"God dag." "God dag!" Yeah! Thank you for being here, I'm Rick Steves. I think that's
Scandinavian for good day, "god dag." I mean it's a wonderful place to travel
and the fact is, Scandinavians speak such good English it's one of the most easy--
the easiest places to travel. We're gonna spend about the next hour
talking about, what I think, are the highlights of Scandinavia. And if you
look at the map you can see the northern part of Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
that's sort of Scandinavia proper. Finland, we think of as part of that, but
ethnically that's a different language group and so on, and a little side trip
from Finland, south to Estonia, one of the most accessible parts of the former
Soviet Union. When we think about Scandinavia, each of these countries is
very distinct, but they're also very similar. And I want to talk about the
similarities and I want to talk about that did--distinctiveness, and I want to
remind you, as we go through all of these countries today, all of the details are
in my Rick Steves Scandinavia book. I just love working on this book. We've been working on this book for
about 20 years now, bring it out with a new edition every year or two, and
this gives you all of the latest as far as prices, and specifics, and sightseeing
ideas. When I was putting this slideshow together, it occurred
to me, rather than talk about the same things in Stockholm,
Oslo, and Copenhagen, there's so much that is similar
that I'm going to dedicate the first part of the presentation in
generalities, and it'll work whether you're going to the capital of Denmark,
Norway, or Sweden. And I don't want to encourage you to think, "oh they're all
the same so I just go to one city and that's it," you'll find that they
are distinct, but at the same time you'll find,
for instance, beautiful pedestrian-only
centers in this richest corner of Europe. Scandinavia is very wealthy, lots of
commerce, and everywhere you go ,whatever capital city, whatever small city, you've
got a pedestrian-only core that's very people-friendly. Scandinavians have the
shortest days and the least sunshine in Europe. Consequently I think they are the
biggest sun worshippers in Europe. When there's a little sun they'll be out
enjoying the sun, if they don't have it they can go into cafe that makes fake
sun, you see. And--but you'll find all over the place in the--especially in the big
cities, beach cafes with imported sand on the
harborfront where people have these lounge chairs, and their fruity cocktails
and it's almost like a trip to the Caribbean without leaving Copenhagen. Also in Scandinavia you'll
find healthy people that are really into the outdoors, and
when appropriate they do a lot of biking. Denmark and Stockholm are two of the
very best cities in Europe for biking, and you'll find bikes minimize the
traffic congestion. I mean if each one of these bikes was a car, there would be no
place to walk. Scandinavians really appreciate working, together being
sensitive to how the community can function, and they have these loaner
bikes in the different cities, programs were innovative
and now they're popular all over Europe,
and that's something that works really well in Copenhagen and
in Stockholm. In Scandinavia you've got well-designed tourist industries, you've
got tourist information offices that used to be genuine information offices, now
they are advertising agencies in disguise. They have to make a profit, they
don't give you all the information on the front top desk unless the people pay
to have that information there, but they still are a good information service. You
need to go there and you need to pick up the information. Ever since I was a kid
traveling through Scandinavia, they've had brochures in English for each
capital that really tell you what is available today. You
want to pick up that "What's On in Oslo,"
"This Week in Stockholm," and so on, and then you want to sit down
and organize your time, taking full advantage of those aggressive tourist
information services. I mentioned Scandinavians speak English very well. You
can get a job in Scandinavia speaking just English. I mean you go to the
airport and there's no Scandinavian there, it's just going to be English, because
everybody just assumes you speak English. And when you do find the Scandinavian
languages, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, they're very close together, they can
almost understand each other's TV. And if you look at the sign, if you just speak
English, you can pretty much understand what you're looking at. This is a fantasy
price, three or more for ten crowns a stick. Can you read that? Now you've got to be a
little bit bold to make educated guesses, but after a while in Scandinavia, you can
read those signs and pretty much guess what
they're trying to tell you. You need to be in that frame of mind, "let's make an
educated guess." Scandinavian public transportation is
excellent. There's an ethic that they will invest
in public transportation. They don't have enough population up there to merit
having hourly trains and so on, so you won't have the train service you find
farther south where you've got more
dense population, but the trains are excellent,
the train stations are well organized, and the investment in
infrastructure is such that when you land at the airport, you can assume
there's going to be a train taking you right into the center of town. It is interesting in Oslo and Stockholm
the airports now are way to the north, but you don't have that frustration like
in Denver where, "how on earth am I going to get into town now?" You, at the airport,
just follow the crowds, they go right downstairs into a hundred-mile-an-hour
non-stop government-subsidized shuttle train, that zips you into the town center. It really is an amazing system. And just
from a travel point of view alone, I like delving into public transit in
Scandinavia, to see how good the subways are in the cities and so on. Driving in Scandinavia, distances are
huge, population is sparse, therefore transp--the traffic is sparse, so
you don't have multi-lane freeways, normally you got two lane highways. And
you rarely have much traffic up there. And here's a beautiful
little sign in the--in Swedish here, and it
would say "søvnig? Stopp og sov." Now I don't speak the
language, but I can bet that says "Sleepy" Stop and rest," you see. It's just fun to look at the
languages, and understand what's being said, and how Scandinavia is looking out
for everybody. Scandinavia is the least church-going
part of Europe, but I think their religion is humanism. They really believe
they can come together as a society. Consequently, Scandinavia's the hi--
most highly taxed part of Europe, and you can ask your
Scandinavian friends, "how can you so docilely pay
such high taxes?" I love to sit down with my Scandinavian friends
and ask them these kind of questions. They'll say, "well what's it worth to live
in a country where there's no homelessness, no hunger, and where
everybody regardless of how wealthy their parents are has access to quality
health care and education?" They're not Crusaders, that's just a
reasonable social ethic if you're a Scandinavian. It is Europe in the extreme.
And when you go to Scandinavia, you'll find the most affluent, most educated,
most highly taxed, most least church-going, and most content corner of Europe. It's a
fascinating place to check out, just from a social point of view. You'll see
father's with the baby in the park, because in Scandinavia you got 16 months
of paid paternity leave split between the mom and the dad, it's use it or lose
it The government--it's not good for
business it's good for family values, the government wants the dad to know the kid.
You gotta take time off work. That's a pretty aggressive sort of a
social policy and it's very Scandinavian. These guys are nicknamed "latte dads"
because they actually cause congestion in the little coffee shops during the
middle of the day with their strollers. I love traveling through Scandinavia. I'm
Norwegian and when I get into Scandinavia I feel, "this is my country, my region,
these are my people." And then when I cross from Sweden or Denmark into Norway
I realize, "oh no, these are my people." It is so striking to me, as a Norwegian,
to feel like I'm with my clan in Scandinavia and then realize, "no,
there's something even more in sync with my heritage." The same would be true if
you're Danish or if you're Swedish. When you travel there's that
local pride, and you feel it, it's quite exciting.
