Where the Tin Soldier spent the night: Denmark Through the Prism of Erotica

They say the secret of the mysterious our soul is rooted in the immense expanses of our Fatherland. If so, then the secret of the soul of the Danish should be sought in the fact that the country is small and flat. What way this territory is so disciplining effect on the psyche that a person voluntarily gives away from 50 to 75 percent of the tax?

Sitting on the plane, I painted myself a Dane as a boring, orthodox religious, unusually disciplined and law-abiding individual, which despises the neighbors-Germans for a mess and inorganization. In the capital of the Northern Kingdom, we arrived on Sunday evening. The relative encountered us at the airport, the fifth year Illegally living in Denmark with his wife and dog, in response to the question of museums and landmarks introduced us to the case: "Today you do not shine anything – here at four o’clock they are absolutely closed, you don’t even buy bread. Country of books – You can only go on the road on the green light, can crush. In private possessions do not go, can shoot. The queen does not scold, because here it is honored; Marghetta herself goes to the store and dissatisfied with high prices. Water and exhaust gases are environmentally friendly, but beer tasty and cheap". He said the last phrase to clarify why he does not return to where the traffic light does not interfere in the free movement of citizens by the streets.

The crushed information, we stood before the red eye of the traffic lights with the complete absence of cars, watching the indigenous people of the country, some of which made us a company, and the other bravely moved the road, breaking the slim theory. "It can be seen here and normal people come across," – We decided and also broke the Danish order.

With curiosity, looking at the lowest possible Danish public and nothing particularly preferably – closed so closed – we were Bard in the city center, until we noticed the gaping gap in the uncle of the argument – I worked as a museum! Gas lights burned over the entrance, flashed colored garlands, music played – and all this dubious magnificence tried surrounded by a red neon arc inscription "Museum of Erotics". To visit the tourist, I did not think that bad, the facade of the building was complemented by state flags located on the sides, which, on behalf of the Danish Queen, blessed the public demonstration of what is usually hidden under the cover of darkness, as if warning a concerned man in the streets: "Come in, do not be afraid, you will see here so much all that, in this background, your pathetic chastity will no longer matter!"

At this point from the museum, a group of elderly our tourists who were introduced from the museum, the type of which did not knit neither with relaxed satisfaction, nor with erotic excitement. Rather, they have reminded those who have accustomed to the savings bank or the passport table of pensioners.

We swore for more than fifty crowns per ticket not to pay, went into the lobby, decorated with a magnificent carved gold-plated member in human growth, and immediately imbued with respect for calculating Danes: the spectacle cost forty nine crowns! I had to go, I do not regret. The impression was so strong that he left a fun inprint to all subsequent stay in the country. Not only hot dogs, which and without special training cause a feeling of something indecent, but the items of a less oblong form generated a persistent desire to prohibit their sale in public places and children under 16.

Strictly speaking, the erotic museum is not a museum in the classical sense of the word. First of all, it is a commercial enterprise operating a healthy or unhealthy, depending on the point of view, the interest of the idle tourist to any exotic. Museums in Copenhagen three – the Museum of Wax Figures Tivoli, the Guinness Museum and the Museum with the intriguing name "Believe or not?" English collector Rigby, all his life collected unusual items. All these institutions are purely entertaining and are associated with a circular lie – having visited one of them, you will get substantial discounts for visiting the remaining.

Since there is no special system, so I want some exhibits of one museum to move to another, to a more appropriate place. Hinnes should have created a section "The longest act of love" and transfer there from the erotica’s museum the room of red lanterns, where two dolls are a prostitute and her client, covered with a black blanket, difficult to master each other. The nose of the upper doll is trying on the face of the bottom and punctured there a decent groove!

The erotic museum should in turn borrow from Rigby clay jewelry, which the Indians on large holidays put on intimate places (the cunning men of the Tanai tribe used these pieces as a remedy for insect bites. Everyone had for the whole wardrobe such nozzles. It is curious that Danai does not have sexual relations before and out of marriage, and newlyweds before making love, waiting for two years), and from Guinness to take the waxing girl with the longest neck. Or maybe this does not need to do? Judge for yourself. Women of the Burmese Padanga tribe wear thick copper rings. Five rings are fixed at a young age, and then each year they set another one until it is 25 years old, and the neck length will not reach 38 centimeters. Spouse, learning that the wife changed him, has the right these rings to remove. The atrophic muscles of the neck are no longer able to keep their head, and that falls the message that is equivalent to the death penalty. What a devilish forever!

