August 18, 2015
Copenhagen, Denmark: I meet the mermaid - and a Norwegian
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The Little Mermaid lives with her five sisters. Each girl swims to the surface for the first time when she's 15. The mermaid listens longingly to tales of a world inhabited by humans. One day she rises to the surface and falls in love with a prince on a boat. She saves the prince in a storm. But the prince never knows who saved him.
THE mermaid, longing for her prince, visits the Sea Witch, who gives her legs in exchange for her beautiful voice. She will have a soul only if she marries the prince. If he marries someone else, she will die brokenhearted.
The prince is mesmerised by her beauty. But his parents order him to marry a princess. The mermaid's heart breaks. Her sisters bring a dagger from the witch. If she stabs the prince and lets blood drip on her feet, she will again be a mermaid and live in the ocean with her family.
But she can't kill her beloved prince, so she throws the dagger and herself into the sea. She turns into a luminous spirit, daughter of the air. Her sisters tell her that, because of her selflessness, she will earn her own soul by doing good deeds to mankind for 300 years and will one day rise to heaven.
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THAT'S the story - and there's a bit more to it than that, of course - but the statue in Copenhagen's harbour is far better known. It's been there since 1913, I've been dreaming of seeing it since 1960... and now finally I'm here!
I took a bus and a train into the city this morning and toured the centre by boat. I got to see the mermaid from the back, getting the other tourists into my picture and getting into all of theirs. And, you know, it's not as if I've spent my whole life thinking of nothing else but, yes, there was a lump in my throat when I thought of the naïve boy with his first bike already longing to see the world.
"You'll walk right by it, " our Danish neighbour told me on a campsite in Croatia a while back. "You think it's really big but it's tiny."
I was expecting a statue no larger than a garden gnome. And I'd have been happy with that, given the dream. But she's 1m 25 so, if mermaids are the same height as land-based women, she's three-quarter size. Which isn't exactly small. .
The train into town had another of those bike carriages. Not as generous as from Bremen to Hamburg but to travel with a bike is not only normal in Denmark but encouraged
I didn't speak to any of the bikes' owners. They had their own lives and, anyway, they were bike commuters rather than bike travellers. But I did meet a world voyager at the city's tourist office. He was young and lean and fair and he was charging his computer from a plug between the front door and the counter. The office wasn't in business yet but the door had been left open for leaflets and, what I was after, a map of the city centre.
His name was Marius and he was Norwegian.
I was in scruffy civvies and not obviously a cyclist. So he gave me the usual polite but guarded reply when I asked where he was going.
"Everywhere," he said.
"By which you mean?"
"India."
I presented my papers, as they say of diplomats in strange lands, and from then on we were fellow cyclists on the road, blessed and bruised by the experience.
"I'm going through Iran and Pakistan," he expanded.
I said every government website said to stay out of the first and be wary of the second. But every cyclist I knew who'd been to either felt not only safe but welcome.
"They say the people are often embarrassed by their government and want to show that it's they and not their politicians who are the real country. And then, they're Muslims and so you get that wonderful friendship and hospitality."
"I've heard the same. I'm not worried. I think I'll be safe."
He has no idea how long the trip will take. Not even where he'll end up. He said he fancied going to Nepal and I said I'd visited it by mistake. I'd been in the Indian mountains and taken the wrong fork on a trail and crossed the border without knowing it.
"And did you have any trouble?"
"No, the people waved and I waved back and then I turned round. They were mountain people. I don't think it mattered much to them which country they lived in."
"I'll have to get visas as I go, I think. I think it can take quite a time to get into Iran. I can't get them in advance because they'll have expired before I get there."
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His English was fluent and just about accentless. So far he hasn't left Scandinavia. He's been in Sweden and he's been in northern Denmark, which didn't impress him.
"It's all long straight roads and no shelter. You go north and it's against you and you go south and it's against you again."
The curse of vectors in a crosswind, we agree.
"I've got a hammock tent to hang between trees. I've seen trees that normally I'd consider safe but they've been blown to the ground. I haven't been sleeping properly because for the first two hours I've been lying there in a sweat, listening to the wind between the trees. It's every camper's nightmare to have a tree fall on him, isn't it?"
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We spent a long time exchanging war stories and he declined a coffee because "I want to save my energy for when I need it" and because he doesn't think much of Danish coffee.
"It's not as good as back in Norway."
We part with an exchange of addresses and I walked on to see the sights and buy a ticket for a boat tour. For once I could just sit there and let other people show me the sights.
I've seen the mermaid. I'm a happy man.
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