Relations between the U.S. and Denmark are very tense right now. I’ll get to that in a future article or two. Yesterday, I published a Copenhagen journal, here: observations, photos, trivia, crotchets, etc. Let’s have a little mail.

“Copenhagen is my favorite European city,” writes a reader. So does another. So does another. So, that makes three. (The kind of math I can handle.)

A reader from California writes,

I felt that I read your journal to the accompaniment of Danny Kaye singing “Wonderful Copenhagen” from the movie in which he played Hans Christian Andersen.

That song was written by Frank Loesser (whose brother, Arthur, was a very good classical pianist and an excellent teacher). (Arthur, jokingly, referred to Frank as “the evil of two Loessers.”)

Our California reader continues,

I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but I have spent some very enjoyable days in Solvang. I know it’s not the same. (No canals.) But if it’s the best California can do, it’s not bad.

Solvang is a little town in Santa Barbara County, and it’s known as “the Danish Capital of America.” I learned about Solvang in the 1980s because the Reagans voted there. It’s not far from their ranch.

Another reader writes,

My mom’s hometown is Greenville, Mich., and it holds a Danish festival every summer.

I’ll be dipped. I’m from Michigan and never knew about (a) Greenville, (b) its Danes, and (c) their festival.

A reader writes,

After the war, my father was angry at the Army for not letting him go home. But he ended up “occupying” Denmark, which he enjoyed very much — not least, according to my uncle, because he met a family, which had a daughter. But he had a girl waiting back home in the U.S. — otherwise, I would not be writing you . . .

Another reader:

Jay, I’m surprised you came back!

In my journal, I shared a picture of a street sign, out in the country — about 20 miles from Copenhagen. The street: Melchiorsvej. I wondered whether it was named after Lauritz Melchior, the great tenor.

The tenor aside, I was touched to get this note:

Dear Jay,

It was with outright astonishment that, as I read through your journal, I saw the photo that has, in the background, the home at the intersection of Melchiorsvej and Tokkekobvej. That, sir, was my mom’s childhood home, and the home at which my brother and I spent summer vacations with our aunt, who owned it after my grandfather passed.

My mom was the youngest of seven children, so I had a large Danish family of aunts and uncles. And to this day I have half a dozen cousins who are like older siblings to me, and I regularly return for a visit. . . .

The lower half of the home was run as a corner convenience store by my grandfather. Before and during World War II, people in the neighborhood could buy tobacco, fresh ground coffee, cleaning supplies, canned goods, beer, and so on. My aunt took this on after my grandfather. Eventually, in the 1960s, when the store could no longer compete with upstart grocery stores in town, she let out the space to a hair stylist. . . .

I could tell you a lot more about the little house on that corner (and the house across the street, which we called “the White House”). Fond childhood memories — not to mention what my mom told me about her own growing up: the occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany; the postwar period; the free-love hippie era.

Cheers for a pleasant surprise.

My thanks to all readers and correspondents, Danes and non-Danes alike.