There is “town vomit” on the streets of Elsinore (Helsingor in Danish), a mere cobblestone’s throw from Hamlet’s castle. Depending on your temperament the stench might evoke either a medieval morosity or a renaissance joie de vivre; in either case it probably isn’t the kind of period flavor the local residents and businesspeople had in mind for enhancing the historical authenticity of this beautifully-kept tourist destination. even with a vigorous breeze blowing in the Ore Sound, the narrow inlet to the Baltic Sea, the drunken Swedes give off an alcoholic haze more lethal to breathe than second-hand smoke. Alcoholics Anonymous should put out a travel advisory.
Hamlet wasn’t the only famous personage to hangout in the castle. The great astronomer Tycho Brahe put some time in there as well, so one of the two ferries that shuttles back and forth across the sound is named after him. The other is called the Hamlet. The silver-nosed Tycho (he lost his real one in a sword fight) made his observations of the heavens at Helsingor, at least when he wasn’t throwing wild parties and feeding his pet dwarf scraps of food under the banquet table. The high living finally got Tycho: it was a burst bladder that did him in, as it was considered rude to leave a party to answer the call of nature. And scanning the bloated Swedes on the ferry that bears Tycho’s name, one wouldn’t be surprised if the same end befell a few of them.
Coming from the Swedish side of the Ore Sound on a Friday afternoon, the ferry is full of people pushing hand trucks stacked high with plastic crates of empty beer bottles. In Sweden, they tax the living be-jesus out of booze — the lowest grade 2.8% beer is more than three dollars a can. So the young and not-so-young alike wheel their empties across, spend the weekend getting hammered in Helsingor, then stagger back onto the ferry, steadied by their hand trucks and the several full crates of beer and spirits on them. Could there be a more fitting ballast for an alcoholic? One surely has to admire the dedication of a hungover guy on his way back from a weekend bender humping all that hair of the dog across the sound to his homeland to tide him over until the next visit to Helsingor.
In town you’ll pass by the Shakespeare pub, as well as other bits and pieces of kitsch, but the rows of houses and the step-gabled churches are very fine indeed. Well worth the visit, if you can hit it at a time when the place isn’t infested with Swedes.
In order to get a nice photograph of the melancholy Dane’s castle with the old streets of the town in the foreground, you have to be very patient, letting the sloppy, red-faced Swede’s weave through the frame, pausing unsteadily to take a slug of beer, or something stronger, then teetering off towards still greater oblivion. At last a perfect shot presents itself: the light-brown brick ramparts of the mighty castle rising above the sea wall, the green copper domes and Danish flags fluttering, and looming close beyond the whitecapped Ore Sound — the forest of smokestacks and apartment blocks of Helsingborg on the Swedish side. The Danish seaside is much more pleasant to look upon, much to the satisfaction of the Swedes who live in the high-rises with a view of Denmark.
That’s the main problem with the Danish coast north of Copenhagen — wherever you look the Swedes are ruining the view, from the booze-hounds in the streets to the industrial installations spread out along the southern coast of Sweden.
Flip Sweden end to end around its southernmost point and it would reach all the way to Sicily. The country is as long as the whole of Western Europe, yet the Swedes decided to build a nuclear power plant right across the water from Copenhagen, the major population center of a nuclear-free country. The plant was to be decommissioned within a few years, but its ominous silhouette will continue to scar the view for quite a while.
On the ferry ride across you can look far to the southwest and see thin white marks scoring the horizon. These are the massive piers of the bridge now under construction which will connect Malmo, at the southern tip of Sweden, with Copenhagen. The bridge will span a distance more than twice as great as that between Hamlet’s castle and the Swedish coast. Perhaps Hamlet’s ghost — or the picturesque appeal of his castle — kept the bridge away. More likely, the decision to build the bridge elsewhere had to do with the imperatives of shipping. It will be a very tall structure, high enough to allow the freighters and tankers that move product, seemingly non-stop, through the passage way into the Baltic.
Amid dire reports that the Baltic is dying, the bridge has aroused considerable environmental opposition. As even the most venal of scientists will admit (I had dinner with one here in Sweden), the effects of the bridge on the circulation of the great inland sea are not known, especially since its construction involved a couple of artificial islands — great chunks of cholesterol in the only artery to the Baltic. There were resignations from the environmental oversight board by leading scientists and lots of protest marches, such as the leathery phalanxes of Swedish lesbians I saw blocking the main drag here in Goteborg. But the bridge was built in the name of European integration, economic progress, and long-haul trucking. The fishes of the Baltic will just have to take up any future complaints with Brussels.
Information highway my arse: it’s the old-fashioned steel and asphalt ones that are still the true symbols of modernity. It truly is the age of bridges and tunnels in Europe: England to France with the accursed Chunnel, Sweden to Denmark with the high span now underway, and soon enough, the tunnel from Ireland to England (the main problem here being the avoidance of World War II bombs buried in the Irish Sea.)
Don’t be surprised when they unveil a plan for a floating bridge from the top of Norway all the way to the North Pole, the high-buoyancy parking lot thick with Winnebagos and tourists snapping photos of the virtual icebergs (the real ones melted or long-since towed away by the Saudi’s), while the kids whine for yet another token for the Disney Narwhal shooting gallery…
But one shouldn’t complain too loudly about those drunken Swedes, nor worry too much about the bridge that will make it easier for them to have their ugly weekends in Copenhagen. Better simply to enjoy the attractions of the reality theme park of fortress Europe with its narrow streets of old houses, its ferries and castles, and its discount Danish beer — while they last.
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