Also in Scandinavia there is a generous spirit of
immigration, and Scandinavia is dealing with the challenges of having poor
people doing their hard work in poor neighborhoods. And that's just as
complicated as here in the United States. You'll find a lot of immigrant
communities, especially in the big cities, and along with that comes very good
communication between the developing world and Scandinavia, you can go
into little communication shops and so on, and you've got
colorful, affordable restaurants. You've got beautiful ethnic restaurants
bringing some spice to the food and some affordability, because they're designed
for the immigrant workers that don't have a lot of money. You'll find the
cheapest, most interesting food will be ethnic food, made by and for the
immigrant community. And it is the immigrants that will run
convenience stores that are open late at night. So
you got the 7-11s run by immigrants, generally. And I want to
remind you, a convenience store is a convenience, it's not a budget. It's cheaper than a restaurant,
but that's not saying much. You can go to the 7-11, and 7-11
by the way is a good place to eat because they've got stools, they've got
tables, they've got microwaved fast food, they've got all sorts of things under
a glass counter, and it's just an amazing value if you want to sit on the main
drag at the 7-11 without going broke. And you may think, "I'm
never going to go all the way to Europe to
eat at a 7-11". Wait till you see the prices in Norway,
you'll be thankful for that 7-11. But if you want cheap food you go to the
grocery store, the supermarket. That's half the price of that convenience store.
Go to the supermarket, put together your picnic, and then go down to the main
harbor where they've got picnic tables set out for people like you and me and
middle-class Scandinavians. Remember, Scandinavians are aware of the high
prices. This man is selling beer for two dollars
a bottle. It cost twelve dollars a bottle at the bar, but you get it for two
dollars a bottle at the 7-11, and you sit in front of the bar enjoying the
view with all the young people drinking beer who can't afford the bar. For years
I took my groups to Scandinavia and they were impressed by how many kids are
drinking beer. There's not more young
people drinking beer, it's just they can't
afford to go into the bar. They're sitting outside and
drinking their beer that they bought from the kiosk on the corner for two
dollars a bottle. You'll find lots of teenagers who are drunk and out in trucks
that are decorated, just having mobile parties during July--June and May. This is
because this is graduation time, and Scandinavia is very into pragmatic harm
reduction. Of course they don't want their teenage kids drinking, and getting
all drunk and everything, but more than that, they don't want 'em drink and drive. So rather than parents telling their
kids to promise them they won't drink and drive on graduation parties, the parents
host the keggers. The parents rent a truck with a driver, the kids decorate
the truck, and they go from house to house, and the parents pour the beer.
And you see that all over the place.
It would be a hard sell in America, but in
Scandinavia the parents just don't want their kids to die. So they pour the beer,
it's very pragmatic, it's very Scandinavian, and it's a fun part of your
travels in May and June. The history of Scandinavia goes
way, way back. Remember during that barbarian times you
have all sorts of Viking civilization up here. The word "Russia" is a Viking word.
The Vikings went down and populated western France, Normandy, the Northmen.
They were so impactful for a whole generation in that part of Europe, people
close their prayer not by saying "Amen," but by saying, "deliver us from the
vikings, amen." That was the standard close for prayer
in France for a long time. And then later, the assimilated Normans invaded England
in the Norman Conquest. So you've got this Viking impact, and when you go to
Scandinavia if you know where to look, you can see traditional--
thousand-year-old Viking ceremonial graveyards, stones like Stonehenge shaped
like a ship, and you can find old tombs in the middle the countryside anywhere
in Scandinavia. When the Vikings became Christian, that's considered the end of
the ancient times and the beginning of the Middle Ages, and that was about a
thousand years ago, and you've got that woodworking technique of the Norwegian
Vikings put into church building, and the typical church is called a "stave"
church, a "stave" church. Unfortunately, most of the architecture in
Scandinavia's wooden, and it's cold, and wet, and dark up there, they had
to have fires to keep warm and dry, and they had a lot of booze,
and they got a lot of drunk stuff going on, and a lot of those places
just burned down. Very little of the Middle Ages Ages survives
because it was all wooden. That which does survive is collected
now in open-air folk museums. In every capital in Scandinavia you will find an
open-air folk museum gathering together traditional cabins, and schools, and so on
from every corner of that country, and saving it there with folk music--here's a
rare band of left-handed violinists. Check it out. And you've got dancing,
you've got crafts, you step in and people are role playing back then. It is
delightful tourism on a lazy Susan. Anybody interested in traditional
culture and history. You can go to the whole country just walking through that
open air folk museum. You'll find it in Bergen, Oslo, Stockholm,
Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Tallinn in Estonia.
They've all got good open-air folk museums and I am a
sucker for those things. Also in Scandinavia you've got a
lot of museums that are very expensive, and when you get there it's like, "what's
the big deal?" This is a leprosy hospital in ber--in
Bergen right here. But the admission ticket often or generally comes with a
guided tour. Ask for one of the docents or the staff people to take you around
and give you a tour. Oftentimes it's a private tour, or
they'll say, "there's an English tour leaving in 10 minutes wait right here,"
and then you get a great value for your ticket price. Then you understand, Henson, the guy from Bergen did all this
study on leprosy, in fact the disease is named after Hansen, Hansen's disease,
you learn about the whole thing there in Bergen. Suddenly that museum comes to
life because you took that tour. In Scandinavia in Norway
and Denmark you--and cities in Denmark, like
this is in Aarhus, you've got Nazi resistance museums.
There's no Nazi resistance museums in Sweden 'cause they stayed out of the
fray, but in Oslo and Denmark, fascinating looks at the time when they were
occupied by the Nazis. And you can learn about the rich history from Viking times,
to Nazi resistance time, to beyond when you have a local guide. All over
Scandinavia wonderful local guides give local walking tours that I think are
just excellent. Remember in every big city in Scandinavia there are modern art
galleries that are very stimulating and fun to check out. And every country in
Scandinavia, well the Norway, Sweden, Denmark, anyway, have a constitutional
monarch. They have a king, or a queen, and a royal family, and all the gossip that
comes with it. They do a good job of staying out of the gossip pages, the kids
are pretty behaved, but still it's fun to follow the latest news with the royal
families in Scandinavia. And you can go to--every capital city has a palace, a
royal palace, where you've got the changing of the guard and a chance to
tour the palaces, because the Scandinavian royalty are very pointedly
and definitively first citizens, and their homes are open to the public and you can
tour it and get a chance to look at how life is for them. The real energy of the
community I think, in a lot of ways, comes not out of the palace but out of the
city hall. This is the City Hall in Oslo, and across
Scandinavia the big city halls are what dominate the main squares, rather than a
big church. As I said, it's the least church-going part of Europe, and their religion to me is humanism, you
step into a city hall and you have a gathering point that feels like a big
sanctuary, and up on the front you have a Bible--not Bible stories on these fancy
mosaic walls, but you have heroic individuals who contributed mightily to
their community. That's what you celebrate when you go into the city hall.
