Got you under my skin

Last weekend I went to see Prince perform in Copenhagen, along with several thousand other Copenhageners. It was a beautiful, long day of performances with fantastic weather and great energies, culminating in the man himself coming on stage later in the evening and giving an amazing show. Unfortunately, about an hour into his concert torrential rains came pouring down all of a sudden, forcing the crowds to flee the premises and bringing the concert to an abrupt end. As we made our way back to the metro with all the others, I was struck by the good spirits shown by everyone around us – no-one seemed to mind that Prince’s concert was cut short or ‘ruined’ by the weather. Instead, they all seemed to think it was quite an experience!

At that point my partner made what I thought was a very Danish comment: “how lucky we are that the rain only came towards the end of the day” he said. I never cease to be amazed by the Danes’ capability to see the glass half full and ascribe positive interpretations to otherwise unfortunate situations. But the really shocking thing was my own feelings at that point – I completely agreed with him! Here I was, not for a minute upset or annoyed by getting soaking wet and missing out on the better part of a show I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. Could it be that Danishness is slowly creeping up on me?

This made me think about another recent experience – a visit my parents made to Copenhagen several weeks ago. As I was showing them around town I suddenly found myself eager to show off certain parts of the city, while talking up various aspects of Danish culture and society. How can it be that within such a short period of time I’ve developed some form of national pride in my host country?

It didn’t start out that way, to be sure. About a year ago, a little after I moved to Denmark, I saw the Newsweek report of the ‘world’s best countries’ (where Denmark made no. 10), and read an article there titled “Why cold, dark, small, and depressive nations top the rankings”. Being a cynic the headline was enough to attract me to the article, but obviously being a newly-arrived resident of one of these small, cold, dark and depressive countries (let’s face it – it’s the truth) was another big reason to read it. The article never provided me with any real answers to my questions, but it appealed to my own ambivalence about life in Denmark.

In the year that has passed I have written 23 blog posts (13 in Politiken, 10 in another publication) about my trials and tribulations as a newcomer in Denmark, talking about my likes and dislikes here, but most of all about my many head-scratching moments. And I have no doubt experienced a lot here, including even an expat dinner at which I happened to sit next to the current integration minister Søren Pind as he was trying to convince me how much he actually wants foreign professionals to move to Denmark (I believe him, but I’m not sure he’s going about it in the right way). I met scores of foreigners and Danes and talked endlessly with others about the state of affairs in Denmark today, its society, culture, politics and people, its fear of the unknown and the many other inconvenient truths about the happiest people in the world.

But as I now sadly bring my blog to an end in order to focus on my day job as a consultant, I have to be honest and say that with all my criticism and frequent annoyances – I must admit that Denmark is getting under my skin. In a good way. Don’t get me wrong – I still have my issues and doubts about Denmark and its future. One thing I’ll certainly never get used to is the tax ideology of this country (god knows how the Danes can accept the oxymoron of ‘skat’ – the Danish word meaning both ‘tax authorities’ and ‘sweetie’. I’m sorry but there’s nothing sweet about taxes!) I also tend to think that Denmark confirms what Daniel Bell, the famous sociologist, once said: “as the welfare state expands, it can eventually undermine people’s willingness to take risks or look after themselves”. I do often feel that the Danish model of high taxes and state support has resulted in reduced motivation and a general risk aversion among many Danes.

Despite all that, I think this country has got many things right: from its value system to its education system, from its beautiful design to its cultural contentedness. And yes, that part about seeing the glass half full is a big plus, too. I don’t even mind the funny smorgasbord called ‘brunch’ in the Copenhagen cafés anymore (a far cry from what I’m used to as brunch in New York). I guess even a cynic can fall for a new country.

Reflections on Denmark, one year on

It’s been exactly a year since I moved to Denmark. And this feels like a cause for a – no, not celebration – reflection is more like it. Not that there’s nothing to celebrate, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I tend to use milestones as an excuse to ponder on things rather than celebrate them. Not one of my better qualities for sure, but there you go.

So what do I feel after a year in Denmark? Well, one thing I’m proud of is that I survived my first winter here. And I have to say, it wasn’t half as bad as I expected. Perhaps my general tendency to prepare for the worst served me well this time, but I felt that once I figured out how to dress properly, I was fine. The snowy period in November was fantastic, and April’s been so gloriously sunny that it felt like a sweet reward for having endured a Nordic winter.

