Cold

Continuing my story about life in Denmark, I believe it is essential I will speak about food. I come from Poland, country filled with amazing bread and delicious sausages. Our food is often very caloric and basing on potatoes. Only in Poland you will have 12 different words for potato (almost every region has its own). But going back to Denmark, bread there is so expensive! This bread I used to buy there, white, with sesame seeds on it, it costed me around 18-20 kr. That is 10-12 zł! (2,5€-3€). I knew that Denmark is pricey, everything is more expensive, but difference in bread price was bigger than in rest of products. In Poland you’d be able to buy such bread for max. 4 zł (1€).

Then there is their famous rugbrød (this is this word where d is silent, if you don’t know what I am speaking about, read “It’s okay to look like wet hen” post). Basically I am speaking about dark rye bread, made on sourdough, sometimes they add pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds to it. Why is it famous? It is said to be healthy, not containing additional fats or sugar. Does it taste good? It depends. If you eat it only with butter, the sourdough may not be too appetizing. I am not a big fan of it unless it is smørrebrød. Another new danish word meaning nothing different than a sandwich (but don’t be deceived it’s special danish sandwich!). But sandwich is a sandwich so you just take loaf of rugbrød put butter, ham, cheese, tomato, cucumber, remoulade, (silent d!) chives, salat, pâté, ketchup, fish, carrots, cabbage, turkey, tuna etc. Be crazy. And yes they really put shredded cabbage and carrots inside. First time I have eaten such sandwich was on university meeting of Cultural Club. Let’s say I was more than surprised.

Moving on to the veggies and fruits department, how new it was for me to see prices not changing during the year. Sometimes maybe some discounts but it didn’t change seasonally. Asparagus always the same price, oranges the same price, grapes the same price. Not complaining! And then comes this magical time of Halloween where every shop, every supermarket and cafe has pumpkins. They are everywhere! Orange, black, white, small, big, whatever you wish! I didn’t know white pumpkins exist until Halloween in Denmark. And let me remind you, Halloween is on 31 of October. Pumpkins come to shops in September. Why not?

I have already mentioned pâté – actually Leverpostej, a danish meat spread made from pork liver. Then remoulade, even though it is french, Danes love it as much. As sauce based on mayonnaise and spiced with herbs. Ideal to french fries. More danish specialties you can buy in supermarket? Frikadeller. Oh how I love them. They are obviously meatballs, made from minced meat. But theses ones are flat and fried on pan. That’s it, nothing more special about them.

There is certainly much more about food. I could write about it and write. I know, I haven’t yet discovered everything in danish cuisine but I will for sure try to!

As for an end, there is a dessert. Rødgrød med flode. If you ever ask any Dane to teach you something in Danish they will tell you this. “Rulgrul ma flyl” If you’d ask me to write in phonetically, difficult to say, easy to eat. It is made pudding like on grits or like semolina and you get strawberries, cherries or other berries to it as a sauce. Totally delicious!

You should for sure try it when in Denmark 🙂

I want to go back. I will go back.

Even though I have lived in Denmark only for one and a half year I feel like I didn’t have enough time to fully understand the country. I fled there just after my high school, to study Financial Management in small city Kolding.

The first impression about Denmark?

Where is that rain you have been talking about? Funny situation I came to Denmark in August/September 2016 which happened to be the warmest summer in 40 years in this country. Almost no rain and around 20 degrees until October. Well, as for student it worked for me very well! Generally weather in Denmark is mostly rainy so good umbrella and some waterproof shoes are a must. However, during this 1,5 year I learned that Danes, especially young ones just live with rain and you can just see them with wet hair. It is totally normal to come to club/cafe/school/any other place looking like wet hen. Older ones, they have rain coats with hoods, no need for anything else. So it’s not like “oh it’s raining let’s stay home”, no. It rains so often that Danes would spend their whole life in home. As much as I thought they actually would spend there most of the time I have noticed that it is not entirely true. But wherever they are, they want their hygge.

