Christmas in Copenhagen 1970

Like many GI's who extended their tour of service for six months in Viet Nam, I took advantage of the free 30 day leave to anywhere in the Free World.  But instead of going home as 99 out of 100 did, I took what I assumed may be my only chance ever to go to Denmark and visit my relatives over the Christmas 1970 holiday season.

In Copenhagen, I stayed with my family.  At my Aunt Ellie and Uncle Poul's apartment, I took a short nap and we had dinner together.  Then I went with my cousin Frank and his wife, Suzanne, and wound up staying with them during my leave.

I was surprised to find that it didn't get light at that time of year until about 9am and the sun went down about 3pm.

Although we went out to a few places and visited a small city museum, I found myself during the day taking long walks across the city.  I'd start from their apartment on the south side of the downtown area, then walk north until I reached the Little Mermaid statue.  I stopped in once at Churchill Park, within sight of the mermaid, and visited the Danish Resistance museum. and another time I stumbled into the Royal arms museum with rows and rows of firearms, knight's armor, a V-2 rocket suspended from the ceiling, and a tank in the back yard area.

Once, we visited Harry, Suzanne's father, Harry, a puppeteer, an actor in Danish films, and currently protraying a Julemanden (Santa Claus) at a candy shop.  He served us Swedish glogg (hot mulled red wine) and asked if I could identify the puppets in his window.  One was a Beefeater (Tower of London guard) and I misidentified another as Lincoln (it was, of course, Hans Christian Anderson).  When, a few days later, we went down one of the pedestrian shopping streets near city hall, we popped in at the candy shop where Harry was at and he filled my pockets with candy as we laughed.

Suzanne and I toured Carlsberg brewery and I noticed swastiks all over the place.  I thought at the time that it had something to do with the Nazi occupation, but I would later learn in my reading that swastikas were actually universal good luck symbols and I assumed these predated Nazi criminals.

We saw a French caper movie with Danish subtitles together one night.  Frank explained what was going on but I was following it with no trouble at all.

Downtown Copenhagen has a number of interesting buildings, including the Bourse, which is the stiock exchange, with its corkscrew spire atop it.  It is across from the downtown palace.  Walking across town from Frank and Suzanne's house to the Little Mermaid statue took me past the Queen's actual residential palace which is north of downtown. (Looking back, I wonder how far I actually walked each of those days.)  There's also a canal that circles around the downtown area, probably a layer of protection in the city's earliest days.

One day, we went with a friend in his car up to Elsinore on the northern side of the island where Copenhagen is located and took the ferry across the Kattegat to Helsingor.  As we put out to sea, my cousins pointed out Kronborg Castle to the north where Hamlet is set.  (In fact, I recall having just read Ernest Borgnine's autobiography about his small theater company which went to Denmark after World War Two to perform Hamlet at the castle.)

We did some window-shopping in the small Swedish town, which, to tell the truth, I found pretty boring.  We did some more on the Danish side and stopped, I think, at a small cafe.  On our way back to Copenhagen, we paused at the Queen's summer palace which is in the center of the island.  Surrounded by a moat, as I recall.

We did go out to public parties a few times and I did some drinking to which I was not accustomed.

I don't recall much about Christmas itself.  As for New Year's, I was drinking Scotch during a quiet party at Frank and Suzanne's apartment, and Frank, possessor of a hollow leg, killed most of the bottle so I was sober by midnight. (For the record, I don't drink and this was on the level of experimentation.  I decided I didn't really enjoy the taste of liquor or having my head in a toilet so I rarely drink except for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 every six months or so, just for a different taste I'm a few years behind on that.)

At the end of the 30 days, I headed back to Viet Nam where I was deeply disappointed to find I had missed the Bob Hope show at Long Binh which had included Neil Armstrong who had landed on the moon just a few months before.