New borders for the old world

"In meetings we speak Danish and they speak Swedish, and everyone understands one another," says Ole Kraup Jensen of the University of Copenhagen, who helped set up a degree program in Hebrew, run jointly with Lund University.

The new "Oresund region" is still in its infancy, but Matthiessen and other supporters say the benefits are already visible. Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport is expanding, international hotel and retail chains are coming to the region, and rents and property values are rising sharply in Malmö, a long struggling rust-belt city.

The 11 universities and colleges in the area have come together to create Oresund University, a confederation that allows students at any one school to take advantage of classes, libraries, and technical equipment at all the others. By sharing resources, the institutions are establishing specialized programs that would otherwise have been unaffordable. Small departments and disciplines once threatened with extinction are being revitalized, such as Hebrew, which had been on the verge of elimination at Lund University before the completion of the bridge.

The universities have also formed a research alliance with the region's 26 hospitals and 150 biomedical companies, hoping they can dominate biomedicine the way California's Silicon Valley dominates software.

"We want to become the number one bio-region in Europe in five years," says Dr. Belfrage, who chairs the board of the alliance, which is named "Medicon Valley."

But it isn't easy building a new metropolitan area where none existed before. Despite the construction of the Oresund Bridge, transportation remains a major problem.

Authorities set bridge tolls so high - $30 each way for a passenger car - that most motorists take the old ferry service instead. The bridge trains are also expensive - $20 round trip from Copenhagen to Malmö - nearly twice as much as the hydrofoils that criss-cross the sound. The special bridge trains suffer from technical problems, and they only run between the central stations at Malmö and Copenhagen, with a stop at Kastrup Airport. Until through service is expanded elsewhere, most commuters have to make several time-consuming connections.

Ola Bunte, a graduate student in molecular biology at Lund University, spent a frustrating semester trying to commute by train between Lund and the Danish Technical University on the other side of Copenhagen. Each day, Mr. Bunte had to catch a commuter train from Lund to Malmö, board an Oresund train to Copenhagen-Central, take a Danish commuter train from there to the western suburbs, then catch a bus that would take him the last mile and a half to DTU. To make matters worse, the Oresund trains are plagued with technical problems and delays.

"The very first morning I commuted, it took me 3-1/2 hours, because of troubles with the trains," he recalls. "I remember thinking: Am I going to sit on trains for seven hours every day?"

Bunte's typical commute was more like two hours each way, but he and other commuters find it frustrating all the same.

"Suddenly people think that Copenhagen is a lot closer than it used to be, but that hasn't been my experience," he says.

Despite the barriers, however, more and more Copenhageners and southwestern Swedes are discovering one another's towns and cities.

"The biggest surprise for me was that Lund was there," says Danish university student Daniel Lehrer. "If it wasn't for the Oresund [cooperation], I might never have known what was available right across the water," he says.

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