You can smell Denmark before you see it

The air in the Baltic does not have the heavy smell of the sea. I suppose this is due to the landlocked nature of the water, fed from rain and freshwater rivers, and absence of sea kelp. The waves are smaller but choppier, kicked up by the winds, and don’t burden the air with the heavy humidity and smell of salt. Spray on your lips seems fresh, but not of the ocean.

But approaching land, you can smell Denmark before you reach it.

Out of the light sea air comes a pungent, thick, organic funk, oozing out over the land from the pigs and cows of Danish rural industry. It assaults your nose with animalistic intensity.

We prefer the cows. “Grass fed beef”, we opine, connoisseurs of the situation. The scent of pigs have a higher, sharper tang and are somehow more intense.

In the Kiel Canal, we find new olfactory offerings – pigs again but also chicken – plus the whiff of German sausage and French fries from the food houses along the water.

We nose forward into the unknown.