False Tourism

Imagine peering west up the Champs-Elysees from the Louvre, and instead of resting your eyes on the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, your view settles on that crappy motorway junction behind it. Or, rounding the corner of Rome’s Forum to greet the Colloseum, only to satiate your viewing pleasure with the world’s largest roundabout. I dare say you’d be pretty peeved, maybe even a little miffed, if these landmarks in European tourism were suddenly taken away from you.

Well, this has happened in Copenhagen. The Little Mermaid, although certainly not as famous as the Eiffel Tower, Athens’ Acropolis or the Big Dipper at Blackpool, is Denmark’s jewel in the crown for tourists. Well… apart from the royal crown jewels obviously. Millions of tourists every year come to Copenhagen, and on each neatly organised to-do list are the bullet points:

- Royal Palace
- Christiania
- Little Mermaid

Now, you can’t exactly shift a palace that has stood for centuries in the middle of the city, nor can you remove an entire area of the capital. However, what it seems you CAN do is bonk off a small statue to the highest bidder.

That’s right, Copenhagen’s beloved mermaid is currently living it up in Shanghai; holidaying for eight months as the centrepiece for the Danish contribution of a world exhibition or something like that… the slapper.

How dare she piss off and leave us here in rainy Denmark all alone. It smacks of utter cheek that someone can pawn off the statue. What makes things worse however, is that the Danes have hardly realised she’s gone.

This is the current scene at the site of the Mermaid’s rock. As you can see, the scene is picturesque, a view overlooking the opposite harbour, while Copenhagen’s famous castile lurks just out of shot. What a beautiful vie- wait… hang on a minute, what’s that youtube video on that enormous projector screen doing there, blocking out the view? What, is that a live feed to the Mermaid 5,000 miles away? Quick Beryl get the camera, you’ve got to take this!

And yet, even though the Mermaid isn’t there, just on the left you can see people selling Little Mermaid figurines. About £5.50 each if you’re interested: postcards £1.50. Figurines, to commemorate that wonderful afternoon when you stared at a screen watching other people staring at the very same thing you travelled all this bloody way to stare at.

Why not just Google Image it?

The sheer cheek to sell these things overlooking the naked crime scene is remarkable, what’s more amazing is that – of course – people buy them in their droves.

I’m thinking of setting up a tourist’s trinket stall myself actually: small-scale figurines of the Yorkshire Dales’ most fascinating dry stone wall designs.