CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

The company that runs Copenhagen's buses has had 17 double-deckers on trial for the past decade. It has not been a happy experience, and when the contract runs out in a month or so, it will not be renewed. With the exception of small children, Danes are apparently reluctant to go upstairs, congregating instead in the downstairs areas, where there are markedly fewer seats. The buses are also too high to go under a key bridge in the middle of the city, which regularly sees Swedish coaches getting stuck or worse. So, no more double-deckers on this side of the North Sea.

In London, on the other hand, they have been experimenting with bendy buses as a possible replacement for the famous double-decker Routemasters. These long things have been wildly unpopular, and will now be shipped off to Malta, where they presumably don't have a head for heights. A new version of the Routemaster is the way to go on the far side of the North Sea.

Whoever said that Europeans were all the same?

Walter Blotscher