Guest Blog: Bike-packing across Scandinavia at 64 (Days 9 and 10)

Day 9: Copenhagen, Denmark (31 miles, 244 total miles)

15 June 2024: Saturday 

Being dry at the end of the day is a blessing!

When Hitler’s army invaded Denmark in 1940, the Danes negotiated a settlement without violence. The Danish government continued to govern the country while meeting German quotas for raw materials and food. The country did not require the nation’s Jews to wear yellow stars or register property and valuables. As relations deteriorated in 1943, Germany announced plans to round up all Jews, Danish citizens successfully hid and then smuggled 90 percent of all Jews across the Straight of Oresund to Sweden. 

The Danish people are supposed to be the second happiest on earth, right after Finland, according to the 2024 Happiness Index. The score is based on individuals’ self-assessments along with expert analysis of six key factors:  income (GDP per capita), healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption. 

I started reading The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth, a Brit who is married to a Danish woman and lived many years in Denmark. Booth challenges that narrative. He claims a high percentage of Danish are on anti-depressants, taxes are high, and people are always stressed. Finland has one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the world. But he loves the Nordic people (Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish). 

I have a theory. The Danish are the happiest people because they have perfected the pastry. To test that hypothesis, I will go on a quest for the next six or seven days to find the best Danish Danish in the world. 

I am setting some parameters for a pastry to qualify as a Danish. We can’t just toss any ole pastry into the Danish basket, now, can we? So, it has to be multilayered, sweet, and have some sort of jelly, pudding, or fruit in the center. 

As a professional Danish connoisseur, I will rank it on:

• Light and fluffiness
• Sweetness
• Overall taste

At the end of the trip, before crossing into Norway, I will select the best Danish Danish and determine if this is truly the single most important factor determining Danish happiness. And, if my hypothesis is correct, I will write to the authors of the World Happiness Report and insist they add Danish pastries as the seventh analytical factor. 

Denmark is also the second safest country on earth, right after Iceland (Visionofhumanity.org). 

I started my day at 4am because the rain is supposed to begin around 11 am. Once more, I am rushing to beat the rain. 

My first Danish Danish was purchased at Lidl in Helsingor and walked away with a score of 7. Lidl is a chain reminiscent of Aldi’s, where you buy food still packed in boxes. 

At 6:30 am, I left my room and dropped off my key at the desk. It was in the high 50s as I peddled through a maze of blacktop bike paths behind several communities of Helsingor. 

On this early Saturday morning, not many people were out and about, except a few dog owners walking their pets.

After about 15 minutes, I landed on the coastal highway and began pedaling southward toward Copenhagen. 

The road was relatively flat with the occasional hill. The wind was formidable at times. I genuinely enjoyed the seaside villages, thatched roof cottages, small town sleepiness, and the lack of traffic. 

After a distance, I came upon a long stretch of relatively desolate highway right on the Oresund (Sound in Danish) Straight. With open fields of sawgrass and no trees for breakers, the wind picked up. I didn’t mind because I have grown accustomed to it. At times, I faced a cross wind, which wasn’t as bad, but the headwinds are always a physical challenge. 

At the next village, I noticed a few men walking in bathrobes to the straight.  

When I reached the village of Verbaek, I bought a coffee and a cinnamon roll from a window at a restaurant. Apart from the window sales, the restaurant was closed. I asked if I could sit in their outdoor patio, and the young woman said, “Yes.” But it was locked. So I pushed Heidi down to a bench overlooking the straight while carefully balancing my coffee and pastry. 

I noticed two docks alive with nude swimmers. A few young people in their 30s and one teen boy, but mostly gray haired nudists were plunging into the cold water at the end of the dock, swimming a bit, then climbing back out, drying themselves off, and wrapping themselves in their bath robes again. A few of the women had on bikini bottoms, and the young boy and a couple men had on trunks, but the rest of the plungers were bare.

It was 59 degrees.