There are, however, and other recipes. Once my friend’s friend asked: "What should be the dissertation so that it is easier to protect it?" "So that it was impossible to make face", – Supposed Ya. "No. So that I wanted to make face!" – The triumphantly laughed a friend. Representatives of the Sarah tribe from Chad used this reliable recipe. Even in early childhood, girls jammed their lips and in the resulting holes as all the large and large plates were inserted (!) to make women less attractive and protect against violence of alien.

Another remedy for the matrimonial treason that everyone heard is the belt of loyalty. In the museum of erotica, it can finally see. It is in thick glass due to repeated attempts to try on or out of the museum with an unknown goal. I’m afraid, however, these ancient leather panties scared the potential adulterers not even their predatory-gear holes in intimate places, and inevitable with a long-term sock. Although who knows what was the attitude to the smells in the distant past?

"They are unlikely to pay attention to such a trifle as the smell of sweat, – a pretty young guide laughed in response to the question of antiquity hygiene. – For example, in the walls of the Sacred Elsinor, known to the whole world as the Prince of Danish Hamlet Prince, you look at the majestic gloomy bastions and indulge in the dreams of pure love, knights of the scarlet and white rose, other heroic romance and do not think that all the impurities were discharged into the surrounding ditch. As a result of several months of life, the noble suite stench in the premises was established such that I had to leave this place and move to another. In particular, it was for this reason that there were several residences for noble. In Europe, today the movement of Naturists, who believe that a person should smell, as appointed by nature, without using blasphemous deodorants. In ancient times, people were inevitable, and the bad smell of some kind of leather belt of loyalty did not confuse them".

The next day I went out of the hotel and went to the city center, focusing on the Venum Spires of the Vintage Temples and the high-rise building of the Scandinavian airline – boring gray-concrete rectangular "High rise", native sister of Soviet architectural masterpieces of the era of the Brezhnev stagnation. This sign of socialism turned out to be, however, not the only one. Traveling around the country, I saw numerous quarters of the most real "five-story buildings", placed square-nesting method that builds "commune" or local government for their inhabitants. The houses were clean, the gaps are neatly planted with green herb, but the main idea is still the same.

"Danish kingdom carefully cares about their citizens, – I reasoned, – the standard of living here is one of the highest in the world. It is Denmark, and not Sweden, as it is customary to think, should be considered the cradle of the sexual revolution – here for the first time allowed the free trade of pornography. But with the growth of welfare and sexual freedom, the country unexpectedly published in the world in the world by the number of suicides per capita, bypassing even the famous "Austro-Hungarian" triangle. Really in the country of love and money I want to shoot a shorter?!"

At the end of the green massif, there was a university where I went in search of clarification. On the second floor of the faculty of psychology on one of the doors it was written "Viktor Omelianchenko". The door was closed. The administration politely reported that "This is some our from Kyiv, no one knows him, and we cannot say the surname, so we call him just "Victor O". For subsequent weeks of stay in Denmark, I came from time to time to Viktor about., But always found the door locked. And Russia was represented in the University of Copenhagen by another person, whose name may seem familiar to the reader – it was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, under a large portrait of which students were preparing for classes.

– Why do you need our leader, I was surprised, – you have your own queen?
– Let it hang – who is worse? – laughed guys.- And the queen does not interfere either.

This review about the queen I then heard many times. Danes seemed to be consumed.

– Marghetta – an unusually intelligent woman, and does not affect anything. The law prohibits her to take part in political life. She does not participate, and we love her for it.
– Will not be more reasonable if such an intelligent woman starts to finally influence and participate? Moreover, you pay her money – let it work out.
– And so everything suits. Under the New Year, she protrudes on television and says that you need to be kind and highly powerful – we have enough. Before we paid the king, and he rules. But then the people decided: still we will pay, even ready to pay more former, just for the sake of all the saint nothing more do nothing! Since then goes.
– You know, I like this idea whether it is impossible to apply it in Russia?
– Here you are already starting to understand.

