Scandinavia-Denmark ,Norway and Sweden

When Neil and I got back to London from Greece we had a few days to wash clothes and prepare for the next leg of the summer vacation.We planned to visit Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm

We decided to go by car, and stay in camping sites wherever possible .

 

We loaded the Volkswagen station wagon  onto the ferry for the Netherlands.

We spent the night with Elsa in Amsterdam and then  drove via Hamburg to Copenhagen in Denmark.

Amsterdam-The Netherlands.

Hamburg-Germany.

As it was the 70's Scandinavia was knows for its liberal stance on pornography. When we got to the border there they were- one porn shop after the other....That was the last time we saw a porn shop!

For the rest of the trip we never saw any pornography. Every book shop had a closed off section that one could go into and look at pornography- but it was controlled by the shop owner- and no underage person could get in there.

Copenhagen 

Copenhagen 

 

Tivoli Gardens

Copenhagen is very famous for the Tivoli Gardens -the biggest amusement park in Europe.
The park opened in August 15, 1843. One hundred years later the Nazis burnt it down to break the spirit of the Danes ,but they rebuilt it, and it became more famous than before.
It was also the inspiration for Walt Disney's "Disney World" .

The statue of The Little Mermaid-

  sits on a rock in the harbor of the capital of Denmark-Copenhagen.

 Based on a tale  by  Hans Christian Anderson ,the small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction. The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobson son of the founder of Carlsberg Beer, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the prima ballerina, Ellen Price , to model for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen  created the bronze statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. The statue's head was modeled after Price, but as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor's wife Eline Eriksen  was used for the body.

Statue of Hans Christian Anderson in Central Park. New York.

 

Hans Christian Anderson was born in Copenhagen and become world famous for his children's book.

 In the English-speaking world, stories such as "Thumbelina", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", and "The Princess and the Pea" remain popular and are widely read.

 "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling" have both passed into the English language as well-known expressions.

Oresundbron bridge.

The 10 mile Oresundbron Bridge between Denmark and Sweden was opened on July 1 2000 by the Queen of Denmark and the King of Sweden.

Before this date the only way to get a car between these two countries was to take a ferry between Copenhagen and  Malmo in  Sweden. This is the longest road and rail bridge in  Europe.

When we were there in the early 70's we had to take a ferry to get the car into Sweden.

When we landed on Malmo Neil discovered that he forgot his passport at  the bank in Copenhagen.

It is not easy to travel by car in a strange city and country .There were no Euros in those day so each country had their own currency. We had to get some Swedish kronen before we could go to Sweden. Then we had to get papers to get the car on the ferry etc. - I don't blame him forgetting the passport. We had to put the car straight back on the ferry and go back to Denmark and fetch the passport.

Today this would have been less of a problem as we could have used the bridge to get back and forth!

 

 

Gothenburg

From Malmo we drove up the west coast of Sweden on the way to Oslo in Norway.

Gothenburg the second largest city in the Sweden. This is the city where the Swedish car Volvo is made-it is also one of the biggest ports in Scandinavia.