Danes generally have high English proficiency, that’s why some say that there is no need to learn Danish when you come here as a foreigner. My opinion is that yes it’s not necessary if you only come to Denmark for a short stay, say 1 or 2 years, and don’t really have any long-term plans here. But if you intend to stay longer then it’s a totally different story, but it really depends on where you are from.

If you are a non-European citizen like me, you are required by law to learn Danish, otherwise you can’t apply for permanent residence in Denmark, so you basically have to learn Danish if you want to stay. It’s generally frowned upon to live here for many years and not speak the language, and those who don’t will therefore often be viewed as un-integrated in society. (Danish politicians on both sides express this view almost daily in the mainstream media)

If you are a European citizen, whether or not you can speak Danish won’t influence your legal stay in Denmark, but the above statement still applies, and you should learn Danish if you want to feel truly welcome here.

For both scenarios mentioned above, learning Danish is quite necessary, as when you live in Denmark, everything around you is formulated in Danish, so it’s much easier if you understand and speak some Danish; e.g applying for jobs at medium-small sized Danish firms, Lunch at work with Danish colleagues, nights out, or just socializing with Danes.  Often you are the only foreigner, trust me, after a few years of feeling like an outsider you will either be very motivated or very jaded. (Quite a lot of jaded foreigners out there who’ve never felt welcome)

But this might be a surprise, if you are from Sweden or Norway, you probably also have to learn Danish to truly fit in, at least that’s how many Scandinavians I’ve met feel. It’s interesting as many Danes think Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are like dialects, so it should be possible to communicate using only your native language.

Yet one of my Norwegian friends expressed that surprisingly, language has become one of the biggest barriers in her daily life here in Denmark, a problem that she definitely didn’t expect to encounter when she decided to move here. Because she is Norwegian, she only speaks Norwegian with her Danish friends. Sometimes she can tell that her friends can’t fully understand her, but they never change to English, even though they are all fluent in English. Somehow there is a mutual understanding that they should understand each other, so they would rather struggle to understand Norwegian than speak English. As she says, “It would feel so odd if I had to speak English with Danes”. So her solution is to inject Danish words into her Norwegian, to make sure the Danes can understand her better. (Of course now she has problems when she goes back home and starts using her Danish flavoured Norwegian).

So in summary, if you want to stay here, learning Danish should be one of your top priorities. So enjoy “rød grød med fløde”. And do try not to choke on the hot potato in your mouth.

By Li Yuan Wu • March 27, 2011

3 Comments

I cannot believe that it’s 2010 already; you know it is still difficult to refer to 2010 as “this year”, and so many times I’ve had to shred papers to rewrite the date because I wrote a fast double zero with a 9 instead of a 20 followed by a pause and then a 10.

In general I think my 2009 was a good year even though it was full of ups and downs. I appreciate all the experiences even bad experiences, because it makes me look at things from different perspectives and it makes me stronger. So how should I end this great year? Be together with my boyfriend and friends to count down new years was defiantly my first priority. Like everywhere else, it’s quite common in Denmark that friends hang out together and either go out to party or party at home.  So we decided to host a party with friends at our apartment which we just moved in at May 2009. You know just to test the quality of the apartment. I think we are quite satisfied with the result, only three glasses got broken and all the colorful stains on the floor kind of disappeared after we washed it

It was a Chinese themed cocktail party but everyone got so drunk with polish vodka which we bought in Krakow last time we were there. At that moment, it suddenly struck me that all my friends are foreigners. Hehe, it’s hard to explain, but most of my friends are foreigners or not very Danish Danes. I don’t know why maybe you can help me to understand, but I guess it might be that us as foreigners share a similarity-”not Danish”. Somehow we don’t have a superior feeling towards other people, so the barriers that separate us become lower.  Anyway, we had lots of fun.

My new year’s goal is to become a more healthy and stronger (both mentally and physically) person. What about you?

P.S Luckily due to my Chinese identity, technically I’m still in 2009, Chinese 2010 will officially start from February 14th 2010.  And my boyfriend and I will go back home to celebrate New Year with my family. We are so looking forward because going to China to celebrate New Year means lots of good food plus more great food.