At one point, I rode over a bridge with water lilies on both sides. I was immediately struck with memories of a Claude Monet exhibit I once saw in Paris. The water lilies were extraordinary. I am very cultured, I admit. But a friend from Alaska named Carl, encouraged me to visit the exhibit with him, and I was inspired. From one angle, the floating flowers emitted a certain impression and from a different angle, quite another.

From the start of my trip, I was joined on the road by an inordinate number of cyclists, mostly exercise enthusiasts donned in cycling outfits and riding expensive bikes in the beginning. But as we approached Copenhagen, more and more plainly dressed commuters on black, fixed-gear bikes joined us. 

In Denmark, 6 out of every 10 people over the age of six years old has a bike. In Copenhagen 80% own a bike. Some 16 of all trips in the country are conducted on bikes. An estimated 40,000 cyclists cross the Dronning Louises Bo Bridge in Copenhagen alone. Nearly half of all cycling trips (40%) are for work or education, 33% are leisure trips, and 25% are to run errands.

In the past 10 years, Copenhagen invested over $200 million in cycling infrastructure. And in January 2022, the Ministry of Transportation launched an initiative to invest $458 million in new cycling infrastructure. 

For most of the highway from Helsingor to Copenhagen, I enjoyed a six-foot-wide blacktop bike path on my side of the road, and travelers going north enjoyed one on their side. In addition, my GPS took me through several miles of blacktopped bike paths through woods.

I made really good time to the capital. Gradually, there were more and more commuters. Leisure cyclists avoided the city, I suspect. 

Downtown, I passed an encampment of protesters, aimed at stopping capitalist wars. 

Then, I got a flat tire. I sat on the blacktop in some square somewhere pumping my back tire for about 20 minutes until it was relatively firm, but no sooner had I stood up, than it was flat again. I pushed Heidi two blocks to Vester Bike Shop. One advantage of so many bikes in the city was that there are countless bike shops to attend to them. 

Joe, the owner, is Afghan. At the age of three, his parents fled the Soviet invasion to India. He has owned this shop for 30 years, and although he is only 47 years old, he told me, he started fixing bikes at 17. 

I told him I would go get a cup of coffee while he repaired the tire. 

“If you just want coffee,” he said, “I have coffee.”

He brewed me a cup of latte with a pod. As I drank it, another American man came in to look around. He was at least my age, and probably a little older.

“Where are you from?” I asked him.

“California, mostly,” he said. “Also from Maine… and Florida… I got my bachelor’s and master’s from Florida State.”

I told him I was from Panama City Beach.

“I used to have a girlfriend from Panama City Beach,” he said. Then after a pause, he said, “That was a long, long time ago.”

I didn’t really want to talk, but I could tell that he was looking for someone to talk to. Extroverts need the conversation as much as we introverts need the silence.

“I am here for a conference. I came in a day early… I found out that flying on Thursday was much cheaper than on Friday. The savings was more than the cost of the hotel room.”

I asked him what his degrees were in. 

“The master’s thesis was in something that is very relevant today,” he told me. Artificial Intelligence. He wrote it in the 60s, he said, but it is “very relevant today,” he re-emphasized.

“Why don’t you put a puncture-free tire on,” Joe asked me. I was grateful for the distraction. “This one will keep getting flats.”

I am going to upper Norway and Finland, out in the barren reindeer country, where villages are few and far between. I don’t want any more flats. So I told him to go ahead and replace both of them.

When I turned around, the other American was gone. 

Puncture resistant bike tires have a thick tread of 7 mm (1/4 inch). 

Once he had lowered Heidi to the ground with brand new sneakers, he said, “Look at this.” He took a push pin and stuck it into the tread of a tire, flipped the tire inside out and rubbed his finger across the inside. “You can’t feel it.”

I nodded.

“You would have to be really unlucky,” he said, “to get a flat tire with these.”

I rode through a network of gravel paths lined with tall grass on both sides, navigating dozens and dozens of dog walkers, joggers, and bikers for about 15 minutes. 

My room at Cabinn Apartments wasn’t ready. It was only about 11:10 am when I reached the hotel. 

