Culture Shock

In answer to any questions:

Yes, the city is amazing. I’m having a lovely time. My course is good and so is my room. The people are friendly and all speak English, so I am having no problems with the language. Luckily I have managed to get a sort of job. It’s expensive but I’m getting by OK. Thanks for asking.

Now, on with the blog.

‘Dav, jeg hedder Joe. Jeg kommer fra England.’ – This is how I of course introduce myself now, after living in Copenhagen for a week. It is right to assume that poorly clumped together sentences like these are meaningless when in fact all you want to do is buy a toothbrush. I can’t imagine many bus conductors care what my name is when I’m standing there with a handful of unrecognisable coins, trying to pronounce Kongens Nystrov. Admittedly it is all pretty frivolous when everyone down to the supermarket trolley boys can speak your language. And yet, when you meet someone who CAN’T speak English, the satisfaction of trying to communicate is wonderful.

I experienced this last night, at a tasty little football match between Denmark (that’s where I’m living at the moment by the way) and Germany (I could put something pithy about the Germans but it’s all been done before). Sitting right at the top of Parken, the national stadium of Denmark, a burly German bloke with a beer in each hand sat next to me, and asked if I could take his picture.

“Of course” I said in my best English. He looked at me with utter confusion, and asked me in Danish if I spoke Danish. This was it, my test. My first interaction with Danish society and I was in fact staring at a German with not a clue how to speak English. – At this point I’d like to add, Danish in a Yorkshire accent ain’t too understandable – I replied in terrible tongue that I spoke ‘lidt dansk’, and he asked me where I was from! Oh the feeling of understanding something I would never have dreamt of knowing three days ago.

In the end I took his picture and pissed off.

This was all pre-kick off. During the game I was sat in possibly the worst (or best if you sway that way) seat in the house. To my right was a shaven headed German with massive shorts, a black t-shirt and multiple piercings. To my right sat two Argentineans in the blue and white stripes. To be quite honest, I wasn’t too interested in joining the Hitler Youth that day, so I turned and chatted (in English) to the Argies.

Heaven knows why they were there. Their team got tonked by the Krauts worse than us in the World Cup. And yet here they were cheering on the dansk. It was beautiful to see two nations joining forces to cheer against a team they had paid to see.

This was my first taste of Danish ‘culture’. My second came in the second half. I moved seat at half time to get away from… the smokers. You can smoke in a football stadium! Also, as the tubby bloke I met earlier was taking full advantage of, you can drink in the stands. And… possibly the greatest innovation of sporting spectator enjoyment: popcorn. I always thought the popcorn business rather stupidly limited its demographic to film goers. But no, some wise old bean on the continent realised the eighth instalment of the Twilight bandwagon just wasn’t enough to keep up revenues. The solution, sell your popcorn in places other than the Odeon.

Maybe this was the culture shock I’ve been warned about in various International Student lectures: The one thing makes the Danes differ from the Brits, and it’s the extra availability of consumable products on match day.