Other than the positive sunny vibes recently, I’ve also met some great people and companies that made me realize Denmark can sometimes be more international than I expect. One local technology start-up I recently worked with has a Copenhagen office of 20 people – half of which are not Danish! Still a rarity here unfortunately but good to know these places exist. Another pleasant thing is that I’m finally starting to crack the code of this once unintelligible language – I actually understand what they’re talking about on the news on TV if I really focus hard (I still don’t understand what they’re saying, but I guess a year is not sufficient for that).

Then there were a few things on the not-so-positive side. For starters, hearing about a friend of a friend who was recently kicked out of Denmark for being Australian and unlucky enough to get entangled in Danish bureaucracy reminded me of a side of Denmark I decidedly dislike. Or going to the pharmacy to buy my usual asthma inhaler that used to cost me £7 in London, and being asked to pay 1,500 kr. (yes, that’s 25 times more expensive in case you think I got the figures wrong) – well, that sure doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy about Denmark. I’ve lived in 3 countries before moving here and never paid more than 10% of the manufacturer’s price for my medications. Now that I live in the country with the world’s highest taxes, I pay 90%. Go figure.

But at the end of the day, pros and cons exist everywhere. And when it comes to a rational analysis of a country, one can find faults and benefits in every single country. The question in my case is more emotional than rational – do I like this place? Can it become ‘home’?

The answer isn’t clear. I definitely feel a sense of affinity to Denmark. In fact, I sometimes feel the story of me and Denmark is one of unrequited love (me being the one doing the loving). The reason is simple – it’s never nice to feel like a second class citizen. Not something I felt in England or the US, but something I do sometimes feel here. And that’s a shame. It’s also a shame that Fortress Denmark is becoming increasingly fortified and isolated from the world, with the majority of Danes either actively supporting it or passively accepting it.

Nevertheless I do like this place – the genuine, down-to-earth people; the values that prioritize family life over material success; the intimacy Copenhagen has while still being a relatively large city; and of course, my daughter’s vuggestue! I now know that the Danes are not in fact the happiest people in the world (don’t get me started on that), but I think I finally understand what’s behind that statistic – a level of contentedness and modest expectations that are basic qualities in the Danish mindset, and which I very much like.

As for the second question – whether this place can become ‘home’ for me – I might need a bit of an extension on that. Ask me on my second anniversary. I hope to have an answer by then.

What did the cats ever do to the Danes?

A move to a new country always entails moments of bewilderment and puzzlement. My move to Denmark was no exception. “I wonder why candy in Denmark is salty” I remember thinking on one of my first days here. And “why do people get so worked up about a sport virtually unknown to the rest of the world?” was another puzzling moment I experienced while witnessing my in-laws watching handball. Naturally there were many other questions and head-scratching moments – why is a right-wing government led by a party called ‘left’? and while we’re on the topic of politics, it’s a bit strange that the locals refer to their prime minister by his middle name… (yes, I realize it’s practical considering his predecessors, but it still sounds a bit funny). And what about that funny habit of answering the phone by stating your name – surely people know who they’re calling?! Or the fact that virtually all women’s names seem to end with an ‘e’.

Of course, with time one learns the origin of the local eccentricities, and if nothing else – one simply gets used to them. I no longer pause to contemplate the strangeness of seeing a woman wearing a fur coat riding a bicycle. And by now I’m pretty used to the locals imitating Swedish and Norwegian accents when they want to crack a joke. I still can’t get my head around the fact that people actually like paying taxes here, and I still can’t figure out why local bands insist on singing in English, but I guess some things take longer to work out.

Then a few weeks ago I joined the local Fastelavn celebrations with my partner and daughter, and was seriously puzzled once again. On a sunny day in a small and quiet residential neighbourhood, scores of parents and children gathered in what seemed to be an afternoon of harmless, family-friendly fun. Then suddenly two queues of children formed, from 2 year-olds (including my daughter) to teenagers, all waiting in line to grab a baseball bat and bash it onto a wooden barrel with all their might!

