Words you need to know: JANTELOV.

For any of you who like a nose in the air serious talk about Jantelov, here’s a link to some electronic pages to help fuel your fire so you can wax lyrical:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jante_Law

Jantelov is enshrined in after dinner conversational patter.

Being here, as a foreigner in Denmark, you are going to have to at least pretend to have some respect for the conversation pieces you will meet time and time again around the Danish dinner and lunch tables..

My advice is to ask a Denish what Jantelov is all about and then to act as if it is the most fascinating thing you had ever heard of.  Frown in deep study,  making oohing and ahhing noises.

Whenever the talk turns inevitably towards Jantelov I do start to nod off a bit and have to suppress little yawns.  But I try to remind myself that if you give the Denish any impression that Jantelov and talking about Jantelov is about as stimulating as a plate of cold cabbage,  then well..it just won’t do.  Must not make Denish Angwee. They will get their little feathers all ruffled if you are not wery careful.

Little task:  Quickly,  grab the first Denish near you and ask them:

“What IS Jantelov?”  I’m going to do it too…*sounds of stiletto heels scuddering across marble floor*

….are you back?

What did yours say?

My nearest Denish said:

“”……Well…um..Jantelov is…erm.. nobody is thinking that they are better than others..”  (long pause) “I don’t really know…that also means that ..um..well that’s kind of the… er….that’s kind of like the most positive thing about it. The most negative thing about Jantelov is that it also means that… um…. that… er ..that you keep each other down because nobody is allowed to be all ‘who do they think they are driving a car like that?’..”

So I said:  “But this is ridiculous,  just look at the people who live in XXXXX (nearest populated area) they are all in competition with eachother!”

Denish said: “Hmm..well, yes. There are people who don’t give a shit about jantelov..”

I don’t see Jantelov as something real. It doesn’t exist.

Denish said: “Yeah it does,  it would probably be um..it does…it is a little bit like…there are also people who have had success who are talking about their experiences abroad, how they are celebrated abroad but not when they come home to Denmark…”

Hmm.  So many Dannish believe that Jantelov is something real,  like a table or something, and it sits in their lives and has a purpose and a history.

If you have just got off the banana boat examples of Jantelov won’t immediately jump out at you until some Denish nearby suddenly remembers they are supposed to talk about it to you.  One has to be told that the Denish are fair and equal to believe it to be so.  I have never seen examples of people looking down on others in Denmark because they are rich or successful.  Denmark is a nation of brown-nosing sycophants.

However, the bar is pretty low here.  So little investment in education.  So little diversity. No wonder the Dannish peck at eachothers butts like chickens cooped up too long.  The mutt of the group, this being the foreigner or anyone remotely different, they get the worst of the pecking and go get to skulk away in the corner,  while the supremacists then get to strut and preen and admire/envy the Sørensens next door for their spanking new Audi.

There seems to be a lack of drive within the elementary educational system.  Gifted children don’t appear to happen here and when they do they are treated like they are handicapped.  If they are very lucky their parents can afford to send them off to special schools for kids who are gifted (I think there are three in the whole of Denmark, and very small ones at that).

Is this Jantelov in action?

I’m none the wiser about Jantelov today as I was in the very beginning, when Dannish first started telling me all about Jantelov. This is how I believe the Jantelov, the common law for Denish, how it really is today.  I’ve doctored it from the original translation of the Jantelov.

1. Do think that you are special,  especially if you are Danish or if you have a high paid job.
2. Don’t think that you are of the same standing as the invandrer, they elevate you to the status of ‘above’.
3. Do think that you are smarter than some people,  especially if you went beyond folkeskole education, or invandrer,  or people from Jutland.
4. Don’t fancy yourself as being better than anyone,  unless you have a newer car or you live in Copenhagen or a big house with shiny black roof tiles.
5. Don’t think that you know more than us, unless you are a pædagog.
6. Don’t think that you are more important than anyone,  unless you work for the kommune or are an academic, or are behind someone in a bus queue.
   
7. Don’t think that you are good at anything,  unless what you are good at is being Danish, and then try to highlight everything you are good at and talk about it loudly amongst your Dannish.  Talk about how much better Denmark is than other countries ad fricking nauseam.
8. Don’t laugh at your fellow Danes, but do poke fun at every other ‘other ethnic background than Danish’ cultural group and what they hold sacred.
   
9. Don’t think that anyone of us Danes care about any of you other Danes,  we don’t really, wouldn’t p!!! on you if you were on fire, but so long as you pay your taxes that’s just fine.
10. I couldn’t find a proper number ten,  this jantelov list is way too long and I am going nowhere with this.

Advice:  Honestly,  trust me on this one, you gotta perfect a focused look for those times Jantelov comes up in conversation. It’s utterly meaningless.

Does anybody want to teach me about Janteloven so I can write a better post about it?  Have I missed something or am I right about Janteloven being a load of bollox?

Define: ‘Danish’.

I don’t have a nationality to call my own,  being an amalgamation of places,  my family has migrated over the eons and there is no one strain.

Increasingly I hear the term: ‘of another ethnic background than Danish’,  which is a thinly veiled way of saying:  *coon* I guess.

We term ourselves as this and that, and I rather shy away from the idea of describing myself as ethnic anything,  but the Danish media has begun to describe people as Danish or ‘of another ethnic background than Danish’ and I have to ask:  Burning question #1: what makes a person feel they are Danish then?

Why the big deal about ethnic appearance?

How can you tell if someone is of another ethnic background than Danish?

Perhaps I look Danish, but I am of another ethnic background than Danish.

It drives me bloody mad, all this pure bullshit straight up in a cup.

If you ask a Denish what makes them Danish they will start bristling with pride about their welfare state and their precious democracy idea.

Recent surveys tell us that most Danes are very proud of themselves.

God.  Can you imagine coming from a country and being darn proud of it?

Very odd.  I am from Wales and I am PROUD.  I am from Greece and I am PROUD of being Greek.  I am from another ethnic background than Danish and I am PROUD of being from another ethnic background than Danish.

I mean, this isn’t at all coherent, just a load of confused ideas floating about in my head, but what is the big deal with them being so proud?

And if they can be proud, does that mean we can be proud.

I have no country to call my own,  oooer,  what does that make me?

I have tried again and again to ask people what actually makes them Danish, I ask simple normal people, I don’t go for the highbrows,  and they all tell me it is because they have a Danish passport and were born in Denmark.

If you go for the middle classes here (anyone above pædagog or vicevært) they start bleating about how being Danish is all about ‘believing’ in democracy.

My belief is that being Danish is like joining a golf club.  You pay an extremely high fee,  agree to abide by the rules and feel very smug for having such a tidy expanse of well maintained lawn to wear your best leisure clothes on and meet up with your workmates.

It’s a bit lame,  I am struggling to understand, except that all i know is that I am sick of self professed Danes bleating on about their fricking welfare state and their poxy version of democracy. How about them getting off their highhorses and seeing Denmark for what it really is?

Which is….

well,  it’s a tiny little exclusive and mediocre club.  No big deal, but of course they are all hugging themselves in self congratulatory manner.

There is a Denmark that the common Dane refuses to admit is existing,  and it’s Denmark between the cracks.  A vibrant place full of ideas and new people who will live here, work here and love here (and probably not for ever) and will never ever call ourselves Danish and have absolutely no plans or desire to ‘be’ danish or ‘newdanish’ or whatever the offer is.

In this Denmark between the cracks we eat great food,  dance really well and enjoy fabulous conversations.  We are sardonic and urbane.  We know what a good sausage is and we complain about the taxes.  Our children are precocious and witty.  Our bookcases are heaving with heavy tomes in languages other than Danish.  We do not notice skin colour so much as the spark of intelligence.  We are witty and we don’t take crap.  We have bullshit detectors and do not need to be part of a ‘group’ to be strong.

