So I saw the Oprah special on Denmark and the Danish people. And it was certainly interesting. Most of it absolutely not the truth as I see it, but that’s what’s prompting me to hit the keys and make this dear Macbook’s keyboard glow.
It’s been so interesting for me to have had the opportunity to live extensively in two different cultures. I have lived pretty much half of my life on each continent. Most of you know my age as being a nice and easy round number in the middle of the metric scale, so that makes it a quarter of a century in each place all said and done. I think it would be fair to assert that I have more than a passing touristy kind of knowledge of both places, having lived, worked, paid taxes, attended church etc. in both countries. Interestingly enough most people here who have only visited the states on a few fun filled vacations seem to know virtually everything there is to know about US politics, poverty, culture, healthcare, education, immigration, integration and..... well the sky’s the limit. On the other hand most people from the US have really no real clue where Denmark is on a map, let alone what language we speak. ”You speak Dutch, right?” is a phrase I have heard so many times it cannot be counted. It’s not a totally far out assumption I admit, but still the country of Holland and Denmark are not the same, neither their language.
So here I am living in what Oprah correctly called beautiful and charming Copenhagen, where people really do bike everywhere, and we do have such a thing as ”rugbrød” a nice rye bread, a stable in most people’s diet here. But it’s not hard to get......
It was funny to see a supposedly well rounded and intelligent woman visit one of the richest countries in the world and ask a rich, well educated, handpicked beautiful blond Danish woman if this bread was hard to get a hold of. Oprah felt bad taking her delicious bread... as if she was visiting some poor African village and her eating a slice of bread thus was causing the entire village population to go to bed hungry. Good grief.
So if you are in the US reading this and saw the Oprah special I have to tell you that what you saw was so not typical Danish at all. They picked two beautiful white, skinny, blonde women to represent an entire country.
Oprah toured the ”home” of one of the women. An apartment in a totally posh and rich condo complex in Copenhagen. The apartment was in two levels, and was decorated with such clinical minimalism it was worse that living in and OR. Oprah had a hard time hiding her amazement at the size of the kid’s bedroom, really no larger than a US walk-in closet. And the size of the fridge was a revelation. When one of the closets were opened, the woman said... “oh it’s going to be so messy”, and then you saw perfect order, her pantry content lined up in alphabetical order. It was so far out in left field and over the top.
These apartments are for the very few and very rich. They have no window coverings. Only big windows out on the harbor and the city of Copenhagen. Everywhere this family sits or sleeps in the apartment one could look in.... except for the fact that it was up five floors or so.
This family had a dining room with only four chairs and seemingly no room to ever have guests. The family had three kids, so maybe one of them eats in the broom closet, who knows.
”Family is very important to us, so we sit here and eat every night” the woman said, as if that sets her apart from the rest of the world....
Yes family is so important to us that we decided to go ahead and get married after we already had three kids. Marriage is not something the Danish people hold hear.
But I was interested to know that the Danish people are very religious.
I see no evidence of this. I grew up one of very few church going students in my entire high school, and most people here only attend church for funerals, weddings and two ridiculous religious traditions, the first being the baptism of babies and then their confirmation to the state run church at age 14.
Arguments in favor of NOT separating Church and State here have nothing to do with religious beliefs, but are founded in the belief that the Church (again state run church) is the foundation of all good in the Danish culture and that the church oversees the very important task of registering new births and deaths in Denmark.) All Danes who do not officially excommunicate themselves from the state church pays a church tax whether they want to or not.
And yes people do ride their bikes everywhere. Try this one on for size. At the crack of dawn a woman (because often the family car is used for the husband to drive to work, but you do see guys doing this to) will pack her kid or kids into a wagon sort of thing that is attached to her bike. Here the kids can sit in somewhat shelter from the wind and snow and rain, but many kids just have to sit on the back of an ordinary bike with a helmet on. She will then bike to the nearest state run day care center where pedagogs, ’having attended a special school for three years... will tend to her children for the next 8 or nine hours while the average Danish woman goes to work, then bikes back to get her kids.
This is no exaggeration. These kids are dragged out in all kinds of weather and at all times of the day. And since riding the public transportation system (and it is very good and effective) can be very costly, many choose to bike.
When the kids hit kindergarden in the public schools it’s the norm that all children attend an after school program, also run by state educated pedagogs. Stay at home moms are common only till the child is one year of age, at which point the government will only pay to have your child watched in a public facility.
Being a stay at home mom is therefore virtually impossible here. For one your family will not be able to eat, and for two (yes I know you can’t really say that) your kids will be social outcasts. There will be no one to play with at all, because all the kids are in the institutions. I have seen a few try it their own way….. but really the kids are the loosers here, because all their friends are at the daycare or after school and these kids do not fit in.
So yes we have family values here in Denmark, but it’s at the premises of the government.
