Bali Travel & Culture

By Scott Vogel
The Washington Post

It was a long time before I felt comfortable asking the Danes why they are the happiest people on Earth, and by then I had already sullied the country’s largest park with a sign that read, “WHY ARE THE DANES THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST PEOPLE? AMERICAN NEWSPAPER WANTS TO KNOW.”

It was all very melodramatic and, as such, distinctly un-Scandinavian, but I had only a few days for a pursuit of their happiness and needed to make every moment count. My tip-off came courtesy the University of Michigan’s World Values Survey, which in June proclaimed Denmark to be the happiest nation among 97 surveyed, a conclusion arrived at by asking souls all around the world whether they were very happy, rather happy, not very happy or not at all happy.

A high percentage of Danes put themselves in the first category. This needed to be investigated, but then I got there and found that happiness was a difficult subject to broach, mostly because of what it seemed to imply.

“Is it that the people of the United States are not happy?” said the first person I asked, a woman selling sausages from a cart on the Radhuspladsen, Copenhagen’s expansive central square.

I gave her my best whatever-gave-you-that-idea face, which she immediately saw through. Then I sighed.

“We’re sixteenth.”

Sixteenth happiest, that is. The sausage lady smiled vacantly, the same smile she’d given me earlier when I’d asked for a knakker, one of those glorious sausages that snap when you bite into them.

“I think we are happiest because of the Carlsberg,” she finally said.

At first I thought the sausage lady was being flip, just trying to take the edge off her conversation with the American, whose countrymen are known for their competitiveness and penchant for concealed weapons. Then it occurred to me that she might be serious. After all, Carlsberg is a Danish beer even more ubiquitous than the sausages, and thus could double as a handy metaphor for the country itself: simple, unremarkable, blond. Furthermore, a few pints into it, simplicity does indeed seem a virtue, unremarkable things become their opposite and, well, blonds do appear to have more fun. But then the buzz lifts, the dazzle evaporates and with it any real chance you’ll ever be as happy as the Danes.

* * * * *

The Moorish architecture and minarets have been restored to former glory and there’s now a loop coaster that you might see in any amusement park in the world. Copenhagen’s celebrated Tivoli Gardens, which dates to 1843, still impresses with its odd combination of string quartets and thrill rides, and the 120,000 light bulbs still don’t come into their own until sundown, which, this being Copenhagen in summer, doesn’t happen until 10.

“I came from a working-class family in Essex,” said Paul Cunningham. He was sitting on a stairway behind the Tivoli restaurant that bears his name — the Paul. His airy, glass-walled eatery (it’s haute cuisine in a conservatory) is one of 11 Copenhagen restaurants in possession of a Michelin star, and so Cunningham is by definition a “hot chef,” a British transplant who is helping lead a resurgence in Danish cooking.

“The only time my family ever sat together was for a Sunday meal. In Denmark, it’s every day,” he told me. I listened as Cunningham gave me the social democracy elevator pitch, nodded as he spoke of “this secure society” and how “everything is built for the middle class, not the upper class” and “the health system is great” and “90 percent of the places serve non-chain coffee,” all of which no doubt make their contributions to Danish well-being. But it was the image of the families sitting together every day that stuck with me, families where everyone knows each other’s stories and kids fall easily into their parents’ arms at midnight in the Tivoli.

And then there were the brief glimpses of joy I caught each time a fireworks shell burst or a fountain danced to life. It is probably unwise to judge a country’s happiness by the faces of its children as lit by fireworks, but the quiet awe of Danish children at such moments was priceless.

On the other side of the park stands Restaurant Herman, which is new and does not yet have a Michelin star but is nevertheless the province of another hot chef, Thomas Herman. He is young, Danish and fiercely committed to keeping the country’s dinner table interesting. This he does by taking Denmark’s many comfort foods and moving them out of their comfort zones, which can be something of a dangerous game. Strawberries are still served with cream, for instance, but now the cream is infused with foie gras.