I had never ridden a bicycle through a blizzard. I feared that we would skid
over at the first corner, but all around me doughty Danes, in their quirky
hats and vintage winter coats - some admittedly with snow chains around
their wheels - were zooming to work as if it wasn't minus 5C (23F).
Meanwhile, behind me I was aware of a faint whining noise, getting
ever-louder. My inadequately clothed sons, icicles dangling from pink noses,
were beseeching me to stop for hot chocolate. Again.
We had decided to spend February half-term in Copenhagen because it is a
cyclists' city, and the previous year in Amsterdam had been decreed such a
success by both adults and juniors. To London children, who are rarely
permitted to ride bikes outside parks, nipping about town all day on your
own wheels is a heady freedom.
In a city, a bike doubles the number of things you can visit in a day yet
halves weariness, and meandering through backstreets you discover odd
amusements. Not including an accidental detour through Amsterdam's sex shop
district. Eyes straight, boys!
But I had failed to appreciate that Danish weather is a thick woolly layer
colder than home. For the first few days our holiday took the form of a café
crawl across the city: cycle for 30 minutes until cheeks throb with cold,
pull in for milky drink, stretch it into an hour by the fire with a few
hands of Racing Demon.
The Danes seemed to understand. They have a word for comfort and warmth:
“hygge”, whose closest translation is “snugness”. Hygge is about cheering
oneself up through the winter darkness with small pleasures: an open fire,
candles, a glass of schnapps, a cosy, wood-panelled cellar bar where you can
huddle with friends. In Britain SAD sufferers, like me, are told to stick
heads under silly light boxes: whereas the principles of hygge sustained our
primitive ancestors.
The older I get, the less simpático I am with southern Europe and the more I
feel northern European. I can't be doing with enervating heat, mañana,
siestas and three-hour lunches. Holidays aren't to be squandered, sprawled
on beaches when, with sons aged 11 and 9, we have, maybe, five years of
family trips left.
Many assume it is a hassle to drag kids around a city, but I find this the
least drudgy family holiday. I'm not expected to pedal pedalos, find lost
goggles, rub in suncream or stare at the same beach/pool for a week. In a
city, deals can be struck: an hour of sentimental Danish realism in the
Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery) bartered for a visit to Ripley's
Believe It or Not!, a boy-pleasing freakhouse of furry trout, optical
illusions and pictures fashioned from toast.
Adults can steal pleasure from kiddie treats: at Experimentarium, the kids'
science museum, our sons careened about pressing buttons, while my husband
and I guffawed at the frank Scandinavian sex-education exhibit.
And vice versa: on a cycle around Christiana, the Sixties “free state” set up
in an army barracks, we marvelled at the riot police occupying “Pusher
Street”, the braziers and graffiti that gave it the air of the
post-Apocalyptic movie Children of Men. Our sons just laughed at hippies.
The Little Mermaid is worth a visit because it is so hilariously unimpressive,
but ice-skating outdoors on Kongens Nytorv, a city centre square, was a hit.
Most attempts at educational worthiness failed.
We took a trip from Copenhagen to Malmö, in Sweden, by train over the stunning
new Öresund Bridge partly because I thought it might illuminate a book I'd
read my younger son, Hitler's Canary, by Sandi Toksvig. But my sons were
less interested in the successful wartime evacuation of Danish Jews than
buying their friends bags of Swedish confectionary called Plopp.
If you find pleasure and amusement simply observing how other people solve
life's smallest problems, a city week with kids need not be expensive. We
hire an apartment much cheaper than a hotel and then the game is not to be a
tourist but to live like a native, buying their weird breakfast cereal,
laughing at their rubbish telly.
My sons' favourite thing about Copenhagen was a machine in the Netto
supermarket where you inserted old bottles in return for tokens to buy
sweets. A rare meeting of green and greed.
On this my first visit to Scandinavia, I found much to enjoy. I loved the
cool, bright pastel colours of the buildings, another spirit-raiser against
slate skies. Copenhagen is as handsome and strong-boned as its inhabitants:
wide boulevards opening into huge squares, befitting what was for centuries
the capital of the Baltic.
Yet the Danes seem confident, even playful, with their heritage, taking a
traditional gabled building and adding a modern flourish of steel and glass.
I liked the piquent, salty food, how smørre brod - an array of exquisite open
sandwiches - turned a simple lunch into a dainty feast. I admired Danish
disdain for fashion, which isn't to say they don't enjoy clothes - they
share the boho dressing-up vibe of Helena Christensen, the country's
unofficial Marianne.
But then clothes must last when Danish sales tax is 25 per cent. When I bought
my son a ski jacket and fleece-lined trousers, the bill was a shocker.
But then the Danish favour well- designed, efficient goods that they expect to
last. Copenhagen is, therefore, not the place for a retail blitz. The stores
are showcases for world-
famous Danish designs - Arne Jacobsen chairs, Boden kitchenware, Bang &
Olufsen hi-fis - but it is probably wise to take the advice I was given by a
Danish mum at my sons' school: window-shop, take notes, then buy on the
internet back home.
It is interesting, however, to see what a high-tax society looks like.
Everyone is middle-class (the country has among the smallest differences
between rich and poor) and for the visitor the chief benefit is virtually no
crime. The key to our Copenhagen flat was left under the mat, the bike hire
company said that of 30,000 bicycles they rent each year only 30 are stolen.
There is a calm, unhassled air, perhaps because with 1.1 million people it is
less populated than most European capitals, but also because the Danes, with
their good sense, design aptitude and, perhaps, hygge, seek to eliminate
life's minor trials, particularly those involving children.
Everything is run with efficient and kindly good sense. At Statens Museum for
Kunst there was a free art room where children could be left to paint or
sculpt while parents enjoyed the exhibits. At the excellent swimming complex
DGI Byen, buggies or car-seat-style chairs are provided to take babies over
to the poolside.
Both men and women's changing rooms have little baths to rinse off your baby.
No wonder Denmark is found in surveys to have the happiest children in the
world, when their parents are relieved of so much stress.
NEED TO KNOW
Janice Turner's apartment was booked through DanCenter (www.dancenter.dk),
from £1,080 a week. The Radisson SAL Malmö Hotel (00 46 40 698 4000, www.radissonsas.com)
has triple rooms from £143.
Getting there: SAS (08715212772, www.flysas.co.uk)
flies from five UK airports from £105 return.
Further information: www.visitcopenhagen.com;
www.visitdenmark.com