And when you go to Scandinavia, especially in Oslo, and Copenhagen, and
well, the three capitals, and Stockholm, go to the city halls, take the tours, and
they are wonderful tours, they're usually free or inexpensive, and they come with a
beautiful insight into that culture. When you're traveling around Scandinavia
there are plenty of ways to meet the people. If you are clever that way, if you
are proactive that way, you'll meet locals, and that'll be a rich part of
your experience. You can stay in people's homes, in bed and breakfasts. If you got
any relatives, this is one corner of the world where I happen to have relatives,
look 'em up, it's just a great part of your trip. If
you don't have relatives, consider making up a name and getting out a phone book,
okay. I mean, just--you want to meet people and get into their home, it makes a huge
difference. The hotels are very expensive, and these
hotels are generally business hotels, meaning off-season on weeknights they're
going to be more expensive than weekends or summer. In the weekends all year long
and in the summer it's low season from a business point of view, therefore
business class hotels put the rooms on the push list, and they charge half the
normal price. You'll find out that as you travel, looking at booking services, and
tourist information offices, and so on. But it's tough if you're a little pension
trying to compete with the business class hotel that's half price on a
Wednesday in the summer. That's the low low season, and business
rooms are on the push list. Okay. Now if you happen to be traveling on
a budget, or if you're a young traveler and you want to hang out with lots of
young travelers, or if you're going during the most peak time during a
conference, or during a business day, you'll want to know about the youth
hostels. In Scandinavia they took the word "youth" out of the system, it's just
called Hosteling International. Everybody is more than welcome, and
they've got high-rise, modern, institutional strength hot--hostels now,
that give you simple, industrial-strength rooms, like this, right downtown, with all the facilities you need, and
probably a wonderful sauna to boot. A member's kitchen, the cheapest
hot meals in town, rentable bikes or loanable bikes, you got
it all there at the hostel. Know about the youth hostels everywhere in
Scandinavia. There's a word in Denmark, "hyggeligt." "Hyggeligt"
means "cute and cozy," it's like "gemütlichkeit"
in Deutsch, in German. And there's a coziness
in Scandinavia, where even in a youth hostel, you likely take
your shoes off at the door and have that stocking-feet cozy inside. You've got
some very characteristic hostels, this is the cutter ship, the af Chapman, which is
one of the most famous and prized youth hostels in all of Europe, and that's in the
harbor in Stockholm. Camping--if you're traveling in the countryside, the cool
thing about campgrounds is they have huts with grass--with sod roofs, and in
the huts you've got beds where you don't need camping gear. If you provide your
own sheets you'll save a lot of money because in Scandinavia they charge for
the sheets. You'll pay for the price of your sheets
if you just take him along and use them in the hostels that way, because they
do provide the bedding without the sheets. You can rent it but it's quite
expensive. When it comes to Scandinavian food, I don't think it's worth splurging
for. I mean of course you can get gourmet food, the fanciest, most--the top
restaurant in the world, I guess, is in Copenhagen. You can spend 200
dollars for meal if you want to, but for me I just want good hearty food.
When I'm in Scandinavia this
is your typical meal. You can get this in wonderful ambiance
and beautiful little restaurants. You've got a lot of buffets, you've got a
sort of a celebration of local produce in Scandinavia. You've got a lot of
daily specials, "dagens ret," "dagens special." When you see "dagen" that would
mean a daily special, and this is designed to grab the business and it
would probably be a good value. This is a lunch special, and you can see
it would be right in the old center of Stockholm, and you can see it includes a
salad, bread, and a drink for fifteen dollars, you know. You can get yourself a
very reasonable meal if you go for the "dagens ret." Also in Scandinavia, in
every one of the great cities, there are trendy neighborhoods. In Stockholm it's
Södermalm. And Södermalm is the place to go for the trendy
collection of restaurants, happening restaurants,
in-the-know locals, great food, innovative cuisine at an
affordable price. Find out what the trendy neighborhoods are, you can do that
online or with your guidebook, but it really makes a big difference. Having said that, you'll probably spend,
given the prices in Scandinavia, a lot of your time just eating functionally with
the locals, you know, as they eat. Here on a ferry, people are just having a
sandwich and a beer, that's what the locals eat, that's what you're probably
going to be eating. When you're traveling in Scandinavia remember there are
government-subsidized "Mensas," cafeterias where you can get a government-
subsidized price eating with local workers, or local students at the
University. This shot is in the City Hall in Oslo, for example. If there is a
government-subsidized Mensa, or a restaurant at a youth hostel, or a
retired sailor's home, or whatever, know about those kind of restaurants because
they are institutional, they are affordable. All over Scandinavia you've
got wiener mobiles, "Pølse." That's the local hamburger stand, okay. This guy's
driving home after a long day of selling wieners, and--but he'd be setting
up his stand, and you can find those stands anywhere, and it's a real culture.
There's a lot of different kinds of wieners, there's a way to eat it,
there's a culture of people hanging out at the wiener snacks and just
talking, it's called "wiener chat," "pølser snack," it's called, and it's
just a whole slice of the culture that's worth checking out. And I found,
last time I was in Scandinavia, I could eat very inexpensively if I just
considered it nutrition. I mean you've got your simple
ham-and-cheese sandwich, you bought some carrots, and some almonds, and some yogurt,
and an apple juice. You know, if you just want to fill the
tank, I don't care how expensive it is, you can do it quite affordably in
Scandinavia. Local people are just like that as well. Instead of going to a
restaurant for a BBQ, they go to the grocery store and they buy a one-time
grill. And this is a disposable grill. And they go to the park and they cook the
shrimp on that, and they have their beer that they bought at the supermarket, and
they're eating out, but on a budget. In Scandinavia the drinks are so
expensive generally when people go clubbing they'll meet at
somebody's house and have a drink, then they go out, and they go to one
place and buy one drink and nurse it, and then go to somebody else's house after
that for the rest of their evening. But it's just so expensive to sit in a bar
and enjoy drinks like we might in Germany or here in the United States. A
big deal in Scandinavia is the coffee and the donut, the coffee and the local
pastry. The Danish are famous for their pastries, the Swedes are famous for their
"fika," where you have a special deal at a department store, or a 7-11, or some
little cafe, where you get a cup of coffee and a local homemade role for a
reasonable price, for three dollars or four dollars, or something like that. One
reason things are so expensive in Scandinavia is the high taxes. And when
you go there you're going to be paying high taxes on everything. One reason I have--this is just between
you and me--but I have no problem stealing a sandwich from breakfast, is
because I'm paying taxes ev--all day long that I'll never be around to enjoy.