Which leads me to my burning question #2:  what is it with the Danes and being part of a group?  I don’t get why they feel they are only strong if they are fully signed up members of groups..surely a person is only strong if they can go it alone?  I would rather eat cold liverpostej on a bit of rubbery ryebread than pay into the idea that a person is only strong as ‘part’ of a group.

WTF is all that about?

Words you need to know: ‘SKILSMISSE’ (D.I.V.O.R.C.E.).

A marriage fails when two people cannot under any circumstances figure it out.  Where you come from, you only break up your happy home if there is no way under the sun you can keep it together.

But welcome to Denmark,  the land of ‘skilsmisse‘ and the ‘skilsmisse’ children.  We do things in a civilized way here and that means amicable divorce  and dividing the children up fair and square week in and week out.

Walking down a lonely country lane the other day I encountered a child tossing a ball against a wall in his yard. He ran over to the gate and asked me my name.  (Dannish children want personal details from you and are more than happy to supply you with the names and ages of everyone in their near family, plus addresses and personal contact details if you speak for longer than five minutes.  They have not been warned of ‘stranger danger’.)

“Jeg hedder Marcus,  hvad hedder du?” Said the little mite, so touchingly without guile.

I told him my name was classified information and that in my culture children don’t speak to strangers.

He told me his parents were divorced.

He told me he had just finished his ‘dad’s week’ and was moving onto his ‘mum’s week’.

Divorce is a funny thing in Denmark.  No bricks through windows, no jealous spats on the street,  no breaking into the estranged spouse’s house when they are on holiday in Ibiza to pierce holes in the condoms by the bed,  no back-talking about the ‘other parent’ and under no circumstances – no arguing in front of the children.  Divorced parents in Denmark are hugging themselves with glee for having their cake and eating it.

Parents in Denmark understand that  the marriage/kids/life balance is problematic and often decide to divide the labor cleanly,  splitting up is one way of making sure you have a babysitter on alternate weekends.

Most relationships are all out of shine after a few years, and rather than continue into phase two (the less thrilling ‘settling down’ phase) Denish parents choose to upgrade to a new partner, a new shiny clean one who hasn’t got five years of domestic resentment brewed up.

Denish parents discover that the domestic life as a long term couple is unrelenting,  there is no room for romance or fun even if your kids are in full time institutions day in day out and staying with grandparents for holidays.  Something has to give.

So they create a ‘divorced’ family.  Which frees up a lot of time for the parents to pursue their individual interests and ‘find themselves’.  They can also log onto dating.dk.

And the children divide their time between mum’s house and dad’s house and make sure they pack their pajamas into their Friday school bag.

O the life of Riley!

For the parents that is.

Typically, the children stay with the mother, but it is not unheard of for the children to spend the bulk of their time with their father.  Father’s make just as good single parents as mothers in Danmark as anywhere.

A common pattern is that the children go to the father every other weekend.  Another common pattern being children spend alternate weeks with each parent.  It’s all very well worked out.

My question is this:  if they can work it out so well how come the marriage isn’t preserved with such order and focus?

I sincerely reckon that the reason for most divorce in Denmark is due to the urge for pastures new and for egotistical freedom and nothing to do with not being able to figure it out.

I wonder what lies ahead for a generation of kids living out of traveling bags and having two bedrooms in two houses.  The rest of the time they are banged up with professional caregivers in what passes for school here so what time IS spent in the bear-cave of family life?  With everything being so aggressively scheduled, how ARE children growing?

Thing is, it appears to work.   These Danish Divorced Kids are not appearing to be that distressed, or if they are, it’s not obvious.  Perhaps they are so knackered from traveling between two homes they haven’t got the gumption to protest.

That lonely child throwing his ball about in the yard while his dad began planning his week sans parenting plucked at a string in my heart.  He seemed to accept his fate with no struggle, and this may be because there is no room for struggle.

Perhaps it is something to do with the talk their parents gave them about the divorce, perhaps it was put in no uncertain terms, perhaps it all makes sense.

Perhaps kids in Denmark are so used to having skilmisse as a word in their daily usage that it’s no big deal…it’s just their turn to live out of a half packed unpacked bag,  plenty of their mates live like that and there are certain advantages.

Divorced parents here have a spring in their step.  They got the kids without the grinding drag of the domestic full time set up.  They get alternate weekends and holiday time free to do whatever they like and whomever they like.  It’s called having your cake and eating it.

Whatever we say about the Danes,  and the Danish way, there is no getting away from the fact that they like a life of Denish fun and one of the ways to protect this is to get divorced from marriages long past their sell by date shine.  There is no point, in Denmark, to stay in a marriage that doesn’t serve your need for fun, time off and relaxation.

It is a well known fact that intercultural marriages in Denmark survive longer than dane on dane marriages.  The reason for this is because if someone travels half way across the world to be with the love of his/her life because he can’t bear to be apart from his family/workmates/cats in Denmark then they are less likely to throw the towel in as soon as the relationship stops being fresh or easy to move about in.

So there you have it.  We foreigners are the pillars of Denish society.  We commit less crime, and we don’t upgrade our marriages to divorce so often.  And you know what?  I have a sneaking suspicion that our children are brighter because we tend to spend more time with them and don’t lean on others to do the childcare in the same way,  I mean, our kids get CONTINUITY of care,  generally speaking, statistically speaking.

If you want to be truly integrated in the DK start observing how Divorce is done,  it should be an option for you, but it has to be done the right way.  There is no point divorcing here unless you get an easier life out of it, so no bricks through windows or breaking into your wife’s email account.

Helpful links for you today:

singledating.dk

How to tell your kids you are divorcing (In Danish, so you might need your kids to translate it for you).

Danes love: LONDON.

Bless them.

Danes love London.

If you are not American or from New Zealand and you have a Britishy accent a Dane will ask you breathlessly “WHERE in England are you from?”

Inside they are jumping up and down on the sofa chanting “O please say London!  O PLEASE say London!”

Say London.  Watch a blissful smile of relief come across that face like warm Dulce De Leche sliding across your ice cream.

They just love it.

It’s a bit of a mystery to me, but I surmise that Danes love London SO much because it’s kind of the nearest possible destination of Cool.  And Denmark to London is like Denmark to the moon in as far as cool steps for mankind go,  I suppose.

Yes it is cool, but calm down,  you can always go there for the weekend.

I’ve never seen a Dane in London,  I’d probably want to avert my eyes to avoid imposing on such a tender scene,  but I have seen Danes on their WAY to London.  It is a well known fact that the real reason why the Danish are the self professed happiest on the planet is because they have just returned from a weekend in London.

Dane on their way to London are the happiest people on the planet.  It’s extremely cute, and one could almost forgive them their dreadful politics to see it,  they are literally jumping up and down on their seats and the Ryanair hair hostesses have such a job getting them to behave.  Okay, they are not all jumping up and down, some of them are very quiet and pensive because they know soon that they will be somewhere bone achingly cool and classy,  and it’s all rather a bit too much.

And when i say dreadful politics I mean dreadful politics.  I’ve a good mind to vote for those evil sonofabitches the DFP (‘Dansker Folker Parter’) just to keep those ghastly Socialists out.

Either way, you can’t win,  Danish politics say “QUACK QUACK QUACK!” and even the Norwegians and the Sweders are turning their noses up at what we do here and seemingly going out of their way to do everything we don’t (like not freaking out about a bit of a headscarf in the army for example).

Mind you,  I am torn on the issue,  wanting to throw a few chairs at the DFP for having the sway to change army policy on headscarves over night,  but also wondering how wearing a headscarf is compatible with being in the Danish army?

If a Dane thinks you are from England (accents can be misleading) don’t burst their bubble,  tell them you are from London and begin singing Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious.

Words you need to know: ‘GALLERI’

I cannot be assed to edit this post so it’s here warts and all with spellings and dead end sentences.  We have a big event to coordinate and I am slightly distracted.  This post may not make any sense but I publish it out of the goodness of my heart and because I think it may help you.

