Fun Observations

I've been in Denmark for a little over two weeks and am beginning to settle into a routine. Now that classes have started and I'm used to their times and getting to and from them things are that much easier and I am able to take a step back and look around rather then hurry from place to place for fear of being lost. I've come up with a few interesting things that have become more apparent now that I've got the time to notice them.

1- Danish is a difficult language. In the past, my language skills in French, Italian and by proxy Spanish have led me to be able to make intelligent guesses if I wasn't sure of what was being said or what was written. Ok so I can't read everything on the train schedule at least I can pick out parts and use process of elimination to find what I'm looking for. Can't understand the whole sentence being said to you? At least you caught the drift. Danish does not (at least not yet, I hope) lend me these same opportunities. My first dramatic realization of this was when I decided it was time to do laundry before the up coming short study tour. My host mom had told me that she'd show me how the washer/dryer worked the first time. Now, I accepted this but was slightly skeptical-- it's laundry, I've been doing it for years, what could be so hard? Oh, how very wrong I was. Danish washing machines are not exactly user friendly if you have no idea what the different cycle options are or how hot Celsius temperatures. The same goes for the dryer. My second encounter with the difficulty of Danish was when I went to look at birthday cards. Guess what I don't know how to say in Danish? "Birthday." Eventually via context clues I figured it out and doubled checked in a dictionary but still since when does buying a birthday card cause this much distress?

Can you guess the word for birthday? (Answer at bottom)
A. højtid
B. fødseldag
C. lørdag
D. befolkning

2-Everything is smaller and more compact. The refrigerator? Smaller. The microwave? Smaller and built into the refrigerator between the fridge and the freezer. The washer and dryer? Both so tiny I had to break my normal sized amount of laundry into two baby loads. Cars? I mean it IS Europe so of course they are small. Oven? Too small to fit a Thanksgiving turkey (not that they need to). I'm not really sure if any of these things are negative or positive. It's just interesting that in America it's assumed that all your appliances need to be big and hold more and do more. All the things here seem to work just fine and if anything are more functional (well, except tiny washer maybe).

3-Simple household things that you'd normally take for granted are different. One thing that myself and a lot of people here at DIS have noticed is the different method in which eating and silverware is held. It might as well be an Olympic sport and the Danes would take gold. If you've ever been anywhere else, everyone has their own way of using utensils. Here it involves keeping knife in right hand and fork in left for entire meal no matter the food or if you actually NEED both utensils. It's really quite fascinating to watch the dexterity they have when eating sandwiches with a fork and knife. Another thing is the lack of a sheet on my bed. Rather there is a bottom sheet and a duvet and a duvet cover which I guess is as close to a sheet as anything is gonna get. It's not a problem, just lacks what I'm used to.

4- Everything is either super modern or historical and castle-like. It seizes to amaze me how much of a contrast is present in my host house alone, let alone the entire city. Take note of some of my pictures and see how modern and sleek some things are while in the next one there is something from 500 yrs ago.

5- Rather than dubbing, Danes subtitle tv/movies to preserve authenticity. Technically this is good news for me as it allows me to watch American tv but is an interesting concept. This is also (supposedly) one of the reasons why Danes tend to speak English so well. They can learn it from the tv! I've been trying to do this a bit in reverse but unfortunately reading Danish and then hearing it pronounced are two very different things.

Alright that's enough observing for now. I'm going on a short study tour to Ribe (Western Denmark) on Thurs/Fri/Sat so if I don't update before then definitely check back after to see how it went and what things are like on Jutland!


Oh and I know you've been dying to know...it's B. *shrug