Yesterday I passed over the eponymous Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo. No corpses or autistic cops spotted, but it still gave me a frisson as it’s not just an icon of Scandinavian cooperation, but of a new European culture. The one some would walk away from. That said, it was lucky my geographical sense remains in working order because, for all the Danish order and efficiency, the one thing they save money on is signs. In the four miles driving out of Copenhagen, there was just one tiny sign admitting to the existence of this motorway, as if it was a guilty secret.

It is one of the more intriguing features of human existence, that every culture has some blind spots where they cannot imagine what things look like from an alien point of view, in this case someone who has never driven in Denmark before. It is all the more surprising because English is so widespread here that you hear it spoken more on the street than Danish, and people who bump into you say “Sorry” rather than whatever the Danish word is. Yet, when it comes to signs, they frequently forget that us foreign clods don’t read Danish, or Swedish, so parking signs and meters are unintelligible. I know it is our fault for mostly being monolingual cretins, but it is no accident that English has become the lingua franca of Europe. All the more ironic that the English are turning their over-sized bottoms to the continent.

Driving the 400 miles from Copenhagen to Stockholm, I am also struck by how much more considerate drivers are here than in either Germany or the UK. Much less of that aggressive ‘get out of my way, I’m coming through’, much more moving over to let you pass, notable since most Swedish motorways are only two-lane and the inside lane is often full of HGVs. Again, the signage is not perfect, since I missed the motorway turn for Stockholm and ended up going an extra hundred miles out of my way via Goteborg, a bit like going to Newcastle via Carlisle.

“You’ll have seen quite a bit of Sweden” said a large guy I was chatting to in a bar last night. But when I told him of my route for driving on to Trondheim, he recommended I change my plans and cut across country through its mountainous heart, where not only the finer landscape is found but the true history of the Swedish, with their mining culture and subsistence agriculture. I duly cancelled my booking in Sundsval and re-planned my journey. Travel is immeasurably enhanced by such chance encounters.

Perhaps it was that which played in my mind when I was on site for the 10 am opening of the Swedish Royal Palace. It didn’t help that the palace booking system crashed and a growing throng of us was kept waiting for quarter of an hour before the manager appeared and graciously allowed us to enter for free, but I had an epiphany walking through the endless gilded halls. I suddenly realised I have seen enough of these gilded monuments to self-esteem, gilt without guilt, pomp without circumstance. I have always thought it a mite strange that 4 million Brits, like me, belong to the National Trust, spending our spare time and money paying homage to by-gone hierarchies of power. As an historian by education, I support the preservation of the past in all its forms but I felt I had had a belly full of it. Second rate portraits of past mayors in Hamburg and monarchs in Stockholm leave me cold as I wander through their marble halls, memorials to their ineffable self-importance. Preserve them, more as a warning than a celebration, and pay more attention to the miners, as my pub mate suggests.

That said, I don’t have the same reaction in old churches. I am still in awe of the wealth and endeavour medieval communities poured into their places of worship. No matter that I don’t share their faith; their collective will remains enshrined in these places, just like in the extraordinary edifice of Salisbury Cathedral, in the shadow of whose 404-foot spire I grew up. The Storkyrkan, Stockholm’s cathedral, is a 13th-century Romanesque gem built in brick, re-modelled over successive generations, but still full of delightful features, including this votive ship, and a 14th or 15th century ‘mysterious seven-armed candelabra’, which suggest a Jewish influence these staunch Lutherans deny.

I also discovered the lovely Church of St Gertrude, incidentally my grandmother’s name which has definitely fallen out of favour, as I was denied the opportunity to bestow it on either of my daughters. It had lovely painted panels on the ceilings of the side aisles and was quintessentially Swedish. I discovered someone had left their handbag in a pew here, and the female verger was concerned she might be booby-trapped. She wasn’t.

Stockholm and its people are generally very nice, although another Swedish pecadillo is that they clearly don’t like urinals. Toilets are generally sets of unisex closets, meaning men have to share the queueing usually the preserve  of women. The only urinals I have seen are these models in a museum display.

I had a pleasant lunch at Kultur in the old town, Gamla Stan. The waiter was concerned that Brexit would stop him returning to London to work as he planned, after he had finished his degree.  From my terrace table, I was able to observe the passers-by. The hipster beard is still very much in vogue here.

Yes, having failed to visit the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, despite staying around the corner from it, I went to the Stockholm version today, not least because pensioners are let in for free! It is horrendous, but the young locals clearly love it.

When we were young, Sweden was synonymous with sex, beautiful blonde people committed to free love, such as in the film I Am Curious, Yellow. Now I guess a significant number of my Swedish contemporaries are more committed to support hosiery, albeit still in sandals. That said, I have noticed that more middle-aged women have tattoos here than young ones. So maybe that hippy generation is still going, shaking conventions while their offspring are obliged to adopt alternative paths. On second thoughts, nothing much changes.

Today I also visited the Moderna Museet, the Museum of Modern Art, which has, despite inevitably over-promoting some Swedish artists, one of the best, most representative collections of art since 1900 I have ever seen, from Munch and Braque, through Picasso & Warhol, to Surrealism, Op Art, Pop Art and nearly every major movement since (though thankfully no Brit Art). It also has one of the world’s finest collections of Marcel Duchamp, who apparently visited to confer his approval. I can only add mine.

Kandinsky and Magritte; Dali’s William Tell below, baring a passing resemblance to Lenin.

OK, that’s one more urinal, though Duchamp had it as an artwork. But probably the most beautiful thing I saw today was the wooden-wall battleship the Vasa, arguably the finest surviving ship of its age. It sank just outside Stockholm harbour in 1628, on its maiden voyage, because it was badly designed, having far too little stone ballast to support its superstructure in even the mildest squall. It was raised in 1961 and reassembled – ‘the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle’ – in its entirety, save only the original exterior technicolor painting, and of course its crew, 50 of whom perished.

And another thing: George and the Dragon is claimed by many other cultures. Leave the EU and get St George back for ourselves! This is Stockholm today.