Drive through any rural area in Denmark and you will notice two major attractions by the roadsides:  1.  Little stalls selling cottage crafts and home grown vegetables and fruit (idea being you stop your car and buy strawberries/peas etc for 20kroner a bundle and go home congratulating yourself on how quaint life is in the country and 2.  signs saying:  ‘GALLERI’.

It is a well known fact that every fifty meters in Denmark someone has created a ‘Galleri’.

“What is a ‘Galleri’?” You might ask,  and overwhelmed by curiosity turn your car off the road up and up the beaten track into the courtyard of someone’s home, following the signs to the ‘Galleri’.  “What could be in store?” You might ask,  your pulse racing a little in expectation.

You will enter into part of a converted barn, or you will stoop to take steps into someone’s garage with a rug on the floor.  On the wall will be framed …erm…framed…..ah…erm…we’ll come back to that bit.  You will enter an interior and in the corner will be a person,  sat on a camping chair, waiting in the gloom.  And on the walls will be…erm…

I can’t bring myself to say it.

They aren’t paintings,  it is not art,  for art is human skill as opposed to nature,  it is….what is it?  What in the name of God and all things holy is it?

You probably thought you were entering a gallery and you are as such,  and Danes are very very fond of Galleries.  But it’s not art,  and while many Danes will pay thousands and thousands of kroners to have what they call ‘art’ (kunst) if you’ve ever seen a true original, you know…you know in yourself, this isn’t art..it’s a HOBBY.

A hobby that sells in Denmark,  for people love to get their hands on an original daubing.  Think about it.  Where you work,  isn’t there a bit of something splashed on a square in a frame? Isn’t it made in Denmark?  Isn’t it ‘kunst’ as far as they know?  Do you realise that the only reason that is there is because someone decided to go to a ‘Galleri’ and pick it out?

Think about it.  At your Danish friends,  at your mother in laws,  at your neighbours…don’t they also have an ‘original’ piece of Danish ‘art’ work on their walls?  They usually put two or three framed..*ahem* pieces above the sofa.  Or in the hall in a line.  Think about it and try not to scream and claw at your face in suffocating wildness!

Yes.

In Denmark we have Galleri.  It is where they sell the ubiquitous pieces of paint plastered on a square that must adorn every parcel hus and apartment lofty and humble.  It is the law in Denmark that to be art savvy you have to have an original.

And of course, not being really art savvy and not really having any proper proper art world money, the Danes don’t want to miss out because it is important to them that part of what they are is arty.  And able to appreciate ‘form’.

Advice:  resist the urge to do the same.  It is terribly embarrassing for your friends.  Just because everybody else has those tacky little non art squares at strategic points in their identical homes doesn’t mean you have to join in.

More advice:  don’t do as I did and blurt out:  “What the F!#% is THAT?” and point derisively at a painted square of insipid nothingness in someone’s home.  Never question what goes on as far as art goes here.  Firstly,  you will really hurt people’s feelings,  secondly a Dane will come straight back at ya with some pompous and well thought out argument about what art is.  You will end up really stupid and your assertion that the daubings that pass for art here are nothing of the sort will make you look well silly.  Not only speech is ‘free’ here, but so is ‘art’.

For the record, the word ‘free’ in Denmark (as in freespeech and freedom and freedom in art) will mean freedom to scrape the barrel and not freedom in true sense of liberty.

See,  the Danes do act under compulsion and restraint,  in matters of speech and art they act in a box.

Here are some links:

Danish Art Gallery #1

Danish Galleri #2

I can’t go on,  but check out the prices man!  A real case of the emporer’s new clothes.

Anyway,  you are going to be seeing a lot of signs for ‘Galleri’.  When you follow the signs you will find a room full of someone’s paintings.  Most of the people who are making these paintings are on sick leave from their jobs because they are suffering from stress. I think.

What is worse is when someone close to you here, or rather, yet one more person, suddenly begins confiding in you that they would like to follow their real path, and it turns out they mean daubing random blurry stripes on little squares to be framed and mounted in the garden shed and putting a sign out by the road saying ‘Galleri’.

I have a plan.  Tommorrow I am going to drive around the countryside and visit each and every Galleri I pass (at last count there were twenty such Galleri within easy driving distance) and see how many times I can bear walking into a room with yet more samey homogenised crap in it.  I think I probably have to get over the pain threshold so I am not reacting in a knee jerking way and being so dreadfully outspoken “Look, I am sorry, but how on earth can you justify charging 6,800 kroner for THAT? What kind of skill did it take to DO that?”

The Danes seem very happy with what they call art, so I really don’t want to hurt any feelings face to face,  but that is precisely why I write down my observations here,  I sense that I am not the only one who has noticed the strange habit the Danes have with opening little Gallerier in their back yards and selling their little daubings that only a mother could love.

I also sense that people are not being straight with one another and I suggest that we stop making fake impressed noises when people show us what they have ‘created’.   I suggest a blunt:  “Well,  that’s not very good is it?  You are surely not planning on having it on view?” or “Oh dear.” will suffice to begin a revolution.

I’ll let you know how it goes tommorrow.  I reckon I’ll be able to manage three of those Galleri without wanting to run screaming into the sea.  And don’t even get me started on the overabundance of samey ceramics shops and little workshops here.

Once you’ve seen one, you have seen them all.  Below is an typical example of Danish art.  It may not be Danish but you get what I mean.  And by ‘Danish’ I do not mean ‘Danish born’ or ‘Danish blooded’ or ‘ethnic Dane’ I mean educated for many years within the system of education and culture so popular during this time here.  You can be black as the ace of spades and still be a thorough Dane, it’s not about ethnicity or skin colour, it’s about what happened to your brain.

Blah blah blah. oooo, someone's been busy.

But basically, this is what is common on the walls of Danes. Is it art?

I don’t think so.  I’d call it mass production.  Any boffins want to tell me what they think art is?

Get Used to it: food shopping frustration.

When life hands us lemons, we make lemonade.  Or in the case of the droves of foreigners moving to DK we make lots of whiney noises and complain about the quality and limited selection in the supermarkets.

Some of us approach the problem with gusto, and if we have time on our hands (i.e:  kids in daycare or no kids) we throw ourselves into mastering all the major Danish recipes (clue:  brown sauce, potato,  fish,  brown sauce,  cabbage,  fish,  pig meat,  brown sauce, apple dumplings,  brown sauce,  brown sauce,  potato,  apple dumplings, rice gruel,  brown sauce…)..but usually we reach a point where we have to admit that the raw ingredients here lack a basic vitality.

We have plenty of incentive to grow our own food here.  Um, that’s a good thing right?

It’s hard to explain to the Danes that the food available here in the shops is a tad below what we expected or hoped for.

Don’t even expect to find a decent piece of fruit in the supermarkets here,  and trying to go a step higher and eat only organic will bring you the same kind of stuff:   bruised, not lovingly chosen, over priced and tasteless.

Advice:  The very best place to buy your fresh produce is at a place like ‘Bazaar Vest’.  Bazaar Vest is a big store with many smaller more family orientated grocery stores inside (with a deli or eastern feel).  Nearly all of these stalls are run by the much maligned foreign foreigners who will give you beautiful hand picked foods at low prices. They really do seem to care.

Walking around Bazaar Vest for the first time I was struck by the extremely high quality of the produce on offer. “Only the best” was a phrase that kept going through my head.  Really,  it was shopping like it used to be (in another country).

Trust me on this,  Bazaar Vest in Aarhus will feed you like a king/queen at a fraction of the price of any supermarket or Danish grocer or Organic co-op and you will feel good about your food.

Usually, I’d try and say that organic food is the best,  especially for food and morals snobs, but actually, what you want is quality and nutrition at a reasonable price, and the high proportion of spoiled fruits and gnarled up veggies you get in the widespread organic fresh foods in Dk makes the whole organic thing non viable.