I'm subsidizing their healthcare, their retirement, their
unemployment, and I can just take a little bit extra
that way and enjoy it. Somebody just turned off my mic, alright.
When it comes to alcohol, You'll find on the ferry between Finland
and Sweden, everybody's going crazy for the booze ,because it's cheap on the
ferry. There are people that take the ferry
right just to get the duty-free booze. They'll take the ferry round trip, and
they'll drink, and they'll party, and they'll gamble, and they'll dance, but it's
so expensive from a tax point of view. Denmark is less expensive, Norway and
Sweden are more expensive that way, but if you need your alcohol you're gonna go
broke drinking it in bars unless you know where to--what country to do it
more. As far as smoking goes, Scandinavians love their tobacco but
they can't smoke in public anymore, so you'll notice a lot of people are
chewing tobacco now instead of smoking tobacco. You'll notice blankets and
heaters outside at the traditional hangouts in the bars, and so on, so people
can sit outside and have their cigarette and they will have a blanket around 'em
to keep warm. But you'll have smoke-free environments all over Scandinavia these
days. I am very proud of our Scandinavia tour, we have so much fun with our tour
groups going around Scandinavia. I just bumped into one of our troops in Sweden-
-one of our groups in Sweden last summer, and it just was a delight to see what a
great job our guide was doing and how much fun our group was having. If you
would like a guide who really knows the local culture show you around for two or
three weeks in Scandinavia, consider our tour. This is what we think is the best
view of Scandinavia if you have 12 or 14 days. The numbers mean how many
nights you would stay in each spot. We fly into Stockholm, two nights there,
down to Kalmar, your best stop outside of Stockholm in Sweden, one night there,
to Copenhagen, down to Ærø Island. It's the cute "hyggeligt" little cozy island in
the south of Denmark. Then we sleep on the boat to Oslo, a couple of days in
Oslo, go across the beautiful Norwegian mountains into fjord
country, and finish for a couple days in Bergen,
and fly home from there. That's kind of what we're going to be
talking about now in the next 45 minutes. I do want to remind you that Scandinavia
is perfect with a cruise. And I've done it by cruising, and it's economic, it's
efficient, it's just designed for cruising. Every one of the great cities,
Bergen, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, and St. Petersburg in
Russia make it onto the big routes, and you cruise at night, and you sight-see
during the day. Huge ships, 3,000 people, well organized, I was impressed by how
they organize the masses. I was impressed by how close the port is
for the cruise ships. The cruise port is- -this is in Stockholm, it's right there, in
Bergen it's right there, in Helsinki it's right there. If it's not right there,
you will have a way to get downtown easily. When you look out the window from
your stateroom, you can see the tour buses, and the hop-on hop-off bus is
waiting for you. The hop-on hop-off buses, those
double-Decker red buses by the way, are perfect for cruise ships. They work the
cruise port into their circle, and you buy a ticket from the driver, and then
every 20 minutes there's another bus coming by as they do this route through
the top 20 stops in the city, including where the cruise ship parks. So you just
let that--you can take it on a once-around for the tour--for the guided
tour, or you can hop on and hop off, listening to that guided tour
in bits and pieces as you travel. When you think about how well
organized Scandinavia is, here's a chart at the dock and it's in
English only, and it says basically, "your ship is
parked here, if you follow the color-coded path, it will take you to the
bus and the train station," and then every 10 minutes there's a train or a bus going
into the center. So you've got that kind of a welcome. And I just stopped in
Aarhus in Denmark, and the students were volunteering, the high school kids were
practicing their English by meeting the cruisers, and giving them welcome maps,
and say, "we can answer any of your questions, you go this way to get into
the town center." So it works quite nice, and also of course with a
cruise, you've got local guides handling all the mobs of tourists
that come into the town, and they take people on small and well
organized tours. If you're doing Scandinavia by cruise ship and you don't
want to just be taking all the included tours, then you need to take my cruise
book. I've written the Rick Steves Guide to Northern Medi--Northern Cruise Ports, as
a sister guidebook to my Rick Steves Mediterranean Cruise Ports Guides. And
with this book, you've got every city covered. And I like cruising because I
can have this resort, this just goofy resort, with cheap drinks, and dancing, and
and all that kind of stuff, and swimming, and then I can eat very well on the ship.
And a reminder in Scandinavia, it's cheaper to buy your drinks on the ship
and take him ashore, whereas in the Mediterranean is cheaper to buy your
drinks on the shore and bring them onto the ship. But the boat is cheap, the boat
has great food, and then from there you use it as your springboard to get in and do
the cities. Okay, now we're going to take off and we're gonna look at Scandinavia
specifically. When we think about Copenhagen, we're talking about the
grandest city in Scandinavia, the number one destination. In Copenhagen, it's
beautiful on foot in the old part of town. You've got all sorts of history,
great kings. Christian IV is probably the superpower of the kings in
Scandinavia, and it's important for us to remember, Denmark and Sweden both had
their stint as super powers in Europe. When you look at the buildings in
Scandinavia, it's a humble culture. And all of them were half-timbered and then
they had too many fires, so they said buildings have to be done of stone only,
and sometimes they faked that they were stone, and they stuck ones over the half
timber. If you go to the back lanes and into the courtyards, you can see some of
that original half timber. You've got great palaces, historic palaces in every
one of these countries. This is Rosenborg, it's the great castle of the kings in
Copenhagen, where you'll find the crown jewels. I just love the crown jewels
at the Rosenborg Palace. And when you go to Rosenborg Palace,
you'll also find great parks, wonderful city parks in every
country in Scandinavia. Copenhagen--in fact, where
all there are cruise ports, there are historic parts as well. And Copenhagen has
a famous Nyhavn, literally the "new harbor," which is the historic port. And
Nyhavn today is lined with restaurants, and people showing off their tattoos, and
outside drinking those cheap beers that they got at the local 7-11 on the
corner. And in Copenhagen, you've got these cruise--or these harbor tours. And
actually every great city in Scandinavia has harbor tours, so -- just thinking
about it there, and it's true. And a very nice overview would be to
hop on the boat for an hour, it's in English, or many languages and
you dial English if it's narrated, and you have a chance, in the case of
Copenhagen, to go out there and see the mermaid and enjoy the town. Another great
way to see the town is to take a local walking tour. Hans Christian Andersen is
actually still alive and well in Copenhagen in the form of Richard Karpen.
