Just back from Scandinavia

The talkative 19-year-old on his way home by train to Oslo, Norway after a year in the navy asked my family where we were from. We gave our typical response to foreigners: Washington, D.C. It’s not that we are ashamed of our Baltimore roots, it’s just easier for non-Americans to place Washington on their mental maps.

Then we started talking about television and the teenager mentioned one of his favorite shows was “The Wire.” So when told him we were from Baltimore, his eyes lit up. “Is it really like that?” he asked. “Does everyone own guns over there?”

With Charm City’s place in the global community secure, here are some other observations from a 10-day trip through scenic Sweden, Denmark and Norway:

• Imagine an American newscast’s top story being about a candidate for prime minister of Denmark dropping out of the race. It would never happen. And yet our Democratic presidential primary was a big deal on newscasts in all three countries every night. The most fascinating thing was a Norwegian station had a panel discussion that included a local college student who was an Obama supporter. Some college students here who can vote probably don’t care about the election at all and here was a kid 6,000 miles away who doesn’t have a vote but was passionately supporting a candidate.

• $1 = 6 Swedish Krona = 5 Norwegian Krona = 4.5 Danish Krona = everything is very expensive in Scandinavia. A large pizza in Bergen, Norway, for example, cost approximately $44. And our tour guide in Copenhagen said half of a Dane’s income goes to taxes. On the other hand, health care and education are free in all of the countries.

• Saturday night, when we returned home, was the first time we had seen darkness for 10 days. The sun doesn’t really set in Scandinavia during the summer because of its high latitude, merely dipping below the horizon for a few hours. Eighteen-plus hours of sunshine a day is a bit surreal, although I imagine it’s much better than the winter alternative of 18-plus hours of darkness.

• Pastries. Yum.

DANNY JACOBS, The Daily Record