So what if your kids get a few toxins in their blood from non organic food?  It’s not as toxic as the overbearing holier than thou attitude of the evangelical organic consumer – go to Bazaar Vest and experience fresh food with a bounce, lots of lively people and a taste of how life could have been here if the families had not been devolved and the kids all sent off to be factory farmed.

Be prepared for a culture shock though,  if you are not used to ‘that sort of thing’.

One of the first things that will strike you about a place like Bazaar Vest is how the menfolk are predominant.  They run the shops and appear to do the bulk of the shopping and will hang out in gaggles passing the time of day.  In some ways walking through Bazaar Vest is like walking through a locker room.  There are a lot of men in there.  And if you like your men blanched then you may find it all a bit overpowering.

But who cares? The fruit is fresh, hand picked and cheap, you can get a home cooked proper spicy meal to take out there and amazing clothes and beauty products.

You can go the whole hog and put a tunic on over your bikini and enjoy the eastern experience properly (a bikini would look out of place there) but you can also be adversarial and have free speech and wear your bikini.  You can enjoy the fact that you live in a ‘free country’ with ‘free speech’ which means you can wear a bikini to go shopping on and noone will stop you just as you can wear full on headscarf and jilbab and erm…noone will say a word against it…or um…er…mock you.

Or tell you it is morally wrong to wear a headscarf.

Anyway.

The point is,  this country has a real lack of exciting foodstuffs so it is wonderful we have the option of ‘leaving Denmark’ so to speak to buy exciting food at places like Bazaar Vest .. without having to leave Denmark at all!

After all we’re stuck with the houses we bought,  our spouse’s family they can’t possibly live on the other side of the world from (and how,  prey tell, do we manage away from ours?) and we’ve made such a big deal about relocating so we do need reasons to stay.

A place like Bazaar Vest in Aarhus would be one more reason to stay.  We drove for three hours to reach it the first time and it was well worth it,  our purchases cost two thirds what they would have done if we’d have shopped the Danish way.  I am amazed that there were are not more Danish people in there,  because if the high quality of produce doesn’t attract them, you’d think the cheapness would.

Words you need to know: ‘LIFECOACH’.

This is the way it works in Denmark:

-go to school until you are out of your teens and then take on a career.

-work for so long and then get a bit of a rash, and feel rather sleepy in the afternoon and suddenly become aware of the fact that the lights in the supermarkets are too bright and make you feel anxious.

-start to feel a decrease in libido.

-go to your doctor and find out you have ‘stress’.

-get sympathetic time off work.

-stay home for a very long time watching daytime tv and wearing your pj’s.

-take life easy because you are ‘stressed’.

-eventually admit that you are never going back to work because it is ‘stressful’ and get a note from the doctor to say you can’t do it anymore.

-start telling people you meet from work that you are actually a creative person and that you want to be an artist.

-begin to buy only organic eggs and stop smoking.

-leave your partner and ‘find yourself’

-get increasingly stressed out about the pressure on you to do ‘something, ANYTHING!!!’ realise your unemployment payments are running out and that you have to find ‘something,  ANYTHING!!!’ and scrabble about in your head for ideas about what you can get paid for that will demand very little energy outlay.

-go to a life coach for ideas

-become a life coach.

At present,  if you listen very carefully to the murmur of conversations in Denmark, every third conversation will be about being a lifecoach, going to a lifecoach, lifecoaching, ‘coach’,  or going on a course to be a lifecoach.

It’s a buzzword in DK right now.

Advice? If you can, cash in on the craze,  become a lifecoach and earn money being an authority on life.

In some cultures we are not worried about seeing a shrink or going to a counselor. In DK, no matter how out in the open people say their health issues are,  the need to talk to a total stranger about mental problems is something that is kept quiet, or transformed into something else altogether.

Most people would benefit from speaking to a shrink from time to time.  The people paying through the nose to be talking to lifecoaches in DK are just too yellowbellied to admit that they can’t function and don’t know why.  Yes they need professional guidance (all else has failed) but they don’t want THAT on their CV’s so seek out the tepid alternative.

But then,  when talking to a shrink here has such negative career and family connotations,  who can blame a people for getting creative?  Getting ‘proper help’ when you can’t cope with the demands this system places on you will mean a black mark on your CV,  even if you do ‘recover’, your CV will still have a big swathe of ‘FRUITLOOP’ bandied across it.

LOL, which reminds me.  I read a funny Danish book at the library the other day.

It was meant for children, was a photo story book in the ‘Life…Oooer’ section (snuggled in between a book called ‘It’s not your fault that Daddy has left mummy to go and live with Mette from the badminton’ and another book called ‘When bad things happen…how to cope when your entire family is killed by a freak falling cow in a boat’).  It was called something like ‘When Daddy went nutz…’.

The story was about a normal family.  But then the dad went nutz.  And apparently,  there were some signs.  He began talking in a ‘too loud’ voice at weird times. (Shows picture of family in supermarket looking aghast at daddy roaring)  He was staying up all night and wearing strange clothing (shows picture of daddy wearing just a frilly apron and socks).  He stopped going to work (shows daddy looking like a slob).  The children were uneasy (shows children stood in hall with their school bags on and their hair all combed neatly and their mom in a 1980′s power suit looking uneasily at daddy in his pjs).

My favourite part of the story is when the dad went truly nutz and started throwing cooked spaghetti on the table.  To emphasize how nutz he had gone the creators of the storyline had that there were no plates on the table,  he had gone nutz you see and was just putting the food on the bare table.  And then some men in white coats came and took him away.  Final straw,  pasta on the table.

You will be glad to know that the story had a happy ending.  It turns out that the dad was suffering from stress and had to go on heavy medication.  After a long time in hospital he was well enough to come home and lay the table and make a proper dinner.

Advice? Depending on the severity of your non functioning,  you may or may not need to wake up and smell the coffee.  Most people need someone to tell it all to, and a little guidance to help lighten the load.  You can go to a psychiatrist if you want the intensity and drama and the permanently altered CV.

Or you can choose a little light relief and go for some coaching.  Lifecoaching is primarily about money,  as with any ‘healers’ you are probably best going with the cheapest.  The more expensive ones are just trying to fill in where their unemployment benefits left off.

Words you need to know: ‘SAGSBEHANDLER’

KONSEKVENS!!!!!

Do you know that everyone gets a personal municipal ‘social worker’ in Denmark?  Except that they are not called ‘social workers’ here they are called ‘CASEWORKERS’ (‘SAGSBEHANDLER’) because we are not people to be worked socially, we are cases.

You will probably have very little to do with your ‘sagsbehandler’ unless you were naive and feckless enough to get involved with the kommune on face to face basis.  I don’t know what kind of dodgy things people have to go through to jump the hoops immigration sets up for mixed marriages here (ie: one partner Danski and the other ‘alien’) but perhaps you have to report and stuff.

Or if you have kids you can’t handle yourself and need others to take care of or rebates to be had for,  then perhaps you have to have sagsbehandlers write reports for you that can be exchanged for magical easy-life vouchers – who knows?  There could be lots of reasons a person would have to lean heavily on and/or speak to a ‘sagsbehandler’.

Either way, get used to the word.  Because even if you are self reliant, do it your way or the highway and tend not to make a habit of banging on municipal doors,  the word ‘SAGSBEHANDLER’ will come into your life on a daily basis.  If you are not talking about yours, someone else will be talking about theirs. You may even be married to someone who is a ‘sagsbehandler’ and he or she may come home and tell you (off the record of course) about all his or her ‘cases’ and how he wishes they would be more compliant and/or sober in many cases.

It is a well known fact (from the Geert Wilder School of Fact) that approx half of the people of employable age in Denmark are in fact,  SAGSBEHANDLERS, who work for da Kommune (coming soon:  ‘Words you need to know: ‘KOMMUNE’).  The other half are fat binmen.