Hygge

I totally admit, I still don’t know how to properly pronounce it, but when I tried to teach it to my parents I just said “just say hygge as if you had a potato in mouth”. You may laugh but almost everything in danish language sounds like mix of German and French (maybe? at least for me) said with a potato in mouth. But about language I will speak later. Anyway, phonetically hygge is written like this : /ˈhuːɡə/. And second thing – you can’t really translate it to anything. It is said that it may be relevant to dutch Gezelligheid or Swedish Lagom, however I have not yet discovered those two and I will not speak about it. For me hygge is about this moment when you sit in cozy armchair with creamy coffee in one hand and amazing book in other in a room with perfectly dimmed yellowish light and look through window on rain. And you are happy, not excited, not enthusiastic, just content, glad and delighted. At least this is how I understand my hygge. I believe everyone should experience their hygge on their own. And candles! Candles in hygge are so important. Not without a reason. They give you this amazing dimmed light and smell of coziness (if it actually can have smell). On average one Dane will burn around 6 kg of candle wax per year. Everything which creates hygge atmosphere is important. Hygge is important. Go to town, even in my small little city (aka the 7th biggest city in Denmark) you will find five shops with candles, six shops with wool so you can make any cozy cloth – from socks to sweater- and maybe 8 hygge cafes. Actually it is hard to find a cafe which will not have a hygge theme. And I love it. Let’s take for example my favorite cafe in Kolding – Tobbers. I would say it maybe isn’t the most hygge cafe in town, but sure it creates this atmosphere for me. Filled with cozy different armchairs and sofas, with all sorts of blankets and pillows, having this light just on point – dingy and vague – also has a wall full of board games. What a wonderful idea! Now you can experience your hygge with friends in amazing place with no risk of annoying silence. There is one thing you have to know about Danes – they are very polite and even a stranger is going to smile to you when you walk down the street but if you want to have a Dane for a friend, that’s a bit more complicated. They don’t trust easily (well of course there are exceptions) and they won’t speak about their personal life. But if you get to know one, and gain their trust you’ll become their buddy for kinda always. So this way if you are trying to spend time with a Dane, coffee by board games or going to club together (where you obviously don’t have to speak too much) is the best idea.

Language

That is difficult. Being in danish language school for 1,5 year twice a week I can pronounce several sentences. And I literally mean pronounce. As much for grammar, it isn’t that hard to learn, especially if you know basics of German language. Some words are even very similar, like take “die Kirsche” German word meaning cherry, in Danish you have “KIRSbær”. How similar is this? Pronouncing is however different story. Before going to Denmark I have bought some guides and used Duolingo to get some basics. My first day of reading anything in those books ended up with my jaw hurting. How was I supposed to say this? Duolingo helped a lot, at least I could hear what I was supposed to say. How defeated I felt when one of my danish mates told me I suck after half an hour of saying incorrectly “Jeg hedder” ( Yay hedhuh), means obviously “my name is”. At this point I just wanted to give up. Because how am I supposed to speak it if I can’t even introduce myself? Let’s just say that teachers in Sprogskole (language school) were less demanding and I managed to introduce myself without a problem (or maybe it was because of my 30 min training of this sentence? No one will ever know). Then of course first class learn the difference between saying “en” and “et”. What I am saying is, that like in German you have “der”, “die”, “das” in Danish you have “en” and “et”. What is the rule of using which preposition to which noun? Jokes on you, there is no rule. But it’s better to risk with “en” than “et” because as we were told, 75% of nouns have preposition “en”. You don’t like to gamble? Then you have to learn it by heart. Next interesting thing, and I guess my personal favorite is soft D and tough D. First one you pronounce like L. Crazy isn’t it? You see D you say L. This way brød becomes brul with L instead of D. But no, Danemark you just say with normal D, however hilarious Lanemark would sound. Generally, if your know German language basics you are going to be okay with Danish language. But for my Spanish friends it wasn’t that easy. I noticed that even for my Polish best friend who learned Spanish it was way more difficult than for me (I can say only que pasa in Spanish, why? Because it sounds like kiełbasa and that means sausage in Polish, don’t judge me!). But they learned Danish anyway, maybe with less ease but you can achieve everything when you want.

disclaimer: these are just my feelings about living in Denmark, not everyone will say it is true for themselves.