Call me a weakling, but the sight of children being encouraged by adults to tote a baseball bat and forcefully hit a barrel with it didn’t seem palatable to me. I asked some of the locals what this tradition was about, and as is the case in most countries with most people and most holiday traditions – they didn’t have a clue. Some told me about the origin of the tradition (there used to be a cat in the barrel, and the idea was to scare it away – even more dreadful!) but still didn’t know the meaning of it. Others talked vaguely about superstitious pagan rituals of banishing evil spirits. The funny thing – though somewhat expected – was that none of the locals, without exception, could see my point that kids banging on a barrel with a big baseball bat is something of an aggressive scene, not to say violent.

Further reading on the topic revealed that Fastelavn is really the Danish equivalent to Mardi Grad or Carnival – celebrations during the days before Lent, a historical fasting season in Christianity. And the slå katten af tønden thing (”hit the cat out of the barrel”) was indeed related to some safeguard against evil. And apparently the baseball bat bashing is not the only violent tradition during Fastelavn – there’s also fastelavnsris, bunches of twigs used by children to flog their parents to wake them up on the morning of Fastelavns Sunday. But I still couldn’t find an explanation for why a wooden barrel is used, requiring so much force to break it open that nothing short of a baseball bat would do. Couldn’t the Danes go for the Mexican cardboard piñata that bursts open with the soft pull of a string by an innocent child?

Perhaps some things are not meant to be understood but rather accepted. Holiday traditions are undoubtedly strange to the foreign eye in many countries – it took a comment from a foreigner to make me realize that calling the traditional Israeli Carnival-time cookies Hamantashen (literally meaning “the ears of Haman”, after the Jew-hating villain from the Book of Esther who ended up being hanged by Ahasuerus, King of Persia) was somewhat gory. Totally right, but for some reason it never occurred to me before.

So yes, being a foreigner gives one a great insight into things taken for granted by the locals. And every so often it means being shocked and puzzled in the most unexpected situations, while the locals look at you in wonder and dismiss you as weird. As you probably guessed by now, I quite enjoy those moments.

Lessons from Matador

A couple of months ago I completed two of my primary integration projects in Denmark: learning Danish and watching Matador. The former of course is a never-ending project and I’m far from truly completing it, but officially I should be speaking, writing and reading Danish quite fluently now that I’ve passed the final exams of my intensive ‘Danish for foreigners’ language course. But the latter was a more defined project – watching the entire TV series from start to finish, which I’m now proud to say I did.

So the other day I was trying to think which of the two gave me better insights into Danish society and culture. Learning Danish undoubtedly solved some of my earlier puzzlement over the choice of certain words in English typically used by Danes (for example, the interchangeable use of ‘fun’ and ‘funny’ or the funny expression ‘I don’t hope this happens’, not to mention the frequent use of the word ‘sparring’ in business contexts, or using ‘back-side’ when wanting to say ‘flip-side’; I now finally get the origin of those funny – and fun! – mistakes).

Learning Danish has also provided its fair share of frustrations and entertainment, the two often being inextricably linked. For example, the fact that there are four different words in Danish for ‘think’ (I still get my mener, tænker, tror and synes confused sometimes). Or the annoying abundance of words for ‘probably’ (still waiting for someone to explain to me the difference between sikkert, nok, vist, muligvis and sandsynligvis). Or the very curious fact that the Danes officially don’t have a future (tense, that is). Of course one can use ‘skal’ or ‘vil’ but those are apparently not often used, with the present tense prevailing when referring to the future, as a rule. You can only imagine the juicy discussions and giggles this triggered among us foreign learners, seeing an opportunity to draw parallels between the language and the country. But I digress.

Despite all this learning from my Danish classes I realized that watching Matador probably taught me more about this society. For years I’ve been hearing about this TV series that started having a mythical aura in my mind as over the years I observed many a Dane soliloquize about it with misty eyes. I’ve come to expect Matador to do nothing less than embody Danishness. Having now watched it I can say it doesn’t quite do that, but it is for sure a superbly-acted well-written drama that can teach foreigners a lot about the history of Denmark – and more importantly, Denmark’s own interpretation of it – during an important period in the development of this nation (1929 to 1947). For the sake of those poor souls who haven’t had the fortune of watching Matador I decided to share with you my main observations from the series:

1.      Danes like to drink coffee. Maybe not the biggest message in the series, but I couldn’t get over the fact that the majority of the dialogue through the series takes place over a cup of coffee (rather like the way alcohol and cigarettes are used in Mad Men). I never actually counted how many times the characters were seen drinking coffee in an average episode but I would place my bet on approximately 10 times an episode. In fact, there was only one activity that could compete with coffee drinking in Matador, which leads me to the next observation.