And the other half are SAGSBEHANDLERS who are off work (‘barsel’) due to illness and stress and having to take care of their own babies for six months and the other half are substitute ‘sagsbehandlers’.

Whichever way you approach it, there are a lot of sagsbehandlers here.

If you are very very fortunate,  you will have a nice sagsbehandler.  If you are having an average experience you will get an evil sagsbehandler who will treat you like a moron who needs to be ‘directed’.

Advice?  Avoid getting into situations where you have to go to any municipality with your cap in hand and a pleading look on your face.  If you must meet with an evil sagsbehandler make sure that you always take an independant witness,  a translator, a tape recorder and a quart of gin.  The gin is for after the meeting, and you will need to unwind after restraining yourself so well and ‘cooperating’.

My personal theory is that a huge number of sagsbehandlers are stewing in their own juices and should never have been allowed an inch of power and authority to abuse in the quiet of their stuffy little office spaces.

But then, it is worth remembering, with the numbers of Danish people drawing various benefits (because it is their ‘right’) being so high that most sagsbehandlers are probably only that way due to having seen it all before.  When you sit in an office day after day and get a constant stream of whiners in your office, all asking for more,  all pleading helplessness and need, then it would turn the freshest of daisies into a rancid bucket of tripe.  I guess.

So let’s make today a National Day of Sympathy for all the not-so-nice sagsbehandlers of DK and imagine that the nice sagsbehandlers are only that way because they are a) closet Christians b) on antidepressants or c) new to the job.

Advice?  Just seriously, take care of your own shit, once you need to refer to a caseworker here you are pretty much F”#¤%D.

Words you need to know: MEDISTER.

‘MEDISTER.’

Cutting the cord.

Unless you have grown up with similar parental habits,  you may find the style of parenting in Denmark a little odd.

Anyone remember the huge hooha over the Danish mother who left her toddler aged daughter in her stroller on the streets of NY while she dined inside a restaurant?

The child was taken into foster care (eventually returned) and all manner of silliness ensued.

If ONLY the mother in question had been humble and chastised about the event, but no, in typical Denish fashion, she proceeded to try and sue the ass off the authorities who had arrested her for child neglect. She tried to claim that she was on the righteous side by leaving her child unattended.

I am not buying it.  In that dreadful ‘free speech and let’s all have a bit of dialogue’ bullying way the Danes are so entrenched in believing gives them the upper hand,  the woman got her case heard and almost had her name cleared.

I often wonder what it is these Denish women have that the more primitive women such as we foreigners don’t have.  What is that mysterious ability they have to leave their children unattended from early ages?  I have heard it called ‘trust’.  Danes trust they are living in a safe little bubble.  Nothing bad will ever happen to them and if it does the state will pick up the tab.

Maybe not.

Maybe so.

Anyway.

If there is any event other than the famous JP stupidity speech cartoons that planted Denmark in international memory it is the urban nonmyth of the Danish mother eating her lunch INSIDE a NY eatery who left her kid alone OUTSIDE.  And that the Mother found it nowhere in her soul to make an admittance of foolishness.

Danish law appears to follow Danish people around even if they leave Danish shores.

Where was I?

Oh yes, if you want to read about that famous case again,  ..here is a link for a read up:

THE NEW YORK TIMES

And here’s another link about the same story:  HERE

Oh and here are some more:  HERE (‘Danish mother’s claim of false arrest is rejected’),  HERE (‘toddler returned to mother’)and last but not least:  ‘keeping baby outside’: HERE.

Should we bring this up?  I think so, because very little has changed.

We should have seen a little humility, something like:  “Oh my god!  I had no idea I was putting my child in real danger!  I had no idea of the risks!  I will do what it takes to prove that my naivety stems from my culture and I promise never to make the same mistake again!  I am so sorry for the distress I have caused by my stupidity.  I will do whatever it takes to do right from now on. I am very very sorry!”

But you won’t get that from Danish Parenting, a movement that believes it is right purely because they don’t mind the product of the parenting.

There is no massive uproar about kids and teenagers in Denmark because basically, as products, they are a success,  a likeable success to their parents and teachers.

What it looks like is this:  parenting is not meant to be stressful here,  that is why the kids are ferried off to daycare from an early age, not necessarily so both parents can work but more for ‘social’ reasons.

Even if a parent is unemployed or hanging out,  the kids are sent off and away as soon as possible because people here believe that the family is an unhealthy culture if it is dominant and that insitutional life rules.

Now,  there is another way of looking at all of this.

Perhaps there is a chance Danish parents are able to unflinchingly leave their kids on the other side of walls and plate glass windows because a certain type of bonding has not occurred due to separation at an age when the child is beginning to step up communication?  Just a guess.

I don’t think the Danes ease at leaving their kids has anything to do with trust, because you look at a mother and child who do have the attachment relationship,  it just doesn’t feel ‘right’ for them to be apart.

Most new mothers have a strange primal aversion to leaving their kids unattended or with strangers and would only do it if they really have no choice.

My advice?  Be prepared, and don’t waver.

If you come from a warm family where the home is the main culture (and not the workplace or the institutions) you will go into culture shock if you chose to parent here.  First of all, one of the first things that will happen to you is that healthcare workers and all other self professed ‘authorities’ will begin to pressure you hardcore to ready yourself to:

• send your baby to daycare to begin the institutionalization process as soon as possible (it is “for the best” they will say and cite your need to ‘work’ as a main motivator, even in this age of rapidly collapsing employment).
• put your baby under three heavy duvets and out in the ‘air’ to sleep every day, screaming or not,  because it is ‘the way we do it here’.
• not get too attached,  after all, recent experiments in Scandinavia have proved that parents and family have the least amount of influence on kids here,  as the institutional employees and the peer group have the main sway.

As parents not of Danish education we have seen several startlingly neglectful tendencies here, but we have to remember,  that the Danes view our methods as outdated and over caring.

The only fly in the ointment is that while Danes get all shirty when told not to do it their way when elsewhere,  if we try to do it our way here we are liable to get equivalent of ten tonnes of bricks and pædagogs land on our head with a hell of a load of pressure to ‘conform’.

To be a parent here you need to be very strong.  Or you can just do it the Danish way.  Which is a lot easier since you won’t actually be spending much time with your kids at all, and when you do you will be spending ‘quality time’ and being careful to be very correct.  You will be speaking to them in over bright and rehearsed tones and opening another bottle of wine and replacing the batteries in their technological pacifiers.  Ah children!  So rewarding.

The hotter blooded of us prefer our kids to see us as being the parents and don’t want to leave our baby’s unattended or with strangers.

But then no,  let’s be frank, what the problem here is not that every one parents differently, it’s that the Danes seem to have cornered the market on self righteousness.  Especially when it comes to parenting.

Were they always like this I wonder? If not, what happened and when?  At what point did the Danes begin believing that they are quite simply the most bestest parents in the world?

When they are quite patently only as good as anyone is or was or ever will be.

Coming soon:  Danes like to talk about…parenting, Denish style.

How to cope?  Well,  you have to be really patient.  Because like ‘rød grød med fløde’ you are going to meet the ‘this is the way we parent in Denmark’ thing A LOT here,  so try and be ready and don’t let the steam come out of your years,  find a happy place, maybe get a mantra (e.g:  “I am what I am, am what I am, I am what I am.”) when a Dane starts telling you how to parent just whistle a happy tune,  and noone needs to know – you’re afraid!

Hold your head erect!  Don’t lose your temper (no point because it will prove how bad a (notdanish) parent you are/how bad your (notdanish) parents were.)

Just listen to what they are saying, make a mental note to keep your passport up to date,  try and find some good stuff about being here (some people are quite good at this, but they have no place to go and balls of steel) and keep on with what works for you.

This may or may not include leaving your tiny infant unattended in below zero temperatures while you cosy up inside with your girlfriends and eat cake and laugh like donkeys about who you met last week on singlemom.dk.

How to speak Danish and like it.

