Fred's secret travels

In an interview with Børsen Weekend last week, the life & style publication of the financial publication, as reported by BT Crown Prince Frederik's childhood friend Holger Foss talks about the travels around the US that both of them took one summer between studies at Aarhus University.

Frederick's childhood friend lifts the lid on the prince's private travel secrets.

Crown Prince Frederik with backpack as camper with sleeping pad and sleeping bag.

It's hard to imagine for those who know Frederik as the official Crown Prince, but nonetheless it is one of the Crown Prince's small private secrets.
Friday's edition of Børsen Weekend promises the prince's close friend, Holger Foss, lifts a corner of the man Frederik's unprecedented and private secrets.
Holger Foss met Crown Prince Frederik through his mother, who attended court balls with Queen Margrethe at Amalienborg Palace, and when the royal family was in residence in Aarhus, Holger was an ideal playmate for his contemporary Frederik, whom he has known since they were both only ten years old, Foss told Børsen Weekend.

Today's 42-year-old Holger Foss, who is sales director at Tieto Denmark, remains close friends with the Crown Prince, also reveals that Frederik stayed in a hostel as they toured incognito together around the US in an old beat up Cadillac convertible purchased for $2,500 after studying at Aarhus University.

"We got the Cadillac spiffed up a little bit, packed two backpacks, two sleeping pads, a casette player and a thick address book with all kinds of people we could call on the road and as we drove," recounts Foss.

On the trip into the unknown USA the two friends slept in the car, camped in a national park and stayed with ordinary Americans, whom they met along the way: "we came to stay at a hostel, on a ranch in Nevada, with a Mormon family in Utah; we camped in a national park and we stayed inside the car at Graceland (Elvis Presley's house) because it rained so much," says Holger Foss to Børsen Weekend.

The tour lasted one and a half months, and the prince was almost incognito: "the beauty of both Aarhus and the US was that people perhaps knew who Frederik was, but that was that. Back then we had our space," says Holger Foss.

Fred and Holger during their student days at Aarhus University. They shared a small house on the Marselisborg estate.



Holger and his wife Rose Gad, the ballerina, at the dinner cruise for Fred's 40th birthday.