“You can take your luggage to the luggage room if you want,” the young lady told me. So, I took a card and pushed Heidi through a door, down some metal stairs, and locked her inside a storage room. 

I went back to the desk and ordered a $4.50 cup of coffee and sat down in the lounge area to drink it. The rain was hitting the windows and the parking lot was already soaked. Had I left the motel only a half an hour later, I would have hit rain. For once, I got it right.

The mall a block away was a buzz of activity. Many men and women or over 6’2”. Same in Sweden, but here even more so. 

The average height of women in the US is 5’4”. In Denmark, they are almost 5’7”. Research suggests that 80% of height is based on genetics and about 20% on nutrition and health care. In particular, when children get adequate levels of protein, such as milk, in their diet, they exhibit greater growth outcomes (Jagranjosh.com).

I sat at the only available table, suited for five people, and ate a $20 bowl of pasta (including $4 for a Pepsi Max). When I was almost done, group of three older adults and two youth came in and took the only available table, which was for two. I switched with them: My good deed of the day.

All in all a pretty good day. 

Cabinn Apartments ($89/night)

Arne Jacobsens Alle 4, Copenhagen, 2300 Denmark

Day 10: Ringsted, Denmark (40 miles, 284 total miles)

16 June 2024: Sunday

I was awake at 3:45 am. I couldn’t go back to sleep because I was thinking about Palestinians. About the family that my family and I stayed with in Bethlehem many years ago. 

The father was a professor. I studied with his son at IU, who also went on to become a professor of Arabic literature in Michigan. I was at the Bloomington Hospital with the son when he and his wife delivered their first baby. 

I met the father the first time when I traveled to Jordan to give a presentation at Yarmouk University in Irbid. I took a couple of additional days to visit Bethlehem. I had arrived early and the mother picked olives off of her trees and served them for breakfast along with cheese, bread, and Arab coffee. 

The father invited me to return with my family. And a few months later while studying Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman, my wife, our three youngest children, and I crossed over to Bethlehem. The family welcomed us into their home, hosted us for several days, and served us snacks, coffee, and a few meals. 

On our last night at their home, the father asked me why Americans blindly supported Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. 

I had been expecting this. I explained that Americans are not terribly knowledgeable about Middle Eastern affairs or history. They know only what they are told in church: The Jews are the chosen people. So God is on their side. And what they fleetingly observe on the news that Arabs surround Israel on all sides and Hezbollah and Hamas and Al-Qaeda want to eliminate them. And what they see in movies: Europe tried to exterminate them, but they were spared (by God or luck or fate) although they suffered a terrible loss. 

“Those are Europeans who did this to the Jews, so why don’t the Europeans find a place for them. Why did they have to come here to our land?”

He was not wrong, of course. But he asked me why Americans always sided with Israelis, not my opinion.

To complicate the matter, most Americans cannot distinguish between an Arab and an Arab terrorist. 

I won’t use this space to critique the war in Gaza. But I will remind readers that America’s values are intrinsically linked to a formula that innocent, unarmed civilians should never be harmed or killed. Not even for revenge. And American weapons and support should never sponsor a violation of that formula. Much like Lady Justice who stands blindfolded with scale in her right hand and a sword in her left, we must analyze the world according to our formulas. 

When innocent Israeli civilians are harmed or killed or raped, we stand up for them. Period. When innocent Palestinian civilians are harmed or killed or displaced, we stand up for them. Period.

What a beautiful day! 

I checked out of the hotel at 8:05 am and rode west. It was 59 degrees already. Before long, I came upon a blacktop bike path in endless fields of tall grass. For 20 minutes or so, I rode along competing with workout cyclists, dog walkers, walkers, and joggers. 

Then I came to a circuit of blacktop roads that led through parks and a series of tiny lakes. I stopped to take off my jacket for the first time since Day One. It was 60 degrees and only about 9 am, but I was drenched in sweat. Hundreds of sea gulls, ducks, swans, cranes, and other waterfowl screeched for attention on a tiny island in the middle of the lake. A half a dozen landed or took off at any given moment. Ducks swam near the bank. A local jogger stopped to ask me where I was from and to admire my bike. I think he was most impressed that an old codger like me would be biking across his country. 

