DENMARK: THE EARLY DAYS

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far.

  A few other things:

The Danish language is a delight.

Not only are there daily opportunities for juvenile pointing and snickering --

           (this sign says ‘schedule’, I think)

but I just adore the words. There are Js and Vs in impossible places, cute new vowels, and multisyllabic words bursting with unvoiced consonants. Even banal consumer goods appear impressive, even epic. Modestrømpebukser sounds like a Norse legend about that one time Odin made the sea surge and flood the villages in a rage at the lack of affordable legwear.

I got an organ donor registration form with my health insurance card a few days ago and had to specify whether I was willing to donate all usable organs or merely a selected few, such as my hornhinder (wha???), or my bugspytkirtel (I have one of those inside of me? GET IT OUT NOW). I am reassured that I have chosen the correct career when I reflect upon how happy it makes me that their exists a linguistic reality where one expresses their incredulity by saying OOCH-choh-lee (the phonetic pronounciation of 'utrolige').

This is my kind of climate.

Easy to say now, perhaps, after a few weeks of much more sun than rain and hardly any weather requiring the wearing of modestrømpebukser, but I love it so far. It’s cool, fresh, green, and you can feel the closeness of the sea in the air. I miss my evergreens and my mountains but I ride past broad green vistas on my way to work and gaze out my office window at big strong tall trees lush with foliage. Sure, it will start raining soon, and it won’t stop until it starts snowing, but with a bit of cursing under my scarf on my bicycle commute I can handle that just fine. 

I like living in a place where I can see and feel the action of the natural world on the landscape. What I disliked about Indiana was not merely the flatness of the place but the complete absence of drama. There is a violence to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest: volcanoes with sharp edges and snowy reminders visible on even the warmest day of the year; hills and valleys carved by incomprehensibly massive glaciers. There’s not too much drama here in Odense, but the sea is never far away, and you can't get much harsher or more intense than the ocean.

Last weekend I traveled to the seaside town of Kerteminde with some colleagues, and from there to the fjord at the northernmost tip of the island of Fyn, a slender bit of land surrounded by the sea. 

or maybe kind of a claw, but you get the idea

maps for context and confusion 

A path carries you close to the shore and up to the highest point as the microclimates transform alongside you. Where the wind and rain hit hardest there are hardy scrub bushes and tenacious clumps of wildflowers, on the leeward side there is tall grass and benches (the kind of people that learn to love and find familiar such a place are my kind of people -- white sand beaches are for wimps). The sea meets a rocky shore on the west side and short cliffs on the east. It was briskly blustery and bright. 

Back in Kerteminde we walked down the beach past tiny summer cabins painted in bright colors, examined a live worm vending machine in the harbor, and ate licorice ice cream.

the beach

Not a very active harbor, but a picturesque one.

lakrids is

Moving abroad is always more tedium than glamour.

Why are their no punk rock songs about bureaucracy? Nothing makes me ragier. By the end of the week I will hopefully have all my ducks in a row but up till now those little jerks have been all over the place. See you can’t get a phone here until you have a bank account but to get the bank account you’re supposed to call a number with a phone. Payroll can’t be processed until you have your social security number and your bank account and so you’re wandering around with your stupid paper map trying to find a government office and wishing you’d written down that thing that was in your email, the email your non-operational phone could download with wi-fi….except the only way you can take advantage of the free wi-fi hotspot is if you have an account with a mobile phone company. It makes my blood pressure rise just to think about it.

Otherwise it's difficult to find much to complain about. People have been wonderful – after only a few weeks I already feel like I have real friends here. The cat is happy as can be. After a singularly awful journey across the ocean she’s made my lovely little home her new kingdom. 

We're cool, just keep your %$&# hands off the mouse

It’s a small place, but the big city, as this past weekend confirmed, is awfully close. I really think I’m going to like it here.