Hmmm it seems like I already have set up a big challenge for my healthy new year goal. Let’s see

By Li Yuan Wu • January 6, 2010

1 Comment

Last Saturday the 26th of September was Christiania’s 38 years birthday.

Some of you might know about Christiania, but for those who don’t know that much about it, here is a little general information.

Christiania is a very special place. The whole thing started from when a group of people occupied an empty military area in 1971. Then slowly the spirit of Christiania quickly developed into a hippie movement, collectivism and anarchism. The purpose was to create a place where creativity, openness and freedom was embraced. And Christiania is indeed an artsy place which is full of creativity.

There are around 850 people “legally” living at Christiania, some pursue very self sufficient and alternative lives, whereas others have completely regular jobs in the city. But that’s not really the reason why Chritiania is so famous.

The real reason is that Christiania is an open drug market located almost in the heart of Copenhagen. Christiania’s pusher street has 50 something stall and tiny shops selling all kinds of Hash or other “light drugs”.

These drugs are illegal in Denmark, and in principle they are also being sold illegally in Christiania, but even though the police go into Christiania once in a while, it seems like the drug trade there is more or less commonly accepted.

So on Saturday Rune and I went to Christiania with some of our friends to check it out.

There were really a lot of people, and it was almost too crowed to walk around. But it was also a very relaxed and happy atmosphere, and our friends even did a little clothes shopping. There are a lot of small shops that sell second hand things. In Danish we call it loppemarked. I think one of my girlfriends bought a pretty nice dress for 50kr.

So we drank some Christiania beer and jumped around, screaming at a D.A.D concert. We really had a lot of fun.

Maybe you don’t believe me, but this was only my second time in Christiania in the 7 years I have been living here in Denmark. It’s a very nice place. People are very friendly. So you can always find a lot of fun, no matter when you go there.

I can hardly imagine that a place like Christiania exists anywhere else. Tell me what do you think

By Li Yuan Wu • September 30, 2009

1 Comment

I’m sorry I haven’t updated this blog in a long time, but I’ve been so busy enjoying summer here in Denmark, that it simply slipped my mind.

Out of the seven summers I’ve spent here in Denmark, this has by far been the best. That’s because all my previous summers have been spent out in “the middle of nowhere”. When I first came here I lived in a city called Haslev which is about two hours by train away from Copenhagen. Then 2 years later I moved to Holbæk, which is also about an hour away from Copenhagen. After another 3 years I moved Trekroner outside Roskilde, which is about half an hour from Copenhagen, and now this summer I’ve finally moved to Copenhagen.

Finally I’ve been able to experience the vibrant Danish summer culture, I’ve been able to see Copenhagen in a completely new way by biking around. I no longer have to worry about checking timetables, and catching the last train home when I went out to Copenhagen, because let’s face it if you want to have fun or experience something on Zealand, you have to go to Copenhagen.

Here’s a few snapshots of fun things i saw during the summer

So what have I been spending my summer on then? Well for one thing I studied, I attended Copenhagen Business School’s summer university program, where I got the chance to meet a lot of other foreigners and make more friends from all over the world. But besides academic work which did take up a large part of my time, I’ve been doing a large number of things.

First of all I worked with the web-TV show www.mydenmarktv.com as a co-host and writer. We’ve been working on it very intensely during the summer to ensure that a new and interesting episode could be posted every week, I’ve embedded episode twelve which I hosted, so feel free to check it out.

Episode #12 – MyDenmarkTV.com from MyDenmarkTV on Vimeo.

My fiancée Rune and I decided that during the summer we would try to have as many culinary experiences in Copenhagen as possible, so we spent a lot of time searching the internet for interesting restaurants and café’s in Copenhagen, we found that a really useful website for doing that is www.aok.dk, so we’ve been biking all over Copenhagen to try what the city has to offer. In august there was a actually a food festival here in Copenhagen, where many of the best restaurants such as world famous Noma offered gourmet meals at student friendly prices, moreover a lot of restaurants had special offers or menus during the food festival. We tried to book tables are many of these restaurants, but weren’t quick enough, seems there’s a lot of food crazed Danes out there.