“It’s warm here” he said. 

“It’s beautiful.”

“Except for the noise,” he said, alluding to the incessant screeching of the birds.

“I don’t mind that. I like that,” I said.

There is something about the Scandinavians. They are sensitive to noise. A half dozen times since I arrived, Swedes and Danes have complained about the noise of children playing or birds screeching. For me, I love the sound of children playing. It is a universal sound of innocence and happiness. 

I remember in Kabul the last time, my room was next to a school, and I could hear children playing at recess during the daytime. I loved it. 

Back on Heidi, we continued on. I saw a family of swans swimming in one of the tiny lakes. Not sure, but I am thinking this may have been Swan Lake. 

On other occasions, I rode through throngs of ducks resting on the bank on both sides of the bike path. Two male ducks didn’t like the fact that I was invading their space and made movements to attack me, or at least give me a piece of their mind. 

I continued along Koge Bay just south of Copenhagen until I found a Q8 gas station and convenience store. I locked Heidi to a park bench in the back grass beside a car wash. Inside, I bought a chocolate croissant and delicious Starbucks dark roast.  I admit, I have become a bit of a coffee snob in my old age. I used to be able to drink anything and become satisfied, but those days are gone. I pine for good cup of coffee, just like at home I have a favorite bowl, spoon, and fork. 

At Koge, I reached Highway 150 and turned west for the last 16 miles. I was making good time. The bike path was still very good and the gusts pushed against me and I rode some tiny hills and I had to stop several times to catch my breath, but I still made good time. 

At one stop, a husband and wife in their 70s passed me riding their three-wheeled bike. It took me three or four minutes to catch them. I had to get a photo of this contraption. When I got close, their tiny dog dangling in a bag on the back began barking at me. The old woman reached back to calm the beast so that he would not jump out, I suspect. And I passed them.

Due to some road construction at Ringsted, I had to take a bike path detour, which led me through woods and the back areas of town. I reached the Danhostel at about 12:35 pm. I had achieved about 9 mph overall. Not bad. 

I had tried in vain to get an answer from the office on Saturday as to whether I had the entire four-person room to myself, but like many other establishments, they hadn’t bothered to answer. 

Now, however, as I straddled my bike, trying to determine which wing of the horseshoe shaped hostel housed the reception, I saw a lady in a black t-shirt throw a bag of trash into a dumpster. I waved, and she waived back.

She was very friendly, and gave me my key. 

“What should I do with my bike?” I asked her.

“Why don’t you take it to your room?” she responded.

Naturally, I always feel best when Heidi sleeps in my room with me. But getting her up the narrow, winding stair case was not simple. At last, I got her up to the second floor and into Room 12. 

It was Father’s Day, and my loved ones back in the US and Honduras and El Salvador began wishing me a Happy Father’s Day!

Before departing that morning, I decided to save some space in my pack, so I ditched the thick plastic bag for laundry detergent pods and put them in my shaving kit. I lauded myself for the great use of space. However, at the hostel when I started brushing my teeth, I realized that one of the pods had burst and leaked onto my tooth brush. Yuck! 

After a shower, I walked about five blocks to an Outlet Mall. At The Burger, I got a Burger Challenge—a double cheeseburger and fries—and a Coke Zero for the low, low prices of $30. What a bargain! Restaurants like to slather the burgers with lots of catsup and mayonnaise, which is always messy. But it was delicious. After 40 miles of peddling and carrying Heidi up the stairs and walking half a mile, I had a Father’s Day spot that needed hitting. And that meal hit the spot. 

I walked a couple more blocks to a supermarket, bought a few supplies, and walked back to the hostel. I gathered all of my dirty clothes and took them to the kitchen and put them in the washing machine. Over the next three hours, I came back and forth to check the progress, and eventually to toss them into the dryer. 

By 7pm, I couldn’t hold my eyes open. It had been a really good day.