2.      Danes like to read newspapers. I know this was a way to communicate the characters’ political and social viewpoints in the story, but it still made me laugh sometimes that almost every scene opened or closed with a close up on someone reading a particular newspaper. I guess if the series was shot today they would all be carrying iPads around.

3.      The only truly happy Danes are farmers. Every character in Matador seemed to have their share of fortunes and misfortunes, but somehow the only ones who came across as more or less happy with their lives were Oluf and Kathrine Larsen, Ingeborg’s parents. Was that an intentional subliminal message, or is it me?

4.      In Denmark, business ambition and family life don’t go together. Be it Mads Skjern, Hans Christian Varnæs or Agnes Jensen – it seems that commercial drive entails marital or children problems in the Danish narrative.

5.      World War II was a strange period in Denmark. That one is naturally an obvious one – the war brought havoc and destruction to most European countries. But having grown up in Israel I was trained to believe all Danes were saints during that period because of what they did for the Jews. It was interesting to see a more realistic portrayal of that time, which also helps explain the complexity of the relations between Denmark and Germany today.

6.      People from Jutland are not welcome in Zealand. OK, that one I knew even before watching Matador.

So these are just some of my take-aways from this important series, more on the superficial side I must admit (you can find a more serious analysis here). And to all the newcomers in Denmark, I do unreservedly advise you to learn the language. But I also warmly recommend watching Matador – it’s a thoroughly fun and funny affair!

Denmark's biggest attraction

This post is not about the little mermaid or H.C. Andersen – it’s about Denmark’s biggest attraction for foreign professionals rather than tourists.

The story goes as follows – a few days ago I happened to hear a conversation between a Dane and a Brit in Copenhagen that went something like this:

Brit: did you get the CV I emailed you about the sales position?

Dane: I did, and now that I have you on the phone why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself.

Brit: I led a large sales department in a UK company and am now looking for a sales role in Copenhagen.

Dane: I can only imagine there’s a woman involved.

Brit: What do you mean?

Dane: Professionals don’t usually move here for the weather or the taxes, but one thing we have going for us is the Danish girls – they still attract professionals to Denmark…

This funny conversation reminded me of my early impressions last year after spending a couple of months in Denmark, when I realized that 90% of the many foreign professionals I’ve been meeting moved here because of love. Not because of the special tax scheme the government enacted. Not because of the Green Card scheme. Not because of the many international branding programs run by the country. And not because of Mærsk. Well some actually were here because of Mærsk, but the vast majority were here because they were married to, engaged to or in love with a Dane. As was I.

Having moved here after living in New York and London this phenomenon was of course new to me, as most foreign professionals I had met in the past were living outside their home country due to their search for career, education, culture or inspiration (and sometimes due to sheer escape). But I rarely met foreigners who moved because they fell in love with a local. Why is it so in Denmark, I kept asking myself.

The natural answer seemed to be that outside the big cultural and business centers of the world, foreign professionals were to be found in smaller numbers and for mostly personal, rather than career-related, reasons. And it was no secret that compared to some other European cities, Copenhagen was lacking when it came to those two very important factors mentioned by the Dane above – weather and taxes, leaving perhaps love as the main reason to move here. But love is not exactly a solid strategy for importing much-needed skills and talent to the Danish economy, and with all the talk and legislative action around attracting foreign professionals to Denmark – I am wondering whether the situation is changing.

A quick look at the official 2010 Expat Study in Denmark doesn’t provide a clear answer, but it does give a clue. Apparently while the number of expats living and working in Denmark (defined in the study as “highly skilled and educated knowledge workers of the global economy”) rose from around 32,000 to 42,000 over the last 3 years, a staggering 66% of the survey’s respondents didn’t move here due to a company relocation or after being recruited abroad, but rather found their job after moving here (compared to only 60% in 2006). Does this mean many of those people moved here because of a personal relationship with a Dane?