We did get to experience a very special restaurant though called Knipps Kaj, it’s a restaurant which only exists for a few weeks every year, and serves the food outside under the bridge Knippelsbro. It’s really a magical feeling sitting there under a bridge looking at Copenhagen’s waterfront with the beautiful opera house and black diamond library, enjoying your food and wine while a guy in a kayak paddles by.

The thing about Danish summer is that it’s more or less the only period where the weather is so nice that you can spend a long time outside just enjoying the sun, so I spent a lot of time during the summer going to Copenhagen’s parks, particularly Valby parken which is right next to where I live. In my home country China parks are always very artificial, and crowded, but in Denmark its only really the famous and central parks which are crowded, if you go a bit more outside of town the parks are very peaceful and quiet. Valbyparken is one such park, and it’s actually also the second largest park in Copenhagen, with Fælledparken being the largest and most popular.

If you love flowers you will also love Valbyparken, the park actually has a large number of smaller parks and gardens inside it with flowers from all over the world, and in the heart of Valbyparken there’s a large secluded area full of roses, with hundreds of different kinds, so if you’re ever looking for a place to take a date and “seal the deal” then I warmly suggest Valbyparken.

Another great thing about Danish parks and nature in general is that there are hundreds of fruit trees that you are free to pick from as long as you don’t harm the tree. In Valbyparken I found the long road which has hundreds of Mirabelle trees, one day I brought a large basket and picked over 4 kg’s, I then went home and turned them all into delicious jam that Rune and I have been eating ever since.

So summer here in Copenhagen has been great fun. But now it’s over, autumn is starting, the temperature is dropping, and the famous Danish rainy weather is steadily making its appearance known, seen the nights will be filled with rain and thunder. However autumn also means mushroom season in Denmark, so I’ve bought a mushroom picking book, and I’m going to go as often as possible into the Danish forests to try my luck as a mushroom hunter. Furthermore bad weather and thunder means hygge, lying under the covers drinking tea or hot chocolate and watching movies, candlight dinners, and having friends over.

So instead of lamenting the passing of Danish summer I choose to say

Goodbye summer, Hello autumn!

By Li Yuan Wu • September 14, 2009

7 Comments

Danish people love drinking!!!

Maybe you will say who doesn’t?! After all every nation has its own drinking culture, with different drinking customs, habits or styles. Yes, that is true, but after these years of living in Denmark, I have personally come to the conclusion that Danes are an extreme case.

Almost every possible occasion involves alcohol, sometimes even during work.  I heard that 20-30 years ago, when Denmark was a shipbuilding nation, employees working at the big ship building factories were almost forced to have beers 5 to 6 times a day, every day.

They eventually abandoned the custom because it caused so many different accidents, and the factories shut down long ago due to competition from the far east, but the beers are still a part of Danish work culture.

Of course not in the sense that people go to work every day to get pissed, more in the sense that alcohol, parties, Friday beers, that turn into Friday bars, which at university turn into Thursday, Friday and Saturday bars, are one of the primary ways of socializing with Danish people.

During my time at university here in Denmark I’ve tried following the maxim “when in Rome, do as the Romans.” And I’ve had some very fun times, I’ve met and partied with a lot of my classmates, been out dancing a lot, made new friends, and had a lot of very deep beer-induced conversations.

But when I would come to school the next day and meet these very same people, I would only receive a nod of the head or a slight smile rather than a warm welcome.

It seems as if Danes are only capable of opening up and socializing with someone who isn’t in their immediate circle of friend, if the Danish culture part of their brain is shut down by alcohol.

Luckily this doesn’t apply to all Danes, and I cherish the great friendships I’ve made with Danes during my years here, and perhaps the Danes who act like I’ve described above aren’t worth collecting as friends anyway.

Nevertheless it is frustrating that people cannot open up to you and be friendly with you if they are sober, it makes me worried about what work-life would be like here in Denmark, and it makes me understand why so many of the foreigners I’ve met here in Denmark have a very bad impression of the Danes.

Now please tell me that I’m wrong and that there’s hope yet.

By Li Yuan Wu • May 15, 2009

10 Comments