One day we hiked and climbed along the rocky bits of the coast near Kungshamn.  Here's one of the views.

I was tempted to title this post "Typical Danish Boat".  Actually, Larry Ellison's new yacht the "Rising Sun" was in Copenhagen.  According to "Power and Motoryacht" it is the largest private yacht in the world at over 450" in length.

 

Compared to the ocean liners in town, it was small...

 

 

Okay, not really.

It is hard to imagine a nicer place to live than Scandinavia.   Between my two trips I've now spent about 7 weeks here, and have visited Oslo, Stockholm, Goteborg, Malmo, Copenhagen, Malmo and a number of smaller towns.  Universally the towns and cities are clean and beautiful (the same could be said of the people).  The landscape is lovely and in Sweden there is a lot of it (it's bigger than California but has only 9 million people) and the climate is temperate despite the northerly latitude.   THe cities are beautiful, transportation is easy, and the countries are full of successful, innovative companies and world-class universities.

 

"Ah", asks the canny American "but what about the taxes?"  Whatever your political beliefs and what you may have read about the social system and tax rates (highest in the world), please suspend judgement unless you've travelled here and spent some time with people who live here. 

 

There is a inescapable feel of affluence in Scandinavia.  Houses are large and well appointed.  People are well dressed and the stores are full of stylish, high tech goods, and people drive nice, new cars. 

 

I almost hate to emphasize this, because it sounds like the ugly American (or 19th century Brit) who expects the rest of the world to be a pestilent hell-hole.  But it is worth pointing out because of the regular stories one reads in the American press about the failures of the Scandinavian system...for example this bilious nonsense from Instapundit.  Being in the country, it just makes you laugh...Jacki and I developed a running gag everytime we'd see a nice Porsche or Mercedes:  "Oh, the poor Swedes toiling under the oppression of socialism.  That poor fellow couldn't afford a Ferrari..."

 

So, given the taxes rates...how do they do it?  Take home incomes are undoubtedly lower than in the US, housing and energy are expensive...  Part of it is surely misleading statistics.  Drop the very, very high earners out and I suspect Scandinavian incomes are very competitive with middle class Americans.  Further, they pay taxes for health and other benefits Americans must pay insurance on, and I wonder if they don't save less for retirement as they can depend on a better state retirement benefit.  Worth doing some research.

 

We were WOIA (WithOut Internet Access) for a few days, so I'll try to summarize.

 

Ann Marie's parents live in Kungshamn on the west coast of Sweden, a beautiful rocky coast area that reminds me somewhat of the Pacific coast, but more of Nova Scotia or Maine (places I only know from pictures).  I'll post pictures later of the hike we took.   After a couple relaxing days (punctuated by spectacular home cooked meals courtesy of Ann Marie's mother Gerd), Jacki and I said our goodbyes and drove a rental car down through south central Sweden.  After a few hundred Ks of forest lined lakes we ended up in Vaxjo, which turns out to be a rapidly growing "InternetCity" with a new university (founded in 1967, but expanding rapidly now) and a vibrant little downtown. 

 

Vaxjo is in the center of Swedish glass and furniture country, so the trip would not have been complete without visits to Kosta and Orrefors.  I found a glass artist I really love:  Goran Warff.  It's a commercial site, but you can see some of his stuff here.

 

We need to return the car to Malmo on Sunday, so we started back towards the Denmark coast on Saturday afternoon, and had some trouble deciding on where to stay, finally settling on the university town on Lund.  Lund is not a very car accessible town...which I normally love, but since we were saddled with a vehicle, getting to a Hotel was no picnic.  The central town is full of one-ways and streets that dead end in pedestrian routes which can't be determined from the map.  We never did find the hotel we were looking for, but pulled into the lovely Grand just before exploding in frustration. 

 

Sunday morning we did a walking tour of Lund, which is just a lovely set of cobblestones and twisty ways (lovely when walking...), then made the short trip to Malmo, also a pretty city.  A quick train trip brought us back to Copenhagen where we stayed Sunday night in "the house of minor annoyances" a Comfort Hotel across from Churchill Park.  The annoyances included but were not limited to:  a bathroom that smelled ever so slightly of sewage; a very aggressive shower curtain; a TV that turned itself off and ON randomly until we unplugged it; and the 20 minutes it took to checkout because the desk was only staffed by a single trainee.

 

Monday (yesterday) we did a little touring of Copenhagen, had dinner with Michael and settled back in at Birkerod.  Today is our last full day...we're back on the plane tomorrow at 3:50pm.

Karlskoga is home to the Bofors Company, a name I recognized mostly from WWII history.  The Bofors gun was an anti-aircraft gun I associate with the British Navy, though it was designed by the Swedes.  As I found out today during a tour of the Bofors Company Museum, the Bofors gun was licensed widely at the end of the 30s and the United States made some 600,000 of them during the war.  They were heavily used in the defense of London as well as by various navies.