My own anecdotal experience suggests that Danish women (and men) are indeed the main attraction of Denmark when it comes to foreign professionals. But if that’s the case, does Denmark realize this is its main asset for enriching the local talent pool?

Clearly not. A by-product of meeting all those foreign professionals who are here for love was getting to know their Danish partners. And those of them who were unlucky enough to fall in love with a non-EU person had nothing but shame and embarrassment of Denmark to confess. From the need to live in a property of a certain minimum size and with a minimum 3-year rental agreement period (forcing some of those couples out of the cities they want to live in due to the difficulty in either finding flats with long-term rental agreements, or affording properties of the minimum sized required), to the unbelievable requirement from the ‘sponsoring’ partner (the Dane) to post a collateral of more than DKK 60,000 to cover any potential future requests for public assistance – Danish family reunification rules make these couples feel unwanted and unwelcome. And those rules are only getting tougher with the new point system.

The result of all this is that most non-EU mixed couples I meet in Denmark talk about eventually leaving Denmark and moving to the partner’s home country – be it Canada, the US, Australia or many other countries I’ve met people from. Indeed the survey above finds that expats coming to Denmark for family and love are less likely to stay longer than planned, compared to expats coming to Denmark for work. And perhaps that’s what Denmark wants. What I learned from all this was that not only does Denmark not recognize its real asset in attracting foreign professionals to Denmark by making it harder for Danes to live here with their foreign loved ones, it’s actually going even further than that – by driving those Danes themselves out of Denmark. And that’s a double loss for the country.

Denmark: perception vs. reality

A little while ago I was speaking to an American friend who wanted to visit us in our new host country following our move to Denmark last year. I said the usual refrain: “come in summertime, with Copenhagen at its most hospitable”, but was surprised to hear his response of “I think I prefer to come in the middle of winter – I’m thinking Northern Lights and all that”.

His comment got me thinking about how far reality is from most people’s perceptions of Denmark around the world. I should be more accurate and say that in fact most people around the world don’t have a perception of Denmark at all – to my friend’s credit at least he knew Denmark was a country, somewhere in the Nordics. After living 9 months here I still get the occasional friend abroad asking me how my Swedish is progressing, and whether I’m getting along with the Norwegians. Yes, it might be a surprise to many Danes, but most people around the world tend to refer to Scandinavian countries interchangeably, and Denmark often seems to be more easily forgettable in relation to its higher-profile neighbours. And there are still those who think that people in Denmark speak Dutch (as I wrote in my very first blog post about our friends’ reactions in London when we told them we had decided to move to Denmark), or that Denmark is the capital of Sweden or Holland.

Those however who do know that Denmark is a country (and even those who know that the residents of Denmark are Danes, and that they speak Danish) still seem to have fantastical ideas about it: from those thinking it’s an arctic Nordic country home to igloo dwellers and ice hotels, to others imagining a place where everything and everyone is stunningly beautiful, stylized and super-modern. Then there are those who think it’s a haven of nudity and promiscuity, or efficiency and austerity. Or all of the above. Perhaps the funniest contradicting perception of Denmark is that of a place where everyone is happy, yet many are depressed and commit suicide.

Of course some of these perceptions have a kernel of truth to them, but basically they’re all pretty far from reality in my opinion. So why is it that Denmark has such a low profile in the world compared to other Northern European countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden? And why are perceptions of it seem to be so removed from reality?

To answer to the first question, it might be the fact that Denmark is smaller in population compared to countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, that it doesn’t have striking fjords (or oil) like Norway, that it never managed to attract as many tourists from countries outside the region as its neighbours did, and that it never had global consumer mega-brands associated with the country like the Swedish brands IKEA, Volvo and even ABBA (there are of course Lego and Carlsberg, but no-one seems to associate them with Denmark). Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that for many years there wasn’t an internationally known mainstream Danish figure in contemporary culture or sport (something that’s changing now with phenomena like Noma and Wozniacki).

As for the second question – perceptions of nations are often extreme and one-dimensional, but they might be even more removed from reality (and influenced by anecdotes) when the country in question is little known and seldom visited.