It can be fun learning a new language.  Our brain stretches around new vowels,  we feel more of ourselves somehow and we can put it on our CV pridING ourselves on our cleverness.

Only one per cent of people learning Danish as a foreign language wake up everymorning looking forward to another day of Danish.  Most newbies take on the language here like a heavy cross.

Explaining to a Danish person:  “You know,  your language is not the easiest of languages to learn..” and the Danish person will chuckle in a modest way as if we have complimented them.  But we are not complimenting them.

We are moaning and groaning and wailing and bitching.

At some point, a person learning Danish will want to run screaming.  It’s the language that doesn’t get any better.  Like the ugly stepchild who wets the bed,  you gotta love it, because it’s in your life,  you chose it, to just run away would be wrong,  and it’s time to just suck it up. Do the right thing.

You are in Denmark and there is no way of getting around it,  they speak Danish here.

Unless you go to South Denmark,  where they speak something else.  But everybody ignores South Denmark,  and like the war, we don’t mention it.  Sure there are people living down there,  but it’s just not the done thing to mention it.  Talk about Copenhagen instead.  That’s a real place.

So sooner or later you are going to have to wrap the flappy bits of skin at the back of your throat around the Danish language.  Being a smoker will help because you need a lot of phlegm to say:  “rød grød med fløde”.

Ah! RØD GRØD MED FLØDE!  Has some asshole Denish come up to you yet and asked you to say that,  given a little self satisfied asshole titter when you have and then scurried off to laugh with his Denish friends to say “ahahahahha those funny idiots cannot speak our language!  I got them to say rød grød med fløde and they sounded so funny!ahahhahahaha oh I laughed!”.

It will happen to you at some stage.  It will probably happen a lot.  Even if you end up staying here for twenty years, sooner or later some asshole will come along and ask you to say it.

My advice? Normally I am against violence.  It is so pointless,  messy and spoils the hang of my dress,  but on this occasion I advocate several forms of violence.  Next time some Denish comes up to you and tries to cajole you into saying ‘rød grød med flød’ you should either:  slap them hard in the face,  use a handbag sized cosh to rain blows upon their shoulders and back,  punch them square on the nose causing bleeding or mace them.  Failing that,  pick up a heavy coffee table and bring it down on their head or bundle them into a car and drop them in the river.

Okay, perhaps violence is wrong.  The jury is out.  I am not advocating you try this at home.

It’s time they stopped with the ‘rød grød med flød’.  What does rød grød etc mean?  A rough translation is ‘I am an asshole say what I want you performing monkey’.  So there,  you’ve learned some Denish already.  Denish is Danish with an accent,  by the way.  It’s a way of softening up what is a very tough pill to swallow.

Above is a youtube of ultimate asshole denish behaviour…getting a load of foriegners to say shit and laughing.  If only the Danes would stop this shit perhaps they would not have a reputation for being such a disapointment.  We really do want to like Denmark, honestly we do, so stop with this shit!

But anyway.  How to speak Danish.

My observations lead me to conclude that the best way of learning Danish is to spend two years learning it BEFORE you come here.  Spend every waking hour getting yourself to be perfect so when you come here you can kick ass and write letters to the newspaper about the crappy immigration laws here.  To be honest, and I don’t like this either,  you only really stand a chance of getting your head above water here if you can speak the language first.

But who has two years notice about moving here?   And who would want to spend those last two years spending every waking hour speaking Danish?  Very few, but those that do will be in a better place when they get here because they won’t have to go to Danish classes when they arrive.

Going to Danish classes here is a good way to meet other foreigners,  but it is a very humiliating experience if you are used to being taught in a different way, i.e:  not like you are a total idiot.  Teachers of Danish here are 99% patronising and 1% malice.   Usually.  They say things like:  “You are LATE!” when you are a 45 year old professor or a 28 year old pregnant woman.  They treat you like naughty school children who are being held back to do lines.  You’ll see.

But so,  How to speak Danish and like it.

Like doing the household chores or sleeping with an unattractive spouse with halitosis you only married to please your mother, there are little tricks you can employ to make the whole thing a little easier,  and dare I say FUN?

Here are my tips:

• speak Danish with a VERY pronounced accent.  It doesn’t matter whether you lay it on thick or just try to struggle along with your own natural as it comes Danish, you are gonna have an accent anyway,  and the Danes you are speaking to will not be able to differentiate.  I like to veer between speaking Danish in a Middle Eastern or a Norwegian accent right now.  Recently I have tried speaking Danish with a Welsh accent (lots of fun) and a French accent.  In this way you can make Danish fun.  I do find that when I speak Danish in a German accent that the Danes find this the most understandable.  *nervous cough*  But anyway,  try it, try purring your Danish in an Italian accent it makes it way more interesting and light on the tongue.
• Speak old Danish.  Get yourselves some Danish written books from before they changed their language into the clipped boiled and peeled potatoe SPROG it is now.  There have been long aa’s in Denmark, the language WAS different.  I reckon part of the reason the language here can come across as such a headachey problem is because they keep revising it and making it more and more clipped.  Speak to old people here and hear a whole other way of speaking.  New Danish is pants.
• Learn all the polite swear words and say them a lot.  It’s charming.
• Learn a lot of the big words in Danish.  Get ready for the average Dane not understanding you.  I’ve been told not to use big words in Danish because ‘there is no need for them and you are only learning,  big words are for people who have been here a long time’.  There are plenty of big and interesting words here but they are generally not said by anyone who isn’t some sort of boffin.  Big words are not needed.  Something is either good (god) or bad (darlig).  But seek those big words out, the ones that are not usually used,  and make your Danish sentences something interesting.
• I don’t have any more suggestions.
• That’s it.
• Best of luck to you.

To finish with here is another youtube featuring a patronising Dane at large.  This one takes ‘rød grød med fløde’ a bit further and takes his patronising laughing at foreigners not being Danish over the boundaries of decency, travelling abroad to ask people “What do you know about Denmark?” and tittering about the fact that they don’t know anything about Denmark.

Keep your sickbag handy for this one.  There is one thing worse than a Denish getting a foreigner IN Denmark to speak Danish and laughing about their attempts,  and that is a Denish abroad asking random strangers if they know about Denmark and then congratulating them if they do (“Yes,  well done!  You’ve heard of the little mermaid!”) or tittering at what they don’t know “Ahahaha, no, you silly dumb notDanish fuck,  we don’t speak Dutch!  But never mind,  you don’t know nothing!”).

JEE-ZUZZ!

Summer in DK and is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a flock of people doing ‘landsstævne’.

There are several surveys being bandied about.  One of them says that one out of every ten Denish is not on speaking terms with members of their family.  Hmmm,  and?  I saay.

The other says that one out of every sixth Denish abroad on holiday lies about where they are from.

It is currently way way more cool to be from Norway than Denmark.  And it’s still what it always was to be coming from Sweden.

I guess.

But nobody’s asked me to take part in any of these surveys so I guess my opinion doesn’t count.

Summer in Denmark is a funny old thing.

Dead as a doornail,  nothing going on but the rent.

You look, it’s quiet, the swimming pools are closed…there are few people on the street.  They are all on holiday,  not talking to family members and denying they are from Denmark and hoping people will assume they are Norwegian.  Or German, or whatever it is those one sixth of Denish holiday makers hopes other tourists will presume they are.

Other big news:  Bruce Springsteen plays Jutland.

My advice?  If you are thinking of moving to Denmark,  do your homework first…check out ‘Landstævne’ in the DR1 archives.  It’s erm…well.  Beyond description.  You need to know.  It’s not dancing, it’s not gymnastics,  you might think it is aerobics but no…they are not demonstrating prowess or coordination..they are demonstrating how fantastic it is to work IN A GROUP.  *sigh* *wipes tears from eyes* I am welling up.

Landsstævne -  it’s very very Danish and it’s defies description.  You probably won’t get it unless you get it.

