenhagen, here our tour director Suzanne, shows us City Hall Plaza

                      

    A typical scene in Copenhagen, I almost rode one of the boats, but as I was about to sign up I noticed that weather might be changing (it poured). On the 14 day trip it showered 12 days, it stayed between 59-69 degrees throughout Scandinavia. This picture was taken from the free city bike Copenhagen makes available (you put a coin in the slot, it frees it from the lock, when you bring it back, you get the coin back-in Oslo, they keep the coin plus a hefty charge).

                                                                

  A tourist trap, the "Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen, they make a real big  deal about this statue, lots of tour busses. The people are in the group I traveled with, said by some to be one of the best groups they ever traveled with

  The train station, you can see bikes rule the day. In the U.S.A. 66% of Americans are overweight, in Scandinavia it is closer to 6%. Gas is $5 a gallon, however with our $2 gas we have killed mass transportation, and in our cities, ride a bike and you get killed.  But we are the king of SUV's, but our excess girths are killing us.

                  In Copenhagen bikes have their own paths on almost all the road. God help you if you step in the bike path.

In the picture on the left you see smart people that came prepared for the showers, in the picture on the right were the not so smart people that brought no rain gear although they soon bought rain gear for a price. A picture I could not get was Croatian men playing a form of "Three card Monty" bilking tourists of their money, when I tried to take the picture a man put his hand over the camera and said each picture cost $100. My desire to live exceeded my desire for the picture

The rain in Spain falls mainly in Copenhagen. By the way unlike Germany, Austria, Poland and France, Denmark managed to save almost all their Jews in WWII. Also it was a myth that King Christian had everyone wear a star of David in WWII so the Nazis would not know who the Jews were. The Danes did help most of the Jews escape to Sweden and many Danes kept up the houses of the Jews until the end of the war.

Take a look at the Kings of Denmark, notice how original their names are! (scroll down for more pictures).

       More Scandinavian Pictures

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