Pop quiz: Where can you rent a kayak for free, have a nice chat with a complete stranger and help yourself to bread without being rung up at the register? It’s our first time in Denmark – people are really trusting here! Copenhagen is a city built on trust.
But just how do the Danes do it? We see for ourselves. A 90-minute kayak ride for two.
It’s free, but there’s a catch. They have to fish out as much trash as possible from the river and canals. They mostly find plastic, but there is the occasional surprise.
A bag of dog poop! The man behind the idea: Tobias Weber-Andersen. I was frustrated to see all the trash floating in the canal, so I wanted to do something about it.
So the idea was to activate as many people as possible. With GreenKayak, he combines sport and recreation with nature and environmental responsibility. And of course: It is a concept that is based on trust very much.
And it works. In Copenhagen, there’s hardly any trouble with missing or damaged kayaks. These two paddlers give it all they’ve got.
The current makes it an uphill battle – or an upstream one! Paddling upstream is pretty strenuous. It's work combined with fun and you know it's for a good cause.
It makes you want to collect as much as possible. When you get something for free, you want to give something back. I don’t know if it would work back home – not sure!
In the Nørrebro district, you can borrow a sympathetic ear like you can a book in a library. That's why this place is called the 'Human Library'. Half an hour for a chat about personal stories or worries.
I have a hearing limit of 50 decibels. That's the same sound level of a truck. So all sound higher than 50 decibels I can hear, but everything that’s below, and especially high tone voices, I cannot hear.
Ronni Abergel knows how challenging life can be. So he came up with the idea of the Human Library. We are a library for all of mankind.
So it's a place where you walk in and you get a chance to explore humanity. Through dialogue, we hope people will find understanding, and through that understanding we pray for acceptance. All of us need that acceptance.
We won't get it by standing alone and shouting. We'll get it by standing together, shoulder-to-shoulder. Whether speaker or listener – the encounters here take place on equal footing.
People here tell us that equality is a guiding principle in Denmark. So there’s a foundation of trust. Delicious breads, rolls, and cake, but no cashier?
Here in the north of the Danish capital is one of the city’s most popular bakeries. It’s tiny – and always full. Customers serve themselves, tally up the price, and pay online.
Cheating the system would be easy. But the baker says it rarely happens. I did not put much thought into it to be honest.
It was just a way of running a bakery in a small, very quiet street located in Österbro in Copenhagen. So for me alone it was necessary to run a one-man bakery as it was in the beginning. Pragmatic and typically Danish.
The concept of the trust given the customer to come in and choose their own bakery items and pay with mobile pay is a very Danish concept. I'm from the US and that would not work at all in the United States. The buns are coming in five minutes!
The baked goods are a hit. But Martin Vogelius is amused by the fuss over having no cash register. It was not a big deal for me to begin with, and that the trust base alone would take so much attention.
Copenhagen’s reputation as a city of trust is known well beyond Denmark. And people here will tell you, that's just how it is.