Near the door to Viktor about. I met his neighbor – Danish psychologist Morton. It was a well-kept man with a neat beard – a classic type of psychoanalyst, which many at the university and, oddly enough, among the drivers of city buses.

We went to the student cafe to have a snack and chat. I made an order, and Morton took out a plastic box from a portfolio, where a pretty low-rotory sandwich. "Here is a real type of cold, judicial Dane! – I admired me.- He has about four thousand dollars per month, he remains less than four thousand dollars, and it feeds the bun from last week with a tipped sausage. Why such a sexy revolution?"

I note in this regard another curious fact. If Russia is proud of the first satellite, Egypt with pyramids, and France by the Eiffel Tower, then the Denmark for his Grand National Invention keeps a worthy silence. About three centuries ago Unknown Danish Kulibin invented sandwich. Let you do not deceive a cheap American hype about hot dogs, big-poppies and hamburgers, real diversity sandwiches can be found only here. In Danish language, there is even a special word, denoting what is placed on top of bread!

Morton’s suicides said that the overwhelming number of their number falls on elderly or, on the contrary, a young age and, it is quite possible, it is just a consequence of guaranteed social security of citizens. Since the elderly does not have to fight for survival – and housing and wonderful pension they are provided – they have a release time to think about the meaning of life and their own unnecession. The result you know.

Young people move to the fatal step about the same motifs. After graduating from school and most often received a higher education, they can not find a job, but get a rather large allowance. Not uncommon such a situation when a person lives to retirement, never in life without having bothering. For romantic boys and girls with Napoleonic plans, this situation is intolerable.

Perhaps as prevention from unreasonable hopes and painful disappointments of Danish children (in contrast to the children of America), from the very beginning, they are trying to wean from leadership, from the desire to stand out. Therefore, dressed in the Danes of Narrosko, which corresponds to the general idea – do not shift. When you see a person in an expensive costume and a tie somewhere in the center of Copenhagen, then it is almost certainly a foreigner.

In general, if we talk about passersby, there is nothing to stop at anything, except that one day I was entertained by a demonstration of naked young people on bicycles, which, against something protesting, accompanied by the police sent to the building of parliament. The weather was extremely cold, I even lowered the ears of my cap and thought about how passionately needed something not to love, just hate to undress in such a fringe. It turns out, strong feelings are not uncommon for Danes?

I went to the canal where the Great Andersen lived.

Copenhagen Center is extremely beautiful. Raught by numerous channels with thousands of yachts and boats standing along the shores of urban embankments, he on a par with St. Petersburg could well claim title "Northern Venice". But whether the name of Copenhagen itself seems to be completely exhaustive, or everything for the same reason that the name of the inventor of the sandwich is hidden, I did not hear any conversations on this topic.

Numerous parks and streets of the city are simply flooded by sculpture – nowhere I have not seen such a bronze abundance: the number of horse statues of Danish monarchs is approaching the number of monuments to Soviet communist leaders. Since drying – especially the central part of the capital – is largely covered with metal with metal, antique gods and just wild animals, the aquatic space is actively beginning to be mastered. I mean not only famous "Mermaid", which with a new head (instead of stolen unknown hooligans) bangs to the sea next to the port. At the bottom of the channel opposite Parliament, with a great desire, you can see the sculptural group "Water and seven of his sons". In the city, three large museum sculptures, not believing that this kind of art is abundantly presented and in all other.

Did some special tendency of Danes manifested here? Or the fact is that the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom there is no such remarkably developed habit of the ours, building a new one, to beat everything created before?

Whether the abundance of the Apollors standing everywhere, Himeneev, Anaximandrov and Narcissov, whether the previous visit to the Museum of Erotic, where everyone can see a picture of a man with the largest in the world in the world, it highlighted the thought in my consciousness, despicablely trembling there and earlier. It is likely that it is not related to Danish character and almost certainly to the peculiarities of the physical device of the Danes, but in the appearance of beautiful nude bodies there was something wrong. At one point, harmony was disturbed and the proportions that we would delicately call the sign of masculinity, turned out to be somehow little and disappointing. Looking backing the figure from top to bottom, the eye hoped for something more.

