EUROPE TO-DAY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12317, 2 April 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

ONE NOTICES IX DENMARK _ The farms, of course. The visitor cannot but be impressed by them. But there is more besides. Nelson referred to the Danes as the brothers of Englishmen, a fine phrase, and a happy one. But there are differences.

One notices, for example, that there are storks in this land of our brotherly Dane. One notices that the Danish farmers beat the English ones in the rows of books and the valuable pictures in their rooms—books they have read and pictures they can talk about. One notices papers and periodicals takerr in a single family—and read.

There are other things one notices in Denmark... .the fact that (the word Hamlet has no aspirate, a very odd-sounding difference to us; the everlasting drinking of coffee, parsons who still wear ruffs, ai 'd * am " ily doctors who have their annual stipends.

We notice that people go about singing, and before we have been long on Danish soil we shall come across plates of sandwiches iu every hotel—a dozen varieties at least. And no doubt one notices that after dinner the guests shake hands with one another and with their hosts, saying, “May it agree with you.” Then, of course, while in Denmark one looks out for the things about which one has read —Elsinore (Helsingor) where Shakespeare comes to mind for here, so we are told, is the very tomb of Hamlet, conjuring up the last scene of the play. Possibly we come to Roskilde, the burial place of the Danish kings, and to Fredericksborg and Kroaborg with their castles. ■*

We shall be sure to visit the open air museum at Lyngby—a sight not to be missed by any traveller, for here the past is found in the present, and here old time Denmark is waiting for us to wander through, old houses and buil'dings standing side by side ready to give us a picture of yesterday. This open air museum, world-famous now, is a good idea which other countries are beginning to copy.