Copenhagen

"Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but its your choice whether you let it affect you or not." -Valerie Bertinelli

I've seen many lists that rank the "happiest countries in the world" and like clock work I always see countries from Scandinavia at the top.  I guess part of this trip held the purpose of finding out why.  How is it that a place that is dark for huge portions of the winter and windy the other part of the year have people that are year in and year out the happiest?  What things in American life make us "unhappy", however science chooses to define that word.  Sitting in traffic is surely an unpleasant experience, as is poor weather, a job you dislike, getting a paper cut, or the sound of your alarm in the morning, but certainly the people of Denmark deal with those as well.  So what is it?

I am traveling with two of my college friends.  Garrett, an old roommate and one of the most laid back people you will ever meet.  And Branden, a guy I spent many college nights with talking soccer and hitting the bars in Cotati.  We arrived in Denmark on Sunday so it has taken me a little while to get around to adding to my blog.

Our first experience with this new land was on the train from the airport to the city center.  We all purchased a ticket, as anyone would do when riding a train, and it was understood that at some point that ticket would be either checked by a conductor or else needed to exit through a turnstile.  Both were wrongful assumptions.  We arrived on the platform to see a staircase taking us to a main street in the city.  Evidently train tickets are purchased on the honor system.

We spent that night treating ourselves to a few beers to shake off the jet lag and exploring town.  Nyhavn is a neighborhood on the water, complete with colorful buildings holding restaurants, bars, and shops.  The number 67 house in Nyhavn is the old home of Hans Christian Andersen, the most famous resident of Copenhagen and author of The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, and The Emperor's New Clothes.  Even with the crowds the sights, sounds, and smells of Nyhavn were worth the trip.

Our first full day in Denmark we challenged any normal travel advice and immediately took the train out of town to Malmo, Sweden.  Malmo was nice but lacking in anything substantial.  It was windy and a little quieter than Copenhagen.  We explored for a few hours before having lunch then heading back.

In the evening we bought tickets to Trivoli Gardens, the second oldest amusement park in the world.  According to the Danes, Walt Disney took many ideas for the original Disneyland from this park.  I could definitely see similarities.  I only went on two rides.  One was a steel roller coaster that Branden and I road.  The other was a huge tower that your chair slowly ascends before dropping you to what feels like a horrific death.  I sat next to a boy that couldn't have been older than 10.  I asked him, before we went up, if he was scared.  He confidently told me he wasn't which helped me keep my nerve as well.  As we slowly climbed upward, and the city unfolded beneath us, I felt tension turn to anxiety.  As my newly made friend to my right started dropping F-Bombs, I felt anxiety turn to fear.  I wish I could tell you that the wind was chilly at the top or the view was amazing but, no.  I only had enough nerve to be completely terrified before making it back to the ground in what felt like half a second.  I didn't enjoy a second of it.  That is my dramatic account of a routine ride at a theme park.

The next day was spent at Christiana, an abandoned military barracks that was taken over by squatters and turned into a small community.  The green light district has a sign that read something like "Welcome to the Green Light District.  Photography is not allowed and we remind you that it is still illegal to buy and sell drugs."  The authority of the sign was slightly undone by the five or so vendors standing ten yards away selling weed by the bag.  Needless to say, we did not spend too much time here.

As we went around town, touring historic fortresses, parliament, and shopping centers, I tried to understand the recipe of their happiness, as if a signpost on a corner would outline it for me.  Copenhagen is a very bike friendly city.  Bicycles get their own sidewalks, pedestrians another, and cars share the road in a cooperative and polite manner.  Rarely did we hear a car horn or screeching tires.  It also became apparent that in the rows of bikes we would see outside of buildings, very few were ever locked up.  People trust people.

We were also witness to a sanitation worker giving plastic bags to a homeless man full of recycling.  A small gesture from him that probably had a relatively large impact on the day or week of the homeless man.  No one ever seemed to be in a rush, or upset, or worried.  People handle their business and expect others to do the same.

Denmark is one of the happiest places on Earth not for the weather, or the cheapness, or the historic palaces (everywhere in Europe seems to have those), but rather that people do what is expected of them and nothing that isn't.  If a bike is unlocked, they leave it.  If it rains, they deal with it.  They are happy because they choose to be happy.

I look back on my life, and the last few months when I might have found myself unhappy, and wonder how much of it was chosen.  Surely if happiness is a choice, so is unhappiness.  We control our perception of things whether we care to admit it or not.