Scandinavia May 20 tour
We are going on the trip starting on May 20th. Anyone else checking in early or wanting to chat ahead of time? We’re from the Boston area. Can’t wait for this trip to start!
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We are going on the trip starting on May 20th. Anyone else checking in early or wanting to chat ahead of time? We’re from the Boston area. Can’t wait for this trip to start!
Comments
My husband and I are from Philadelphia (Main Line) and are excited to join this trip. We arrive in Stockholm on the 19th.
Looking forward to meeting you! Finally someone is out there! See you in Stockholm
Please send any tips as we will be on the June 14 trip. Copenhagen: read this about Christiana if you plan to visit in your freetime:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2024/04/04/all-change-for-christiania-the-freetown-of-copenhagen-denmark/?sh=2fb670215375
I have been to Christiania numerous times and have never felt threatened or unsafe, but I also speak the language and blend in -- even at 80+. It really is no different than what SoHo in Manhattan was like in the '60s - '70s. However, due to the influx of outside groups, I would discourage American tourists from going there. I no longer visit the area.
Just watched a Rick Steves episode on Copenhagen. He focuses a bit on Christiania. Considering how little free time we have in the capital,I think I’m good missing it.
Not sure how much free time you have in København, but if you enjoy WWII history there is the Museum of Danish Resistance which has exhibits and storyboards of how the Danes helped Jews across the Øresund Strait to safety in neutral Sweden during the Nazi occupation. My father (a Jew) was honored posthumously for his (and many, many other brave souls) efforts in rising up against evil.
I always loved Kobenhavn (Copenhagen). I first visited it in July 1971, while I was in the Army stationed in Germany; it was a wild place then as all "restrictions/prohibitions" were no longer enforced then for a few years; when I returned there again on a tour in 1983, it was now returned back to "old Copenhagen," Conservative, etc. as it had been before the late 1960s. I still loved that city, but it was completely different from the one I had first visited in 1971. LOL. :-) BTW, in 1971, it was also still a "fairy tale like magical place with small holiday lights hanging in Tivoli Gardens" and I was also able to see/hear the late Victor Borge perform at Tivoli Gardens, both of which were no longer the case by 1983 when commercialization had taken over Tivoli Gardens, etc. Sigh.
I adored Victor Borge (birth name, Børge Rosenbaum). He had extraordinary talent as a pianist, comedian and conductor. Like many Danish Jews, he found safe harbor in Sweden when the Nazi's invaded Denmark and subsequently became a U. S. citizen. But he always returned to his beloved homeland to perform. I saw him perform/conduct in København, as well as at the New York Philharmonic.
Yes, tomh, Tivoli lost its charm quite some time ago because of tourism, but the gardens are nice and the children love the rides.
kfnknfzk. I remember that Borge returned every year during the summertime to perform at Tivoli Gardens, when I happened to see him there. He would switch from English to Danish to French and half a dozen other languages to perform his comedy and music. I was just lucky that summer of 1971 to be there then (I had seen him, of course, on US TV shows earlier, so I knew him from it.) Tivoli was a lovely experience for me then. I remember speaking with a Danish grandmother in the Gardens then and she encouraged me to see more of her lovely country. :-)
tomh - Borge was brilliant. His phonetic punctuation routine was a masterpiece. I have visited his gravesite in Greenwich, Connecticut where half his ashes are interred with a replica of the little mermaid sitting on a rock above the site. The rest of his ashes are interred in Denmark close to his parents.