A quick note on the bikes:<p>1) Copenhagen is really, <i>really</i> flat, which makes it easy to bike for everyone.<p>2) Cars in Denmark have an environmental/luxury tax of over 100%, on top of the 25% VAT, making cars incredibly expensive to buy.
A well traveled American ex-colleague of mine moved to Copenhagen but left after 6 months. He said he simply couldn't afford to live there on his (Senior) game developer salary and theorized that the reason Danes are so happy is that they have such low expectations.<p>I really hope that's not true (I'm pretty sure it isn't) as I find the idea of moving and raising my family there very appealing.
A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’ (quoted by Kotkin, 2009).