To be or not to be ...

That is the question.

Today, we caught the train to Helsingør (Elsinore) to visit the Maritime Museum of Denmark (http://mfs.dk/en) and Kronborg Castle (Hamlet's home).

The Maritime Museum of Denmark was only opened last year and is built into a former dry dock.  The building itself is quirkily interesting; the museum is surprisingly post-modern, with discussions on sailor sexuality.  Not really like any maritime museum I've been to before.  



Not unexpectedly given that the museum is supported by A P Møller, it has a focus on the contribution of container shipping (especially big, blue Mærsk line container ships) to global commerce and trade, but no discussion of the impact of having a shipping workforce that is mostly poor and from the Phillipines, India and Pakistan.  See Rose George's "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" for a discussion of this.  

After visiting the Maritime Museum, we wandered over to Kronborg Castle in absolutely freezing winds, and walked around the castle.  They perform Hamlet there with puppets - seems wrong somehow.  



The Danish army was priming the cannons against an imminent Swedish invasion, which seemed a bit fruitless, given that Swedes cross over from Helsingborg by ferry hourly to buy cheap(er) booze in Helsingør.