The Danish Summer
This summer has been an exceptional one in Scandinavia. On most days, temperature soared in the high twenties, the sun beamed unrestrained from any passing clouds, and the blue waters of the Baltic Sea shimmered underneath. On days like these, Danes, declared the happiest people in the world, pour out on the Strøget, the city’s pedestrian street.
Last week, on one such sunny afternoon, I decided to take a stroll on the Strøget. Denmark had just recently allowed people from southern Sweden in, and I didn’t want to let go of the opportunity to visit one of my favourite cities in the world.
Strøget runs from the town centre Rådhuspladsen through the shopping thoroughfare of Copenhagen to Nyhavn. Nyhavn is perhaps the most recognisable neighbourhood in entire Denmark. It is marked by old pastel coloured buildings and a waterfront, where Danes and tourists sit in open air cafés eating smørrebrød sandwiches. There was a mild cheer in the air, and as is usual in many a European cities, artists occupied corners of this neighbourhood street, punctuating it with their flair.
I stood by a watercolour artist, who was busy painting the bright buildings in equally resplendent colours. Others gathered around a street musician down the street who was doing an encore of Bob Marley songs. Later, I sat at a waterfront cafe, sipping coffee, breathing the air infused with the smell of the sea, listening to the songs from the street singer, and watching expensive yachts bobbing up and down in the Öresund Straight. At this moment, everything looked fine, as if it has always been so. Though it may only be for a few hours, we all who had gathered here seemed to have collectively dropped the fear and decided that things are normal. I relished this semblance of normalcy with each sip of coffee.
I left the festivity of Nyhavn behind me as I walked to yet another favourite spot of mine in Copenhagen — Tivoli.
To the outsiders, Tivoli may seem like just another amusement park. To the locals, it means much more. Tivoli threw its gates open in 1841, when a Dane, Georg Carstensen, inspired by all the amusement parks that he had seen abroad, sought Danish king's permission to open one in Copenhagen. Such was its success that even Walt Disney took inspiration from Tivoli and tried to replicate Tivoli’s mood and atmosphere for his parks.
In normal times, I would have taken a few rides, and relished the artificially generated thrill. But today I decided to stay on the ground and watch others hop into their rides. On the bench where I sat, next to me sat a man eating ice-cream. He was perhaps in his late fifties. He saw me observing him, and smiled back.
“I have been doing this for the past 40 years,” he said, “eating ice-cream here every summer”. Not everyone comes to Tivoli to take the rides. Some come here to relive their childhood in this small fantasy world, a refuge in the heart of the city.
Though my childhood was very different from this man’s, I decided to give him company and got myself an ice-cream as well. There we sat, a safe two meters apart, eating ice-creams on this warm sunny afternoon.
Above us, the carousel twirled, and the kids in it hollered in euphoria.
A version of this story appeared in The Outlook Traveller