He's a friend of mine and he does Hans Christian Andersen role-playing as he
takes groups around. He meets--this is one of our tour groups, and and Hans meets us
and shows us around, but there's plenty of ways to get into the history, and the
culture, and the Hans Christian Andersen stories. In each of the Scandinavian
capitals you'll find great investment in the culture. New opera houses, this is the
new opera house in Copenhagen, you'll find an edgy, modern flair for design.
Danish design is great, if you're into modern design make a point in each of
these capitals to go to the design museum. In this shop you can get a can of
holistic thinking, and you can get another can of sustainable innovation.
They've got all of this fun, sort of edgy, modern look at life. Remember they're sitting on historic
remains of their medieval cities that were fortified. So they would've had a
wall. You tear down the wall, today you got a lot of parks, what used to be the
moat is a lot of lakes, and in Copenhagen you can actually see the moat system and
the rampart system torn down. Part of that old military fortification is
Christiania. And Christiania is a hippie squatter community that just took over
what was the military barracks, and today it's about a thousand hippies and their
children who are living a non-conventional,
non-commercial lifestyle, non-materialist
lifestyle, and you step in here and it's quite a charming
civilization. It's a little rough edge, but if you walked beyond what's called
Pusher Street, where they sell the marijuana, you can get into communities
where people are living, and children are running around, you know, appreciating
nature, and moms go and do their swapping. Instead of going to the grocery
store or the department store they'll just swap clothes with other neighbors, and
it's a fascinating world when you think about the struggle of a idealistic
community like that, standing up against the needs of developers. It's quite an
interesting controversial settlement really, they've always been on the verge
of being bulldozed by the developers, because now their land
is much envied by developers, but Christiania
is here to stay. All over Scandinavia they're dealing
with social problems in a pragmatic harm reduction kind of way. Here you can see
they're very strong against hard drugs, and marijuana is just fine, and when you
go through there today you'll find that culture, somehow managing in spite of what
are the norms outside of their walls. Beautiful vegetarian restaurants in
Christiania, as you can imagine, and then when it's a--and you can take bike tours
of that as well as the rest of the town with a local guide, and they do allow
local guides in Christiania, you get a good look at it. And then when you leave the
grounds of Christiania, the sign up above says, "you are now entering the
European Union," okay. So they are quite proud there in
Christiania. Also you've got Tivoli. This is just your ultimate Disneyland kind of
amusement park in Scandinavia. And it's one of the venerable amusement parks,
with local people enjoying it as well as tourists. Lots of pageantry, lots of bands,
and one of the highlights for visiting Copenhagen for me is the jazz festival.
Every summer for a couple of weeks in early July, you've got a jazz festival,
and it is a hoot. Everywhere you go, whether you like it or
not, there's outdoor jazz on the boats, the grandstands, on the squares, and so on. It's something to look into as you're
traveling, is the various music festivals and jazz festivals. Going into the Danish
countryside, remember Denmark is a series of islands. It's con--it's just across the
street from Sweden. You can see Sweden across the way. You've got a famous
castle at Elsinore, the Hamlet castle, north of Copenhagen. All across Denmark,
including a bridge going over to Sweden, you've got what's called the Big Belt.
And they have spent a lot of money doing state-of-the-art bridges and tunnels
connecting the islands, and literally connecting Denmark with Sweden, making
Malmö, a big city in Sweden, sort of a bedroom community of Copenhagen, and
turning that into one of the big, big urban centers of Scandinavia. North of
Copenhagen, less than an hour, is the Versailles of that country, I would say,
the Frederiksborg Castle. And I love touring the Frederiksborg Castle in part
because this is the National Portrait Gallery. And with a good guide you can
wander through those stately palatial rooms and see all of Danish history in
the paintings around you. Nearby also, just a half an hour to the west of
Copenhagen, is Roskilde. And Roskilde is famous for its beautiful cathedral,
where they have buried and crowned most of the Danish royalty,
and you can see every chapel dedicated to a different
Danish royal family. And in Roskilde you've got the
Viking Ship Museum. There are two Viking Ship Museums in Scandinavia, one in Oslo,
and one outside of Copenhagen in Roskilde, and both are very good. When you
see the Roskilde Viking Museum--Viking Ship Museum, you'll learn that these are, I
think, five ships that were intentionally sunk in the harbor to stop bad guys from
coming in, and they, you know, they rescued those, and they preserved them,
and now they've studied them, and as visitors we can learn a lot about Viking
culture, and they've also got a workshop, just in the same facility, where you can
see people making Viking ships with traditional techniques, and student
groups there learning about Viking culture and so on. The birthplace of Hans
Christian Andersen is just over the bridge to the west of Copenhagen, in
Odense. Odense. And the big deal about Odense is the home of Hans Christian
Andersen. And it's a big hit with children, every day in the summer they've
got the theater, and fairy tales, and lots of kids gathered and so on. And from Odense
you can go further west and get to a place called Aarhus. Aarhus is a
beautiful second city of Denmark, and when you go to Aarhus, just wander
through the streets and find fun, you know, public arts, and to go into the
church and early Danish art in the churches, go to the open-air folk museum
there and find people role-playing from 150 years ago in Denmark,
as a lot of people were emigrating to the United States. It's a beautiful
glimpse into Danish culture. That would be reason to go to Aarhus. And when you
go to Aarhus, there's a wonderful modern art museum, which is one of the
great modern art museums in Scandinavia. You've got a museum all about the Bog
Man, and this was a guy who fell into a peat bog and was miraculously preserved
from almost ancient times, and today we can learn about that culture. And if
you're traveling with kids or if you are kid at heart, there is Legoland. Of
course, Legos are Danish, and any Lego maniac will want to go to
Legoland where it all started, and that's just outside of Aarhus.
In the south of Denmark, a boat takes you across to an
island called Ærø. A-E-R-O. And my favorite town--small town in Denmark
is Ærøskøbing, the big town on that island. And an arrow you've got--every
time a ferry lands you've got a bunch of new visitors washing up the
cobbled main drag. It's just a ship-in-a-bottle little place,
and you've got a night watchmen's tour. You've actually got a museum filled
with ships in bottles, I've never seen so many ships in bottles,
and you've got plenty of private rooms for rent in this charming little town that
was a big deal back in the days of the cutter ships, but today it's a
perfectly pickled little look at small-town old-world Denmark.
