His Danish

Heart Is In Tahiti

From Bjorn Westergaard in Copenhagen.

HAVING lost your heart to one of the lovely islands in the South Pacific nothing can stop you from wanting to go there again and again.

One person like that is 71-year old Johannes Hansen (pictured), a retired Danish farm worker, who lives in Denmark on only a shilling a day, so that he can visit Tahiti as often as he can.

In the last five years, Mr. Hansen has visited Tahiti four times, and. in all, he has been there about 10 times.

He has to be careful with his expenses because his only regular income is a pension equal to £2O sterling a month.

Of this sum Mr. Hansen saves up £lB/10/0 a month for a third class ticket to Tahiti.

To give himself a little pocket money for the long trip, he does gardening for people in his home town of Odense, and sells fruit and vegetables from his backyard.

Mr. Hansen says that when he was in Tahiti last winter, he met a priest in a barber shop, who gave him permission to stay in an old

school-house and paid him for doing his gardening.

“I will take him some Danish flower-seeds next time 1 go to Tahiti,” Mr. Hansen says.

Mr. Hansen has never been a rich man, but he has managed to see much of the world.

He was in the United States in World War I, and has also lived in Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela, Ar gentina and Brazil.

“Travelling keeps me healthy and happy and I will go on visiting Tahiti every winter as long as possible,” he says.