While undoubtedly a low profile can hurt a country’s economy by limiting export, investments and tourism – there’s something to be said for a country that is relatively obscure abroad. I find it quite entertaining when people I speak to don’t exactly know what Denmark is and where it’s located – almost like a quaint little place I can keep all to myself.

Then again I have to admit I too experienced a gap between my own perceptions and reality of Denmark when I moved here and realized that Copenhagen is much less international and cosmopolitan than I had previously imagined, despite having visited the country more than a dozen times in the past. Perhaps the flip side of being unknown to the world is that the world is a bit unknown to you. It might be a good idea to work on raising that profile after all…

The plight of the returning Dane

Foreigners living in a new country seem to attract one another – every time I’ve lived in a foreign country I seemed to befriend other foreigners first, before meeting and befriending some of the locals. Be it through communities and associations for foreign professionals, co-workers in international companies with foreign employees, friends of friends from one’s home country or simply a chance encounter that promises the joy of commiseration.

Denmark was no different for me – following my arrival in Denmark I quickly met other expats and foreigners through my Danish language school, my job searching activities and my networking efforts across various expat associations. But this time around I found another group yearning for an opportunity to share frustrations and exchange criticism of the host country: Danes who have lived abroad for a few years and returned to Denmark.

Otherwise known as ‘repatriates’ (as opposed to ‘expatriates’), people who live outside their home country for many years and then return to it often experience a sort of a ‘reverse culture shock’. And according to conventional wisdom they tend to find this reverse culture shock more surprising and difficult to deal with than the original culture shock when moving abroad. I can personally attest to that, having a severe case of reverse culture shock at home – my partner.

So what do Danish repatriates talk about when sharing their frustrations over Denmark? One Dane I met, who spent a few years in the US, said “the first thing I noticed after I came back was how poor customer service is in Denmark, and how unfriendly people are here”. Another friend who spent a few years in London and Barcelona, confessed as follows: “soon after moving I realized that Denmark isn’t as open – and Danes aren’t as open-minded – as I once thought. When I moved back here this realization hit me even harder”.

Several returning Danes I’ve met said something like “I have always been taught to believe that everything in Denmark is superior to the rest of the world. Now I know that’s completely untrue”; others complained that the Danish health care system is far inferior to those of other countries they’ve lived in; many laughed about the myth of ‘superb infrastructure’ which in their minds proved to be just that – a myth; one friend slammed the entire Danish education system when she said: “this mentality of mediocrity and discouragement of drive, ambition and competition has so many negative aspects, but nobody ever talks about it!”; and others claimed that the social welfare system no longer provides value for tax money, and robs them of the personal freedom and choice they’ve grown accustomed to abroad.

I guess it’s natural for people who left their home country, discovered the world and then moved back, to think that their homeland is provincial, narrow-minded and mono-cultural. But the Danish phenomenon of reverse culture shock seems stronger and more widespread than anything I’ve encountered as a foreigner living in the US and the UK. I can’t help wondering why that is.

Perhaps it’s the fact that Danes cannot find the freedom (associated with anonymity and foreignness), which they’ve grown to like in other countries, back in the small and culturally homogeneous city of Copenhagen (as opposed to Americans returning to New York and Brits returning to London – two huge multicultural cities where even locals can feel free and anonymous). Or perhaps it has something to do with the Danish tradition of ‘nurturing a collective self esteem’, or in other words – the patriotic indoctrination most countries practice, but which Denmark seems especially good at. I was once told this is a result of the loss of territory and power in the 19^th century, requiring the building of a new type of national pride not linked to international political might. Whatever the reason, it worked brilliantly!

This might be the reason behind the conviction held by many Danes that Denmark is in fact a perfect society. I can see then why when Danes move abroad and find their home country is not perfect (as all people do when living abroad), they struggle more than others (something I can personally identify with coming from a country that’s exceptionally good in the art of nurturing a collective self esteem, which I tend to call good old nationalism).

I can keep speculating about the real causes of the plight of Danish repatriates, but a more important point is that every country in pursuit of continuous improvement can benefit greatly from its nation’s repatriates, who bring a different perspective and often a strong will to change things for the better. I’ve met many of those in my last few months in Denmark; now the question is whether their insights can be utilized for the benefit of the country.