Elissa Goes Abroad: Denmark Diaries: A Week of Danish Culture

Hi! As always, apologize for the poor layout...

Well, I've been in Denmark a week. I spent my last couple days trying to catch up on sleep, not freak out, and figure out my life here. So far it's been pretty nice, and pretty different. But I'll start with my departure from Iceland.

I had a beautiful sunrise greet me in my early morning zombie-state. The cloud that I had mentioned lingered, hugging the mountain closely. I rather enjoyed watching Iceland from the air, seeing all the glaciers from above was quite cool, and I took some pictures, though I'm not sure they're quality enough for this here blog.

For starters, I wasn't really terrified or nervous until I heard the captain announce our descent into Billund. Although an argument could be made that I started feeling nervous halfway through the flight, when I started getting nauseous.The plane descended down through the curtains of rain, and when I got off the plane, and I thought I was going to be sick. My head hurt, my hands were shaking, and I was anxious because our bags took forever to get on the carousel. But I walked out into arrivals, and there they were, waving Danish flags and American flags and holding signs, smiling--probably equally as nervous and as excited as I was.

For the sake of privacy, I will not use my host family's real names. For the future, the names will be Christian (10), Sophie (13), Ella (Mother), and Marcus (Father).

In the car, I tried to speak. I could already tell that Marcus was rather goofy. He reminded me a lot of David Tennant as the tenth doctor with his demeanor. They drove through the country side from Billund towards Vejle, and although I had been told Denmark was flat, I'd never seen such a flat land before. There were lots of wind turbines with their blades spinning majestically, but I can't remember a whole lot more about the landscape truthfully. I was so tired.

We drove to Carsten's house, the Rotary club member who arranged this whole thing for me. His house large and beautiful (they called it a Villa). I walked in, and noticed how short I was compared to everyone around me (for the record, I'm 5'7"). While Christian isn't very tall (he's ten), his sister easily stands 5'9", Ella close to 6', Carsten at 6'4", his wife at 5'9-10", and Carsten's son standing close to 7 feet. I sat and listened to my host family and listened to them talk. That whole day is kind of a blur, so I couldn't tell you what we talked about, but I remember it happened.

After travelling across the bridge, we were finally in Middelfart, where I would be staying. Sophie would evidently be staying in the basement, and I have her room for two months...which is really cool. My desk and dresser are on the first floor, then I climb up a ladder to sleep in the former attic. It's very nice. They have a large beautiful garden, full of fruit trees (plums and apple trees from what I can tell) and vegetable plants. There are blackberry bushes everywhere, abundant with sour berries that are not quite ripe just yet. They are a five minute bike ride from the beach, which I got to go to the second day I was there. The water was cold, and there were jellies, but I jumped in like the my young Viking comrades. It was nothing compared to the 35 degrees I was in just a couple of days before!

On the second day, I was given a bike tour of the town, first showing me the route to the place I would be interning. We also rode down to the harbor, which was really beautiful. I was told, to my delight, that you could see marsvine, or harbor porpoises between the bridges. There will even whale watching boats full of (presumably German, as I'd been told) tourists. There were lots of jellyfish floating in the water (we all know how much I love to look at jellyfish--and yes, they were where I was swimming too). But overall it was really beautiful and I have been blessed with a great place to live. It's very cute here! I also played a memory game with Christian and Sophie, where I would say the words on the cards in English, and they'd say them in Danish. I learned a bunch of new words that way, which was great.

On Monday, I got to attend school with the kids. A short day, only an hour and a half, but it was a great taste of what the education is like, even if they attend a little private school. I was told that they, regardless of public or private, always gather around the Dannebrog (or Danish flag) and sing songs every morning. I thought it was interesting that they increased the length of the school day by about an hour each day (they end at 2:30ish, for the record), but are not allowed to have homework. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple months.

I started work on Tuesday the 12th (of August, of course) at a company called Uhrenholt, a dairy, seafood, and vegetable company. Uhrenholt is very close, a ten minute bike ride from where I am staying. It's located in a beautiful, Harvard Yard-esque building, the former location of an old mental hospital from the 1800s. I know not of any ghosts, but I was told it depends on who you ask. I have a terrible view from my desk (that's sarcasm). I have a standing desk, which is great because the chairs aren't all that comfortable, but the CEO of the company is behind me, so I suppose there will be no slacking off!

View from my desk...terrible right?

But on the first day, I was a little surprised to walk into the marketing/design department of this multi-billion dollar, international company and see that they used comic sans on their packaging. At Saint Rose, we talked a lot about typography, and Comic Sans is generally not held in high esteem, so I had a sinking feeling in my gut when I saw it used on some of the packaging. This packaging is used mostly in the Asian marketplace and sells well, but I still feel there is a better way (such as the typeface Comic Neue which is based off of Comic Sans). They also used Arial and our good friends Minion and Myriad and good ol' Internet Explorer. This is gonna take some getting used to. Although I am the bottom of the totem pole, I can be an advocate for change. Any company will have existing design parameters for packaging and branding, so it will be a new experience for me to be as creative as possible within them. I hope I can provide some inspiration to enhance the brand, while respecting that which has already been done.

That being said, everyone has been super friendly to me at the office. They gave me a grand tour of the building and introduced me to all of the 100-something employees. I constantly tried to say Mit navn er Elissa properly, but failed...though I've said it enough that I think I'm pretty close now. They also provide me free breakfast and a lunch buffet (LOADED with lots of Danish deliciousness) everyday so I get to try something new.

Speaking of food, let's move on to the cultural differences. Many of these I had been aware of before I left, but I'm now noticing them. First of all, diet is very different. Butter on everything, and butter first on everything. Bread, butter, jam, cheese (or is it cheese, then jam?) Bread, butter, Nutella...etc. etc. They also eat far more red meat and cheese than I am used to. My dad would say I ate too much cheese at home in the states, and then I got here and it's like, cheese galore. I mean, I had cheese fondue tonight for dinner. My stomach is trying to get used to all these changes, and it vocalizes that its getting use to the diet here quite often, to my embarrassment.

Then there are the other smaller things. Like 1) the nudity and cursing on TV. Or that 2) light switches are outside of the doors, and up is off and down is on. 3) Wine and liquor being sold in grocery stores. 4) Bikes and bike lanes everywhere. 5) Danes love their houses; each one is different, unlike all the cookie-cutter ones I see in the US. They take much better care of them too, from what I can tell. 6) There's the aforementioned height differences too.

Then the biggest difference is the 7) reservation Danes show. They're less open to conversation, and don't smile at you as you pass them on the street. That's different from what I'm used to experiencing in Albany county. This is one of those things I knew about before I got here, but still find it unusual and perhaps, a little anxiety-inducing.

Tomorrow I head off to Copenhagen to meet a good friend, an internet friend, of ten years. It will be amazing and exciting and terrifying. I've gotta get to sleep...I've got an early train!