 

Further, I did not know that Bofors was owned by Alfred Nobel.  Nobel started with his own company, but did so well after inventing dynamite he was able to buy Bofors (which was founded in 1646!  if you can believe it) and it became central to his business empire.  Karlskoga has a Nobel museum including his laboratory and one of his main homes (later in life he lived in Paris and eventually spent his last years in San Remo). 

 

Karlskoga is a company town with a Bofors school and a Bofors hospital and many of the older housing complexes were built by the company.  Business is declining however, and Jani says people have been slowly moving away for decades.  But don't start mental images of Flint.  Karlskoga is a beautiful place, with well appointed homes, well-dressed inhabitants driving nice cars, wide streets and all those other signs we associate with affluence.

Jani made sure we didn't get too thirsty at the races.  In addition to some nice northern European Pilsners he had "Gin-n-tonic-inna-can" which is really quite a fine idea if you ask me.  I'm kinda surprised it hasn't made it stateside yet given the beverage innovation wave we seem to be in currently.

If you can read Swedish, the official results are here:  http://www.stcc.se/

 

After we went Karting at the outdoor circuit next to the track.  The Karts are 2 engine jobs that are a little faster than I'm used to, but other than one lap where I spun out and got my left rear wheel stuck under the tire barrier, I did okay...only a couple seconds a lap behind Peter who lives nearby.  Okay, 2 secs is pretty huge when we're talking 38 sec laps, but my best lap actually ended up in the top 20 for the day.  I wonder how I would have done if I hadn't had 4 beers in me.

 

 

Anne Marie and Jani live in Karlskoga, and we arrived last night for a stay.  We talked about several agendas, but I (at least) was decided when Jani told me the Swedish Touring Car Championship series was visting Karlskoga this weekend. 

 

Jani's friend Peter picked us up (along with his friend, also Peter, from England) and the four of us went to the racetrack.  The track is quite old, having been a F1 site in the 1930s.  It is a short track, full of tight corners, flat and with excellent visibility.  Most of the day was taken up with qualifying for the STCC championship race, but there was also a JTCC (Junior Touring Car Championship) race of small cars like Suzukis and Citreon C3s, a motorcycle race, a Volvo series made up of S40 and S60s and a Porsche Carerra Cup race (guess which was my favorite).  We missed Formula Renault and Radical races, which were probably quite something to see as those cars are nearly as fast as the bikes. 

 

I had a great time and got plenty of pictures from the pits and show areas.  In addition to the race cars there were a couple of F430s, some new 911s and a Carerra GT on display. 

 

The STCC race itself was dominated by an Audi that started in 1st place, closely pressed by a pair of M3s.  It was clear the M3s were setting a faster pace, but they needed the Audi to make a mistake to pass.  The mistake when it came was on the far side of the track on about lap 15 (of 18)...all I saw was a puff of dust and the 2 M3s were past, only to be overtaken again by the Audi at the next car.  However, he went off again in the dirt and the BMWs went past him and just ran away.

 

The bike race was won by a local from Karlskoga who is called "Crazy Mike".  I didn't understand much else that was said, but every few moments "Crazy Mike" would come over the loudspeakers, which was quite strange to hear...

One of the nice things about vacation is getting a chance to catch up on reading.  I've read "Mind Children" by Moravec about robotics, a terrible sci-fi novel called "Raft" (I actually gave it up before the end), and a couple of Michael's books including part of a Modern Library abridgement of European Philosophy. 

 

In particular I read Pascal's description of his wager and got to discussing it with Jacki.  Basically Pascal makes a purely probabilistic argument for faith.  He points out that the expected return from a wager is the probability of it "winning" multiplied by the size of the prize.  Since the reward for believing in Christianity is eternal bliss if it is true, then no matter how unlikely it is the expected return is infinite...therefore one should have faith.  The obvious (to me) counterargument is what if it turns out say the Norse myths are actually the true ones, and the penalty for not believing them is eternal damnation.  Then the expected return from Christianity is infinity plus minus infinity or some other indeterminate value. 

 

Jacki made an even better point, which I've never read.  What if you made up your own faith that offered infinite reward?  Wouldn't believing it that have the same expected return as believing in Christianity or Paganism or whatever already extent faith?  I like it because it is a reductio ad absurdum of Pascal's central attempt to justify faith mathematically.  On further discussion it points out what is wrong with Pascal's argument:  that if there are an infinite number of possible faiths (ie make up your own) then it is possible some number of them are true while the probability of any one of them being true remains 0.  The expected return is thus infinity divided by infinity...

 

Gotta watch your infinities there, Blais.

We've been staying with Michael and Susan and doing a little touring around Copenhagen and the countryside.  The gallery now has some pictures from FrederiksBorg castle in Hillerod, from Nyhavn Street in Copenhagen, and a great fountain that represents the goddess Gefion and her oxen (sons).  The snake is also from the Gefion fountain.