"Hyggeligt" is that Danish word for cozy, and "hyggeligt" is a perfect way to
describe both the town of Ærøskøbing and the island of Ærø. In fact on the edge
of Ærøskøbing is a little strand, a little beach filled with--lined with "hyggeligt"
vacation cottages, little tiny cottages. And it's fun to be there having a BBQ
with local friends as the sun goes down. You can tour Ærø, the island of Ærø
very easily by bike and I would highly recommend it. In the countryside you find
this charming culture where, you know, produce is fresh out of the garden, and
it's for sale on the honor system in little stands along the road. You'll find
people working on their thatch, and you'll find beautiful churches with
stubby spires because they're tucked behind the hills, so you can't see--so a
pirate couldn't see it when he's sailing by and pillage that little village. But
you step into that church and it's got a history going all the way back to the
Reformation, when that place became Protestant rather than Catholic, 500
years ago. The countryside has countryside manners,
where you can get good food and enjoy
traditional hospitality. Going to Oslo, my goodness. This city
is so fresh and so in love with life. This is the main center of Oslo, centered
with its City Hall and its newly restored harbor, which is now a
people-friendly zone called Aker Brygge. And here you've got the City Hall.
Inside the City Hall again, you're going to celebrate Norwegian culture and how
it's doing today, and guided tours take you through the
modern art of the City Hall. Facing the City Hall is the old fort of Oslo. Well
worth touring up there, you've got the Nazi resistance museum which is
exceptional. A centerpiece of the city of Oslo is the Royal Palace, and leading to
the Royal Palace is Karl Johans Gate, the main drag. The main drag goes from the
train station to Karl Johan, and along the way you'll find everybody out having
a good old time. On the harborfront we've got shrimp being
sold by fishermen that just brought it in,
fresh shrimp, and a rundown industrial zone that's now been
turned into a people-friendly area like all over Europe, they're turning industrial
waste lands in the modern areas. You've got the new opera house. The new
opera house in a--just a few years ago, just a industrial camp, is being
developed. And what it functions as is concert hall inside and out. You can go to the park-like surface and
watch a band playing on a pier just across the water. When you're in
Olso you want to go to the National Gallery, and in the National Gallery
you've got great opportunity to enjoy Romantic Norwegian art. I love Romantic
art because it gives you a nineteenth-century look at the nature,
which is the foundation of these cultures, before going out into the fjord
country, and of course you've got the work of the Expressionist Edvard Munch.
And the Scream is his most famous piece of art. There's actually a new
modern art gallery just on the edge of town in a park. It's an open-air art gallery, Ekeberg
Park, and I just went there a couple of months ago. And this is the place where
the screen was actually painted, and it's just a lot of fun to go out there. But
the best park in Oslo would certainly be Frogner Park. And in Frogner Park, just
behind the Royal Palace, you got all the work of Gustav Vigeland. And Gustav
Vigeland has all of this Nordic celebration of life. And to complement
your visit to the park, go to the Vigeland Museum where you learn about the artist,
who is, I think the greatest artist along with the Ren--Rodin in modern
European sculpture, and you'll find his techniques very clear in his workshop.
And you can see where he made all these great statues that fill the park today.
From downtown Oslo you get in a boat and you go across the harbor to
place called Bygdøy. And in Bygdøy you can see the the
Viking ships, you can see along with the Viking ships, the Kon-Tiki,
famous from Thor Heyerdahl, and you can also see the Fram. And the Fram is the
Nordic exploration vessel which was so important to open up the Arctic and the
Antarctic, as Norway led the way that way. And at Bygdøy, this collection of
museums just across the harbor from downtown Oslo, you can find the open-air
folk museum. And this is the grandest open-air folk museum I think, along with
Skansen in Stockholm, that you'll find in Scandinavia. And here at Bygdøy you can
see people making the lefse, and the traditional food, and dancing, and
instruments, and so on. One of the great sites in Oslo is the Holmenkollen ski
jump. Here you can see it in the winter, in the summertime it's a popular park.
They've--I was just there a couple of months ago and they've renovated it, and
today it is wide open for tourists. You can go to the very top--there's a skiing
museum there by the way. Then you ride the lift to the very top and you get a
grand view of our Oslo, and a chance to get on a zip-line and go screaming down
just like a skier. Yeah, wow. I was--it was thrilling enough for me just to watch it.
It cost a--it's quite expensive do, that's about a hundred bucks to do it, but what
a thrill of people who want to do that. Going into the Norwegian countryside, of
course people want to make a beeline for the fjord country. And the most exciting
day in Scandinavia, outside of the cities, would be the Norway in a Nutshell trip,
which is a train ride over to Bergen via the most scenic fjords. I just did this a couple of months ago,
and it is a delightful day. The train right itself is just great, you look
out the window. I was thinking it'd be great to be up there
in a mountain bike. This is the top of Norway. Heading due west from Moscow over
to Bergen, the train stops at the highest station and then you take a little cog
wheel train down to Flam on the fjord. You stop halfway down at a--at a great
waterfall, and there you'll see maidens coming out of the mist. It's kinda kitschy
but everybody loves it. And then you find yourself in Flam. Flam is the humble
little town, the little station at the base of them-- the
mountain, where you've got cruise ships and recreational
boats going out, and people enjoying the wonders of
nature. You can take one of these jet boats along the fjords. You can--remember
that the trains will be in sync with the boat, so when your train arrives, your
boat's ready to go, and from there you carry on getting close to nature in
these amazing fjords, heading over to Bergen. And when you enjoy the fjord
ride it just--everything is synchronized, so when you leave Flam you
will go over to Gudvangen, and you get off the boat, everybody tumbles off of
the boat, a bus is waiting there, it takes you up to the mountain station, Voss,
where a train will then take you into Bergen. If you're driving in that part of
the country, the roads are very scenic, the tunnels are really long--look at this
tunnel, this is 24 kilometers, that would be 15 miles long, and they're building
new tunnels all the time to lace together the communities once isolated
by the fjords of Norway. When I was there with my TV crew, as soon as we saw the
fjords, they said "stop," we had to get out and film, I told the guys "it gets even
better." But you just will be blown away by how beautiful the fjords are. And
Norway has designed it there where the most scenic places are, you have these look out
to we can park your car walk out there and just marvel at that beauty. Beautiful
waterfalls, beautiful vistas, wonderful opportunity to take your car onto the
boats if you like. traditionally the boats even connect with
each other in the middle of the fjord where they'll pass over the mail because
these are mail services for the towns. Coming into Balestrand, Balestrand
is a major town up there, an old-world resort with a grand old hotel, a
beautiful smorgasbord, that classic Norwegian buffet, and then the boat goes
on. One of the most beautiful fjords is called Sognefjord. That's my favorite
fjord by the way, and Sognefjord is the fjord you see when you do the Norway
in a Nutshell trip. The best little sleepy village there, we talk about it
in our guidebook, is called Solvorn. But this is just one of many little
towns where you can settle in. You'll find old farmsteads high above the
fjords that are now desolate, as everybody left for the United States,
abandoning these farms. One of them now, Otternes, is a museum where you can
learn about traditional life in an old Norwegian farm. Also while
you're in this part of Norway you can go to a glacier. And the glacier is an
opportunity how to actually take a tour. The glacier is receding
every year so you'll find that's a big theme
on these glacier tours. But the best glacier to tour is
called Nigardsbreen. And Nigardsbreen, you will meet your group and you
will put on little crampons on your feet, and you'll follow your guide hiking up
the glacier. And this is the family glacier tour that I did, anybody can do
it. You're roped up, you got your crampons on, and you learn a lot about
what it's like, the whole glacier world, in the biggest glacier in Europe. All
over this part of Norway, if you know where to look, you can
find wonderful stave churches. And in the stave churches you
can get a little bit of that Norwegian Gothic culture.