Denmark and making friends.

Ah!  I can hear you mutter.

“They are so cold.”

“WTF is wrong with them?”

Making friends with the Danish is not a walk in the park.

They have a unique way of bonding with eachother, and it tends to involve institutions or clubs.  If you are not that into the institutional or clubs scene then you will feel lost at sea.  By clubs I mean ‘groups’, ‘organisations’,  the ones where you have to be a member, and there is a common and preordained goal and meaning.

Some argue that it is easy to make friends in DK if you have kids, then all you have to do is hook up with other mothers and fathers and have play dates,  go to school parties et cetera..but seasoned foreigners here will tell you that it is not so easy.  Making friends at the school gates in DK takes relentless determination and you will often be feeling like you are coming on too strong.  Perhaps Danes are the way they are because they are so busy with their lives they just don’t have space for anything other than what they already have?

Foreigners often complain that it isn’t easy to feel wanted, accepted or befriended in Denmark, and this is because it’s just not what we are used to. Perhaps we come from lively, colorful, expressive, spontaneous and artistic cultures and we pick up on the vibe that this way of being is not the accepted norm here.  Our basic essence seems to be rejected time and time again.  To get with the programme we have to dumb and dull ourselves down and develop very thick skins.

In so many other lands and cultures,  friendships form in a seemingly more organic way.  Things sprout, blossom and come to fruition in a whole other way to the way Danes do them, and to suddenly be in a Danish pool and trying to find friendship is very difficult.

The people who normally fare best with friends here are the ones who are highly professional and who like to network.

You won’t get anywhere staying home and grumbling.  Although, there is a lot to be said for plain giving up on the Danes if you’ve had about as much as you can stomach.  There is no point banging your head against a brick wall.

However,  let’s take a step back and be a trifle clever:  the best way to make contacts here is to get into what the Danes do and if you don’t like it:  feign it.

The attachments you will make won’t be nearly as intense or nourishing as the ones you knew before you came here, IF you were already used to intense and nourishing attachments,  but then, heck, if those attachments were all that you probably couldn’t have torn yourself away in the first place.

Or maybe you would, and who knew?

No.  Thing is,  it’s not easy in Denmark,  it is not automatic for us to be able to make friends in the way the Danes do,  and when we hunger for friendships of yore and are left with little other option than to join a club to make contact,  we feel rather pathetic.  But that is the way they do it here, and hell, they swear they are the happiest bastards in the entire universe so let’s play along for a bit.

And such is life,  this is where we are until our marriages end, our job contract runs out,  the government throw us out and/or we get our diploma and/or we retain our memory quit the amnesia and find our way ‘home’ again.

My advice?  Don’t suck it up about the way contact is made in the Danish culture,  it is a tad iffy to say the least,  but do get over yourself and at least feign interest in getting some really superficial relationships established.  Don’t see these superficial relationships as ‘less good’ than your other relationships with international and maverick types,  see them as ‘different’.  It’s different is all.

At least in that way, you will be ‘taking part’.   Isolation, even if justified, it can be dreadfully isolating,  and even if you don’t enjoy superficial meaningless fairweather relationships with people,  this is the way it is done here so that is all you got.  Do you think these people can help it?  Bless them.  Bless them soundly and all their quirks.

If you do get yourself into circulation with the Danish Socializing you will be able to say you are integrated,  no matter if you know deep down it’s all a sham, that is precisely the point, to be integrated you don’t have to like it, you just have to be able to ‘tolerate’ the situation socially.  And who knows,  even if 99% of all your superficial social activity is meaningless, what about those rare chances when there is a breakthrough?

Today several people knocked on my door being really quite friendly by anyones standards, and one was even bearing a gift.  I had not invited them,  (having given up on Denish years ago),  they came unbidden.  Perhaps Danes get more friendly in the summer? Perhaps they were all inebriated and missing their workmates?  Who knows?  Either way, a gift was involved.  That’ll do me.

In fact, I get gifted stuff on a slightly more than occasional basis by Danish people.  They are trying to reach out you see,  they don’t know how we do it,  so they just do it in the only way they know how.  Rather like us.  See…when it all pans out, we are all pretty similar…lost in this ocean of life with absolutely no idea as to why other people are the way they are.

More advice?

Achieve a delicate balance.  Make dignified and measured efforts to ‘integrate’ on a superficial level (trust me, it takes very little to appear to be ‘integrated’, it is all about appearance) and accept the gaping chasms in conversations without being too too frustrated.  And remember to hold your foreign friends dear.  Your international friendships will sustain you through your time in Denmark.  It is a big mistake to stop speaking your ‘mother tongue’ and you should make sure that you speak your first language so as to not neglect it.

Final word:  integration is a sham,  but at least make the effort to polish your act, and be ready to wheel out the necessary when opportunity comes knocking.

99.9% of all the so called integrated people are just faking it like Judy Garland.  Just look at Princess Mary,  a fine actress if ever there was one.  I give her top marks,  especially for her high polish.  V.V impressive.  Only me remember her initial phases when she wore too much rouge and had not been colour coded?

LINKS FOR YOU:

Danish Royal Watchers Blog.

Somewhere over the rainbow.

Superbest and Denish supermarkets.

Supermarkets in Denmark are dismal places.  Aisles stacked all willy nilly with strange bland products we can’t do a thing with.

Føtex is awful, crap lighting, over crammed shelves,  not cheap,  too few checkouts,  crazy layout.

Kvickly is alright, but not cheap, and same old same old, over the years they seem to just sell the same old crap.

Spar will do, because it is local, and the staff can be more personal.

Netto:  do we really need those special offers? I am never sure the freezers in Netto are set to the right temperature.  The processed food always has a sweaty appearance.

Aldi:  don’t even go there, you will feel soiled afterwards.  It’s only for the dirty dirty foreigners, the Denish alcoholics,  farmers wives and the like: not for just normal only just a little bit dirty foreigners like us.  If you start shopping at Aldi then you know your life is really bad.  Don’t try to argue your way out of it:  Do you shop at Aldi? Is your life really bad?  There.  See.  Case closed.

So then, we have SUPERBEST.

I have avoided the place for a long while but am now a recent convert.

I’ve dropped in at several SUPERBEST supermarkets dotted about this land,  and I can say they offer a uniform enthusiastic customer service.

Perhaps they have some special training that enables Superbest managers to have their fingers on the pulse of their clients.  Whatever they are doing,  they are doing it better than the others.  Not perfect,  but in the right direction.

SUPERBEST appears to stock such a wide variety of foods it is almost as if they want to cater to different needs (wow – in Denmark???).  In several SUPERBEST supermarkets there is a middle eastern flavoured selection,  an extensive organic selection, an international section (go to Superbest if you want American and British products!!!), and a dazzling array of speciality cheeses.  Vegans and vegetarians are catered for,   and there are mysterious sections devoted to people who cannot eat sugar or gluten or whatever it is that section is about.

An instore bakers offers fresh bread,  a deli offers such danish faves as hot liverpostej and big fat medister.

Don’t quote me on this, but conversations with the staff in different Superbests lead me to believe that if there was a product they didn’t stock, and I was interested in buying, all I had to do was mention it and they would see what they could do.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR YOU:

SUPERBEST SUPERMARKET

Customer Services – the concept as defined on WIKI.

Me at SUPERBEST with local manager.

Posts coming soon: If you are new to the Denish way.

• Danes like to talk about…FREE SPEECH.
• Flags.  Now why do they do that?
• Danes and Porn/Ryebread and Pig Liver Paste.
• Danish Kids – a blank canvas.
• Danish women – they wear the trousers or else.
• Denmark:  Germany’s Bed and Breakfast.
• Denish sex:  more dildos per capita than any other land.
• Young Mothers.  Now where did they get the idea that 20 was young to have a first child?
• Infertility.  Could it be that they have been using contraception?
• Denish Healthcare:  not what it’s said to be.
• Give us Denmark back! Erm….where did it go?
• Danes and immigration:  not an after dinner conversation.
• DK-The Happiest Place in the ENTIRE universe.  (Pass the sick bag).
• Coffee and Beer:  the lifeblood of the Danish System.
• Denish teenagedom:  it’s all about choice.
• Danes love London.
• Danes and drunkerness:  what’s the problem?
• Divorce the Danish way.
• Danish Beauty:  omygod – is that a tan?