Having been at work all day most Danish families shop at a grocery store called Netto, roughly the size of an American gas station convient store. (These Netto stores will be the subject of one of my future blogs) It is where the Danes really shop because the groceries used to be the cheapest there. They are really no longer, but most people still buy the bulk of their stuff there. They have the basics that you need to subsist, but at no point in time could you ever expect to go there and pick up everything you need for a meal. They are open about 10 hours a day, but they stock the shelves during opening hours so the chances of a customer ever entering one of their stores with the shelves full of food is zero to none. It is totally common to enter one of these stores and not be able to buy bread, meat or milk. It’s all gone, and nothing will come till the next day. You pay for grocery bags and wait in line endlessly to pay and then bag your own stuff.
And many people do have little fridges as shown on the show, but that is if they live in small apartments, not uncommon in San Francisco or NY either. But most people I know have homes with fridges that look like the average American one.
And most Danish homes are very warm and cozy and inviting.
We have a Danish word called ”hygge”. It means cozy. When the Danes really want to hygge it means light the candles all over the house, make some good food, hang out with family and friends...... eat candy and delicious chocolate... you get the picture.
It seems to me that the home you saw on the Oprah show was incapable if even anything near that.
Yes, Denmark pays their students to go to school, but only the very best can get a spot at the university. I know many people with several degrees. They either couldn’t get work in their first profession, or felt like doing another one. This they do at the expense of the taxpayers of Denmark. If you for example spend 8 years getting a PHD in history at the University of Copenhagen and get done at a time where all the appropriate teaching positions at the very few universities in this country are filled with people who are only a few years ahead of you or even 20 years ahead of you.... your chances of ever using your degree as you intended are slim to none. Because by the time they retire you are old and would not be considered for the jobs. So many then go ahead and take another degree.
I literally know of people who in their 50’ties are still full time students, and while they still hold out dreams of making a living with their newfound knowledge, the reality is far from it.
If you want to drive a car here in Denmark the government adds a 180% tax to the price of the vehicle. So I am driving a totally scraped model of a Japanese car of the make Suzuki. It’s the size of the smallest Ford Escort, and it cost me over $40.000. Yep.... that’s also Denmark.
In the US we pay property taxes..... they cover schools, sewers etc. Same thing here. I would say that the property taxes here are about the same as when I lived in California. So far so good. But.... hold on. If you have the audacity to own your own home........ you also have to pay a tax as a penalty to live in it. This equals a couple thousand dollars a year per owner. This is only to make it fair. The reasoning is that the masses of Danes who don’t own their own homes don’t have a chance to build wealth and equity in their property like you do, so to make it fair you have to pay a penalty for living in yours.
Never mind that each person makes his own choices in regards to how they choose to distribute their income. Some people choose to live in an apartment and travel or wear fancy designer clothes etc..... but the person who lives in their own home is not someone who is conforming to the social structure laid out for the people. So... bamo.... a penalty tax.
Healthcare is free they said.... yep...... but that’s a topic for another blog. Let me just tell you that part of the system works fine.... and it is true that you go to the doctor and pay nothing. You go to the hospital and pay nothing...... but you also wait months on end for x-rays, operations... people die while waiting for their treatment to begin and many treatments are not at all the best available in medical science. I speak from personal experience with both my parents in the hospital system, and it is not pretty.
And something Oprah did not talk about. Dental care. It’s not covered in the public health system. Take a look at the teeth in the mouths of most Danes.
Not a pretty sight and we have supposedly a world-class dental school.
You see, when it’s not covered in the public healthcare system and forced upon you by the government, most people only go when absolutely necessary. I see so many people with crooked or missing teeth.
It’s not uncommon to board a bus and travel to either Sweden or Poland to have you teeth fixed at less than half the price in Denmark. But again....that’s not something to show the world.
And it’s really a shame, because it’s not for the lack of trying to have dental care here. All schools have their own dental office with full and free care to kids until they are the age of 18, but that’s when the decay starts.
In Denmark you can retire at the age of 67 with a Social Security pension that lets you survive. If you do not at this point own the home you live in or have private pension funds you will have to move to a small apartment. If you do not have substantial funds, around the sum of $15.000 is the max allowed, you can get quite a bit of additional benefits. So guess what most retired people in Denmark has? Yep you guessed it. A little extra stuffing in their mattresses. Why let the government know what you have.... then they won’t give you anything.
I could go on about excessive teen drinking here. Totally acceptable by society. Or gang wars with people being shut at daylight in the streets of Copenhagen. Massive problems with Muslim integration and teens not attending school and not working either. Police is something that we rarely see where I live just 15 minutes from the center of Copenhagen, and much of the infrastructure such as streetlights are very outdated.
They have problems with the garbage people striking excessively, and repeatedly, and even though Denmark is a well beloved democracy only 62% voted in the elections for local government two days ago.
In my humble opinion the Danes are the happpiest people because they simply don’t know any better.
Obviously Denmark is a beautiful country, but I have lived too long in another place to think it a wonderful place to live and raise children. I am here for one reason only and that is the love for my husband and to be near my family. And oddly enough that makes all the other stuff easier to endure.