Visiting Sisters Liz and Carin, in an atmosphere of mutual trust and sympathy, I could not resist not to talk on this topic. Liz, romantic nature, nine months a year working as an educator of a kindergarten to go to New Zealand’s accumulated money, answered like this: "Once this place was covered with a fig leaf. Then a lover of realism, judging that the nature is deprived of imperfections, threw it the last shelter, but, having risen her own courage, and did not decide to say all the terrible truth. "I would not have changed anything, – added Carin with a smile, – moreover, a leaflet on the old place would be returned. Even in nature there are such things that interfere with the pure contemplation of beauty". "I feel, the Danish sexy revolution passed by you". "No, it’s not so. I gave birth to a child at eighteen, who has no father. And for my parents and for me it was a hard drama. That guy made another six children to other girls. And so across the country: young people rush from one woman to another, making children who will never be a full-fledged family. They have to pay a little for it, approximately seven hundred crowns per month per child, and mostly the money gives the state". "It went back since the times of King Christian IV. He had more than three hundred children, so all the Danes can consider themselves his descendants". "By the way, traditional values ​​are now returning, and among young people, it became fashionably not only to marry, but even declare the engagement". "Probably, the church attached to this hand". "No, believers here a bit, and the parishioners are not at all. Churches earn mainly the fact that for money they allow tourists to climb on the bell tower. But it is here in Copenhagen. In the province, the situation is different, there even new temples build".

In one of the following days there was a religious holiday – the day of all saints. Several centuries ago, the celebrations dedicated to different saints followed one after another so often that there was no time to work, so decided to unite all these holy days together. In one of the central temples of the capital, I only counted a few dozen praying. In another – an old and impressive cathedral – a second week was cheap book sale, and near the parliamentary square in the Church of St. Nicholas held an exhibition of contemporary art: on the tables and chairs, covered with snow-white sheets, were televisions showing the exhibits of the Guinness Museum.

I suddenly noticed on the wall of sculpture of some unusual creatures. Surprisingly, the Danesian traction to everything bright and exotic. A large number of wonderful animals was alarmed – the spire of the Tower of the old Copenhagen Exchange was built in the form of woven crocodiles, the organ of the centuries-old temple supports the elephants, not to mention countless lions, rhino, bizarre fish and other livery. Suddenly, the explanation gave a guide of one of the museums: "This strange animal had to become a bear. But the artist who worked on the cannut has never seen this beast and asked how he looks like. He was explained that about as a lion, only much worse. He crossed lion with a bear and got a good result!"

Guides here do not consider mandatory to preserve seriousness even in such things that in other countries can be considered the national shrine. In the gloomy dungeon of Kronberg Castle, the Elderly Guide told the legend about the mighty Danish hero. It was a typical story to be fed tourists everywhere where excursions. An unusual ending. "That’s all, he said, – If you want, you can believe in all this nonsense".

My familiar German Friedrich, married on the Dane, said about this, that’s what: "Compared to Germany, life here is more relaxed and calm. A lot of familiar Socialism is well reminded of me – full of all regulations and rules, difficult to interact with each other, but there is no such instructing of ideology. Denmark – a country without extremes, there is no feminism or type of movements "political correctness" – all these American absurdities, in general, extremism of any kind, racial or religious intolerance. In recent years, a large number of Muslims from the Arab East arrived here. There are almost two thousand small homemade mosques, but when one multimillioner allocated money for the construction of a giant mosque that would eclipse everything around, the government stopped the construction. Said: "This is too too. Pray quietly. Allah this is enough. And other gods will be calmer."

I have long noticed – the less you know about something, the clearer it seems. And vice versa, the more facts do not fit into the procrusteo bed of the theory, the further you advanced on the way of knowledge. Therefore, the final criterion that the question is as follows, serves as a state, when all sensations, facts, assumptions are hopelessly mixed, forming full chaos. At Copenhagen airport, leaving the country, I was close to this. I did not understand how all these contradictory things exist at the same time? Is it in nature invented by me the type of perfect sensing and how common it is distributed? And in which group to bring pretty, witty, intelligent, small, and not too disciplined kingdom citizens? For two weeks, the country where I was heading without great expectations, became the place of intriguing mysteries, and for its ironed uniform, it was possible to see a living soul. What else can be desired from life?