I WANT to look this way.

Impetigo aka ‘børnesår’

Institutional Complection.

Impetigo is rife in Denmark,  Get Used to It!

It won’t be commented on,  but fact is,  impetigo is as normal in DK as the common cold.  It isn’t so in some other countries/communities,  and the only explanation can be that this skin infection is so common because of the early and intensive institutionalisation of children in Denmark.

Impetigo,  along with hair lice and thread worms will become a regular routine of hell and itching for you if you have child over,  ooh, six months and you take part in the Normal Danish Practice of bundling your kids off at first light to be taken ‘care of’ in one of the many institutions available for that purpose here.

Poor hygiene standards in these institutions overflowing with kids leads to cross infection and repeated infection.

Fear surrounding impetigo/børnesår is high,  despite the fact that every Tom,  Dick and Harry (or Mette,  Mads and Jakob) will have it at least once in their institutional life.  Children who are suspected of having ‘børnesår’ are treated like lepers, their parents are dragged in from work and said children are ordered to stay home until the infection is over.

Common herpes and rashes are often mistaken for impetigo, many doctors do not perform the simple test that can tell if or if not the sores are impetigo,  and children are often sent home,  parents often kept from work or hobbies when what appears to be impetigo/børnesår is actually a mild reddening from eating too many satsumas.

Adults also contract børnesår. Mostly adults who work in daycare or afterschool clubs.  People who work in institutions can often cleverly and seamlessly team having impetigo with stress and thereby extract some more sick days that are perfectly justifiable.

My advice?

If you want to avoid your kids faces breaking out into ugly weeping sores, their heads being over-run with tiny little bloodsucking lice, their bums exploding with little white worms and their chests being ravaged with hacking coughs and their noses constantly oozing bright green snot…then keep the kids at home until school age (6-7 years old in Denmark) build your own communities instead of paying (or not paying as the low waged don’t) for mock community life in institutions.

If you’d rather live your own life free from the fetterdom of taking care of your own kids,  get ready to know you pharmacist on first name terms and get used to a life awash with antibiotics and pesticides…oh, and time off work to pick up ‘sick’ kids.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR YOU:

‘Fakta om børnesår’

Wiki on Impetigo.

Daycare is bad for babies.

‘Daycares Don’t Care’

(Links don’t necessary reflect my opinions).

Danes like to talk about…..’stress’.

Get used to it.

Danes like to talk about ‘stress’.  They take it very seriously.

You will begin to meet Danes who are not at work because of ‘stress’.  Their job was too hard,  they were unhappy, they were putting on weight.

Stress is real.  It is out there.  And it is coming to get you if you are not careful

And your employer will be very supportive.  Your employer will not say:

“You are just being feckng lazy,  get your arse off the floor and get on with it!”

Your boss will say:

“I understand.  I have had stress too.  Then I went on a healing course and I drew some mandalas and I spoke to a psychologist and found out that I am a type B person and now I am fine..but you have to watch that stress!  It is so real.”

And your neighbours will say:

“Oh stress!  We have that.”

And you won’t feel so special any more, because stress is real and that tiny little sneaking feeling you had that you are making it all up because you want to stay home farting and watching Oprah on tv will go away.

Danes like to talk about stress.  Because it is part of their lives, and because it is another way to get a day off.

Foreigners aren’t really allowed to talk about stress though,  because they should be grateful and if they find it so bleeding stressful here why don’t they leave?

IF foreigners have stress it is because they actually have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Danes with stress get stress ostensibly because they have been ‘overdoing’ it.

And it’s all out in the open, nothing to be ashamed of.

My advice?

Make lots of impressed ooohing and ahhing noises and cooing sympathetic noises when a Denish person begins to ‘open up’ about their stress experience.  Encourage them to put themselves first and take time to come over their stress.  Explain to them that they cannot do everything and that it is necessary to take stress seriously.  It is very real and it means you can watch Oprah.

HELPFUL LINKS TO GET YOUR STRESS CASE WATERTIGHT:

‘Undgå stress’

Wiki- workplace stress.

"Hello? Is that a pædagog?"

TAX aka ‘skat’.

Daylight Robbery.

When you first stepped off the banana boat,  and took your first breath of tangy Danish air,  you may have met idyllic Denmark.

Remember?  Oh the windmills!  O those quaint little thatched cottages!  O the cyclists!  Shiny new cars buzzed past,  well cultivated trees waved in the breeze,  well laundered,  well tanned,  well fed Denish wandered past with looks of placid wellbeing playing across their satisfied faces, children were playing in the streets and there were no street hawkers.  You felt you’d arrived in a land of plenty.

But that was before you worked your ass off,  got your payslip and saw that you have entered a land where the tax man takes approx half of every kroner you earn.

This fact,  the tax in Denmark,  it will make you bitter.  Trust me.  You will pretend it doesn’t bother you.  You will pretend you can see the sense in it.  But secretly you will become a raging seething beast pacing cage of your own construction in manner of raging seething beast.

Put it this way:  you work your ass off,  every other hour you are working your ass off,  you are working it for the tax man.

The Denish like to laud ‘democracy’ and they get a little iffy about autonomy and anarchy.  But there is large scale anarchy in Denmark.  As you get used to life here,  and get to know the Denish,  and they let you into their confidence, you will discover that just as the tax man takes every other hour you work,  every other hour the Denish work is black money.

Working ‘on the side’ is a covert activity in Denmark,  but you will find it is acceptable to most Danes to get money for this that and the other and not declare it.  The Danes speak loudly about how the system works,  but every other Dane (FACT as proved by Institute of Facts) works ‘black money’ or doesn’t declare everything properly.

And who can blame them?  With tax this high, it stands to reason.

Another thing the Danes do,  is to ‘milk the system’.

Example of how include:

Early retirement.

Free Daycare.

Sick pay for ‘stress’.

Financial support for education not completed.

Etc.

Further examples of how Danes ‘get the most’ out of their system includes the fictitious (but based on real) scenarios of:

A family who decide to ‘downsize’ as a reaction to the rat-race.  They earn less because they want more quality time with their kids.  Perhaps a parent has suffered ‘stress’,  perhaps one wants to retrain as a ‘healer’,  or take a course in ‘laughing therapy’,  they want to eat wholesome foods that save the world…..and because of their low income they get:  free childcare.  So the tax coffers pay for the childcare they are not earning enough to pay for, out of choice.

The same could be said of:

Students.

Welfare claimants.

This is what the taxes do,  after all,  support people who don’t have the cash to pay for what they need to do.

No question that they have a right to need to do it.  But really,  the same scenario – with foreigners?

Mmmm.

Foreigners in Denmark are much maligned for draining the ‘system’,  but I don’t think it’s us,  fresh faced off the banana boat of hope,  who are draining the system.

I think the system drains us.

And that Danes drain the system because they feel that that is how the system should work.  This includes taking as much as they possibly can get and working illegally for money they do not declare.

I am not saying that foreigners are exempt from abusing and exploiting the system,  but I am saying that the Denish lead the way in that respect.

The fact is,  a person who is Danish on paper has more wiggle room when it comes to milking the money back from the tax man and breaking the law,  but foreigners stand the risk of being deported if we break the law.  And for the most part,  and this is not only anecdotal but proved by the Institute of Fact…foreigners are more law abiding than Danish nationals.

My advice?

As a foreigner,  you shouldn’t think about doing what the Denish do.  Yes,  the Danes milk ‘their’ system, but somehow, they are allowed to and we are not.