The world's most liveable city

What can I say? It must be me. First Melbourne, and now Copenhagen has been voted the World’s Most Liveable City.

Someone in Australia who had read the results too, asked me if this tiny city deserved the accolade. What can I say? Yes, it does.

Ex-pats are divided about this place from what I read and hear. Some can’t stand it. I, well we, if you include NQDII and Hamish, love it.

First things first. It’s really barely deserves the title city. It’s a small place on a global level. There aren’t gazillions of people. A Dutch freelancer recently said to me it was like Amsterdam without the crowds and I think he was right. Copenhagen has something for everyone. It has history, it has lots of green spaces, you can get anywhere easily by public transport and if you take away a few months of near darkness, it’s an extremely nice place to call home.

What’s odd about the award is that last year tourism to Denmark dropped dramatically. I guess it’s hard for Copenhagen to compete with the draw cards of London, Paris, Rome and New York but as clichéd as this sounds, in very many ways it really is a fairy-tale kingdom. There’s very little crime, the people are amicable and it definitely doesn’t have any where near the agro on the streets that so many cities have nowadays. In general, there’s an innocence about Danes that is very endearing. The country I certainly not trouble-free but, on the whole I can’t think of m/any other places where a huge majority can live very decent, fear-free lives.