This is 1,000 years ago, made out of wood. And you gain an
appreciation for the aesthetic of the Viking civilization. The best--one of the--
one of the best open-air folk museums is actually outside of Oslo, it's
a place called Maihaugen. And Maihaugen is a great
opportunity just to get different slice of life, everything
from biking times up to Norwegians and their Jane Fonda workout
books. So just different generations, different ages across the
spectrum. Farther north in Norway--you know, the distances are huge, it's
very expensive--there's a wonderful city called Åndalsnes which burned down in
about the year 1900, and was rebuilt with German aid money in the
prevailing style, which is Jugendstil, so the whole town is like a remarkably
cohesive Jugendstil town, that's Åndalsnes. But for most people, the best
thrills are in the west rather than the north, and the sister city of Seattle and
the most--and the historic capital of Os-- of Norway is Bergen. And when you go to
Bergen you'll find that, really this is a city that has a very powerful Hanseatic
heritage, a beautiful connection with the sea, a wonderful harbor-side market where
you can stroll around, and it's got a history that goes way back to when cod
was what it was all about. This was the way Europe got its cod. European
merchants came to Bergen, all the fishermen brought their cod to Bergen,
it was part of that Hanseatic League, and consequently it's a grand city
throughout the ages in Norway. This is the modern
center of Bergen. I was there during a--just a
summer afternoon and they had a huge table full of Lego toys, and the kids are
out just enjoying what must be a Lego wonderland for a little kid. For me the
highlight of Bergen is the Bryggen. This is the old German merchants quarter. And
here we have the original--or the rebuilt of the original wooden buildings where
the merchants would all run their businesses, and live, and do their work,
and today you can tour that. There's a wonderful museum there that explains all
about the Hanseatic League. And there are the oldest stone secular buildings in
Norway in Bergen, well worth checking out. If you like music, you know that Edvard
Grieg was from the area around Bergen, and you can visit his home in Troldhaugen
where you can go out and see the piano that he recorded on, and the fjord
scenery that inspired him, and actually enjoy a concert there at Troldhaugen.
From Bergen, you can hop on a gondola and go to the top of the
mountain with an amazing view. Okay, we're going to zip through Stockholm
now, and Stockholm is a city--if I had to live in Europe I might want to live
there. This is the old town, the Gamla Stan, and when we look at the Gamla Stan
we can walk around there day or night. Very comfortable in Stockholm, very
charming, traditional, beautifully preserved old town on Gamla Stan, that's
the old island that is the historic center of Stockholm. You've got the
palace and so many museums associated with the palace, and every day in
Stockholm you've got a mounted band parading through the streets up to the
palace, where you have an impressive changing of the guard. Stockholm has a
great city hall like Oslo, and it is worth touring the City Hall in
Stockholm for sure. Stockholm has a people-friendly old
center and the whole harborfront has been designed now for people to stroll
or ride their bikes. I really enjoyed Stockholm on bike on my last trip. You've
got pedestrian zones in Stockholm, you've got a subway system that actually has
modern art installations at different stations, and peeking into the subway is
a look at modern art in that country. And vast climate-controlled
indoor shopping malls in that expensive and commercial far northern capital. A
beautiful way to enjoy Stockholm is by bike. It's easy to rent a bike or borrow
a bike and Stockholm, like it is in Copenhagen. You can go out to the island
that has the Vasa Museum. The Vasa is the greatest warship of its day, I think 350
years ago, too many cannon on the top. They went greedy with the gun--firepower,
as it was sailing out all the sailors went over to one side on this top heavy
boat, they waved at their loved ones, and 200 yards into the voyage the
thing tipped over and the most expensive ship in Europe went down right on its
maiden voyage. It sat in the bottom of the harbor for centuries, they excavated
in our lifetime, and today it's an amazing museum, giving you a look at the
greatest warship in its day. Across the street is Skansen. And Skansen is this
magnificent open-air folk museum celebrating Swedish culture. You've got
live folk music, and dancing, and all sorts of tradition going on there. All
over Scandinavia you will find ice--what they call them--ice bars. And a ice bar is
kind of a tacky business adventure, you pay $25, and you put on a coat, and you go
in and you--it includes one cocktail served out of an ice glass, it's a vodka
advertisement basically for Absolut vodka. And of all the ice bars that you'll
find in Europe, I would say the original one and the one you might want to do is
in Stockholm, if you're just going to do one I would do it in Stockholm. And it's
fun but it's gimmicky, and it's a $25 drink. You might want to spend your
25 bucks going to the ABBA Museum instead. The long-awaited ABBA museum is
open, it's a huge hit, and you can--it's a state-of-the-art collection. And ABBA was
the biggest industry in Sweden for a while, I think rivaling or beating
Volvo, so you can enjoy ABBA while you're there. Something underrated, and I think
really powerful, is to go to the Carl Millis Garden. Carl Millis is a great
sculptor, a Swedish sculptor, and you can see his best work right there on the
edge of Stockholm. All over Scandinavia you've got 20th century artists that
have their own galleries, and every Scandinavian city has a royal
palace that you can tour, I love the palace outside of town at Drottningholm.
