Happy New Year Travel Blog readers.  we thought that a light hearted article would help brush away the winter blues – we hope you enjoy this and wish you happy travelling in 2010

If you are planning a visit to Scandanavia beware of street sellers offering shoes.

Here’s a little shoe stealing trick we read about in the Times

Swedish police following the progress of theives that stole single shoes (left) from shoe shop displays in Malmo, Sweden were tracked travelling to nearby Copenhagen, Denmark which is only half an hour train jouney away.

The city of Copenhagen was recently in the headlines because it played host to the 2010 Copenhagen climate change fail conference  It was discovered that Danes have a preference for displaying the right shoes and therfore enabling the theft of a complete pair.

The Swedes are lobbying for international rules to be drawn up in order that all countries display the same side shoe.  125 shoe shop owners in Malmo have informally requested that the several hundred footwear shops in Copenhagen switch the traditional Danish right hand display to conform with the left therby twarting the shoe thiefs.

The debate has already begun in Denmark but in the aftermath of the disapointing talks about the effects of climate change it is expected to be some time before any shoe display concensus is reached.  Getting the Danes to display only the left shoe as well — was rejected by Marie Andersen, a shop assistant in Copenhagen. “There is no point in switching to left shoes, since in Germany they display the right shoes,”