 

The weather has been spectacular and we've been really relaxed and enjoying ourselves.  On Wednesday, Michael took us to the Football Match between Danmark and England which was won in a huge upset by the Danes 4-1.  The Danish Hooligans are pretty restrained, but it was fun to sit among a bunch of drunken Scandis and enjoy the game, even if we did end up with more beer on us than in us.  Who knew you were required to throw your beer when your team scores a goal?

 

Yesterday we took the train to Hillerod and then to Helsingor to see the castles.  Frederiksborg, especially the gardens, is actually much prettier than Helsingor, but Helsingor is on the sound between Danmark and Sweden...a spectacular location reminiscent of parts of Puget Sound, except with castles.

 

 

This is Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerod, not Helsingor Castle.  But it's prettier.

Michael came back to Birkerod in the afternoon to check out a car he is thinking about.  Jacki and I had spent the morning enjoying the sunshine in their backyard, and choose to accompany Michael back to the city when he went back for his language class.  The trains are quiet and clean, probably the nicest I can remember anywhere.  The city itself didn't overwhelm me at first...the downtown area is much the same as other northern european cities with wide pedestrian thoroughfares lined with shops and cafes, churches and a few other notable buildings, punctuated with cobblestone squares adorned with one of more statues.  Granted, Copenhagen has more sculpture than any city I can remember, but the central city was not exceptional next to Stockholm, Amsterdam, Koln etc. 

 

Until we got to the harbor. 

 

We had wandered north from the center looking for a bookstore, and ended up in Churchill Park watching the ducks.  A natural progression led us to to the Kastellet from which we could see the water for the first time.   It was a beautiful sunny day and the water was spectacular.  We walked back along the waterfront, and were particularly struck by the Gefion sculpture, showing the goddess driving her oxen sons to plough the land she was promised.  I'll try to get a photo later...  The mermaid is indeed little, though awfully cute.  Nyhavn is a really neat street--like the canal streets in Amsterdam crossed with the Seine in Paris. 

 

We met back up with Michael about 8:30 and went to Sushitarian to pick up dinner.  Preparation took them about an hour, so it was late by the time we returned to Birkerod...but dinner was good.   Not as good as the very best Sushi from Seattle or Vancouver, probably due to lack of the exceptional north pacific fish, but very good nonetheless. 

When I die, I want to be cremated and my ashes scattered over a crowd of Danish women.

Just made a short trip to the super market in Birkroed (where we're staying).  Sure, it has everything, but it wouldn't have been too hard to mistake the place for a butcher shop.  The Danes apparently love meat, especially ham products of all kinds.  The fish on the other hand was mostly of the "smoked and salted in the 19th century and still good today!" kind.

Landed in Copenhagen yesterday about 2pm, greeted by Michael and whisked off to their home in the 'burbs.  Denmark countryside looks like Sweden or for that matter the Skagit Valley--lots of trees, fields and bodies of water.  Very green.  It's Sunday, so most things are closed, but I grew up in a town where all the stores were closed on Sunday, and I like the quiet lazy days that result. 

 

Michael and Susan have a beautiful house with a big backyard.  We walked through town a bit...Jacki and Malcolm played by the lake and on the slides (Malcolm being in his 3s and Jacki in her 30s) and then came back for dinner.  Malcolm is about as crazy about cars as I am...which is pretty funny since neither mom nor dad are all that interested. 

"How War Came" ... a book I bought 10, 15 years ago about the immediate origins of World War II, almost entirely focused on just 1938 and 1939.  It's good stuff, because it is easy to summarize as:   Germany felt ill-treated after WWI which led to the rise of Hitler who took ove Austria and Czechoslavkia before Britain and France declared war when Germany invaded Poland.  As if it all happened in 2 weeks.  In reality we're talking a period between Hitler's first election as Chancellor until the start of the war of about 6 years.  Just think how much has changed since 1999 in our world...and how many other ways things could have gone.

Read "The Money Culture" by Michael Lewis.  I really, really like Lewis's books, but this was probably the least interesting.  It is collected magazine essays of his and they are a bit hit and miss.   It is certainly sobering to see the banal excesses of Wall Street, but it gets old.

 

Speaking of getting old, I can't say I recommend reading "The Conquest of Gaul" by Caesar, but it seems like one of those books that should be read.  Once.  Preferably skimming.

 

The way to think about this book is in terms of domestic politics.  Caesar was safely exlied to the provinces out of read of the oligarchic party in Rome.  To read his text straight, the Gauls and Germans kept attacking him for absolutely no reason, so he was forced to march all over western Europe conquering their lands and demanding tribute.  The Gauls and Germans were the fiercist, bravest, most technically advanced group Rome had ever faced, but fortunately at each stage Caesar, with the help of a few heroic (and well connected) patrician comrades and that salt-of-the-earth, Caesar-loving 10th Legion, was able to prevail.  See how heroic that Caesar is?  Modest too.  We really should put him in charge when he gets back to Rome.