From Stockholm, you can get in a boat and go to the archipelago. The archipelago is
this long chain of idyllic islands, and this is the backyard of Stockholm. This
is where the Swedes really enjoy their vacation, their getaway. And you can go
out there and explore. I want to remind you there's also the reality of old
fortifications out there. One of the--sort of the--one of the main
forts of Europe is right there, protecting Stockholm from invasions
through its archipelago. You can tour that, and now you can frolic on the
ramparts of what was the defenses of the city. When you get to the far end
of the archipelago, then you know your boat's going to continue, and the
next stop is Finland. When you take the boat from Stockholm
to Helsinki, three hours of it is through this amazing archipelago, and
it's one of the most beautiful experiences you can have if you like
nature in Europe, is sailing through the archipelago, leaving Stockholm on the way
to Helsinki. I find the countryside of Sweden relatively boring, compared to
Denmark or Norway. Dalarna is a famous place where there's traditional Swedish
culture and so on. In the center of Sweden you'll find an area called
Värmland, which had more people leaving it than any other place in Europe as a
percent of the population, when they were all emigrating New-Land style, you know
"The Emigrants," that movie, see that em-- that movie by the way, before your trip,
if you like to see the story of Sweden-- Swedish emigration. Växjö is the
emigration center. There's a museum there that talks about the great
emigration leaving Sweden when times were so tough. And this is glassblowing
country, a very traditional and important industry in Sweden is glass, and you can
visit the various glassblowing companies out there in the countryside.
My favorite town in that central part of Sweden is on the coast south of
Stockholm, Kalmar, K-A-L-M-A-R. And in Kalmar you've got a wonderful ship
museum, you've got a charming old center, and you've got a great castle that you can
check out. Just beyond the castle is a good example of how Swedes love the
sunshine, and they've got a public park, it's--on a sunny summer afternoon it's
filled with people enjoying the sun. Outside of Stockholm is the
historic ancient birthplace of the Swedish society, and that is Gamla
Uppsala. Gamla Uppsala, Old Uppsala. And you can go to these Stonehenge-type
mounds, and you can imagine the Swedes standing on top of the mounds, with all
the clans gathered before them, declaring what's going on with the Swedish people,
you know. And when you go to Gamla Uppsala, the big city nearby is Uppsala. And
Uppsala is important for its cathedral, and in the cathedral you've got lots of
important art and history. And this is a modern Virgin Mary who just looks like a
commoner, which is a more Scandinavian Protestant approach to Mary. Rather than
the Queen of Heaven, to be one of us in a very ultra-realistic kind of way. In
Uppsala also, you've got the work of Carl Linnaeus, the great botanist, and he was a
professor there at the great university. I've got five minutes left, and I'm going
to blitz through Finland and a little bit of Estonia, forgive me for going so
fast but I just have a time limit here. When we go to Scandinavia, remember you
can hop on that boat and go over to Helsinki, from Sweden, from Stockholm.
There are two big boat companies, Viking and Silja, and they dock right in the
harbor in Helsinki. In front of the ship you've got a great salty sailor's quarter--
not sailor's quarter, a marketplace where you've got also to
fresh seafood. And a couple blocks away you've got the commercial district. You
can walk to the great sights of Helsinki just there near the harbor where the
ships dock. Helsinki is famous for its modern architecture, the work of
Alvar Aalto, the Finlandia Hall. You've got beautiful churches this, is
one of the best neoclassical churches I've seen in Europe, and this is the
Lutheran Cathedral. Across the street, basically, from that is the Russian
cathedral, an example of the Russian Orthodox architecture, and a reminder
that Finland was really dominated by Russia for a long, long time. ans a modern
church, called the Church in the Rock, which is blown out of a big rock, and
then put a ultra-modern dome on it. To give you an idea of the
passion Finns have for music, one day I was in the city and there
was a demonstration, everybody was marching. I didn't know
what was going on, and they said, "this is the massing of the choirs,
where all the choirs are bringing classical music to the pubs." They met on the steps
of the Lutheran Cathedral, had a big songfest, and then they dispersed and
they took their live choral music to every one of the pubs, and brought
classical music to the people that way. The Finns love their music. Their famous
national composer is Sibelius, and you can go to the Sibelius monument and be
impressed by that statue. And I want to remind you that Finland has the Gibraltar
of the north, it's called Savonlinna. It's an island fortress that is
incredibly strategic, and you can go out there today and learn about how that
could have been such an important bastion up in the north of Europe. Huge
dry dock, this was really a--just a dominant sort of fortress up in that
part of Europe. A big part of Finnish culture is the sauna. These days
everybody's rich enough to have a sauna in their home, so what
you'll find is for the tourists, your only option
is to go to the hotel, or on the cruise ship,
or go to a poor neighborhood. And if you
go to a working-class neighborhood in Helsinki you'll find
there still is the traditional sauna on the corner, and that is fun to check out.
Fins get on the boat for an hour and a half and zip over to Tallinn just for a
fun day on the town, just for a cheaper trip to the hairstylist, just for some
cheap liquor. It's so cheap to go to Tallinn, and you can actually literally see
it from Helsinki if you know where to look. It's a easy side trip. This is our tour
that includes Helsinki, Tallinn, and St. Petersburg, consider that when you're in
Scandinavia. Tallinn is quite a historic place, it had tough times during the
Communist era. Today Tallinn is the most thriving and accessible city of the
former Soviet Union. I absolutely love to spice up my trip to Scandinavia with a
trip over to Helsinki, and from Helsinki take the boat to Tallinn, and
you could fly home from Tallinn. It's a huge cruise port, when you go to Tallinn
you'll find all sorts of tour guides with their numbered posts walking
little groups of people through town. I would much rather stay there, there's so
many important things to see in Tallinn. Great palaces, great markets, a great
success story for people that literally sang to bring down the Soviet Union. Before
going to Tallinn, see a movie called The Singing Revolution. And it talks about
how the Estonians, who have lived between the Germans and the Russians for
centuries, there's only a million people that speak
Estonian, and they were able to sing because they didn't have the weapons, and
with that kind of a power of their own culture, they were helping to bring down
the Soviet Union. Today they survive and they thrive, and we can visit that as a
side-trip from Scandinavia. When you think about Scandinavia, once again this is
is what we consider the best two weeks to enjoy Scandinavia. You can learn all about
that at our website at ricksteves.com. I would encourage you to follow
me on Facebook, I just love taking people along with me on an intimate, candid,
behind-the-scenes look at all of our work. You do that at Rick Steves on
Facebook. To learn more about our tour program, check out our website, and
remember Scandinavia is distinct, and Scandinavia is welcoming, and
Scandinavia's the place that if you know how to travel, it's gonna be worth the
investment, I'll tell you that, okay. Thank you very much, and happy travels.
