"Denmark is a Happy but Expensive Place"

The Post Dispatch had a bit about Denmark in the travel section a few months ago. "Denmark is a Happy but Expensive Place" was well written and thoughtful, though a bit sparse on descriptions for my liking - but the author is male, after all, so what can you expect? :D It reaffirms that travel journalism is what I want to do with my life. ;)

Rick Steves, the author, briefly describes Legoland, and the cute, 'miniature golf' feeling of Denmark, before moving into an analysis of the culture. "I've been wondering how the Danes pull it off," he writes. "I think their success relates to handling the "free rider" problem through their social contract. Danes seem to keep in mind the consequences of free riders - If I do it, I can get away with it, but if everyone does it, the system will collapse. They do things considering what would happen to their society if everyone cheated on this, sued someone for that, took advantage of that technicality, or ignored a rule there. Europeans trade 'individualism' for 'socialism'. The Danes seem to take it to an extreme... But I am intrigued."

Other nice bits:

"In Denmark you have to work quite hard to find a crack to fall through. A few people with alcohol problems manage to be homeless. Yes, we are the most contented people."

"We Danes believe a family's economic status should have nothing to do with the quality of the health care or the education their children receive."

"The society is designed in a way that encourages people to use less, chew slower and just sip things."

And I learned that the Danes write "Tak for Alt" on tombstones. Awww! :,)

An Idea

You know how most fantasy books are so European... like their not really set in Europe, but you can feel it all around; you look at a map, you have a blobby bay where the Mediterranean would be, you have your unexplored southern continent, you have the mostly vertical orientation and the northern, icy oceans? Well Ive decided, that in all the lazy and inaccurate ways I want, Im going to base my worlds more of the American continent. Because I'm not amazingly fond of American culture, and because we have no long term history to speak of, it'll be mostly ecology and stuff that I'm mirroring, but I think it would be interesting, because America is what I know, so I think Ill be more comfortable with that. And; America is the melting pot, and my imagination is basically Western with Eastern ideas here and there, so that should work well, don't you think?