There’s something peculiar going on in Denmark when it comes to 30th birthdays. I've been watching them now for a few years, and it is seriously odd, here on Funen at least.
Apparently, when a Dane hits the big three-oh, it’s not enough to throw a party or give a nice, sensible gift. No, instead, they mark this milestone with what can only be described as giant, eccentric sculptures. These are usually massive, almost always jokey-obscene, and bizarrely intricate creations, often made from old bits of scrap metal or discarded machinery. And they’re not exactly subtle, either. Plonked right on the end of the birthday boy or girl’s driveway, these creations are left out in full view for weeks, if not months, as though they’re some sort of public art installation.
Now, I’m not entirely sure who’s responsible for these sculptures. Do friends and family secretly build them to surprise the poor soul who’s turning 30? Or does the birthday boy/girl actually request one of these arty monstrosities to mark their entry into a new decade? Either way, it’s quite the spectacle. I’ve seen a fair few since moving here, and they never fail to raise a few questions. My first encounter was a two-metre-tall man made entirely out of metal drums, complete with a beer can in his hand, which was displayed proudly on the main road to Søndersø. Sadly, I couldn’t stop for a photo as it was on a busy road, but it’s burned into my memory all the same.
Then there was another one, a real masterpiece in the art of scrapyard chic. It was a wrecked car painted in all sorts of garish colours, splashed with rude slogans, and lacking anything resembling wheels or an engine. This was on the road into central Odense, positioned just so every passer-by would have no choice but to take in its full glory. I swear at first I thought some joy riders had stolen, vandalised, and abandoned a car, only to realise that Danes just don't do that and it was actually 'art'. No one else seemed remotely fazed by it.
As I began to realise these weren't one-offs, but traditions, I decided to start making a conscious effort, whenever it was safe, to actually stop and photograph examples of Danish birthday 'art'.
The first one I snapped was parked outside a house in a nearby village. It was a large, rather rude, pink... let’s call it a "creation," made from what appeared to be various car parts and hoses, joined together in a way that made it look suspiciously like it was trying to make a point, if you catch my drift.
The next one was a huge metal structure, made out of an old caravan no less, in a tiny village called Sønder Esterbølle – a quaint, rural place full of thatched cottages and windmills you’d think would be immune to such antics. Yet, there it sat, in full view on someone’s drive, for the entire summer, as if it were just another garden gnome.
Honestly, it’s baffling. There’s absolutely no shame about these things here; it’s as if these sculptures are perfectly ordinary. Even in the most picturesque little villages, with colourful cottages and cobblestone streets, you’ll spot a massive, anatomically questionable sculpture on someone’s lawn, and no one bats an eyelid. It’s just part of life here, apparently. Maybe it’s the Danes' famous sexual nonchalance – they’re simply unembarrassed by things that would make most Brits blush. In the UK, people often thought I was 'way too European' on this front, but I think even I would draw the line at an orgy of sex dolls amongst my dahlias!
As for the “why” behind it all? That’s still a mystery. I’d love to know if there’s some hidden meaning or if it’s just a bit of fun that’s got wildly out of hand. Thomas had told me of people gifting each other pepper mills for their 30th, back in the 90s as it signified you had been left on the shelf, but how pepper mills morphed into 2 metre tall scrap metal sex sculptures in the space of two decades is truly puzzling. Maybe it’s their way of taking the edge off turning 30, reminding each other that they’re still young at heart, even if the calendar is saying otherwise. Or maybe it’s an elaborate way of poking fun at friends who are reluctantly edging out of their twenties.
In any case, I’ve decided I’m going to start a collection – of photos, that is. I’ll be documenting these sculptures as I come across them. Who knows? Perhaps there’s a national sculptor of 30th birthday oddities out there making a mint off these things. Or maybe each one is a unique, one-off creation crafted by mates with too much free time and access to a welding torch. Maybe I could start a business selling sex dolls for this very purpose...🤔
One thing’s for sure: I’m quite relieved I was already way past 30 when I moved here. (Though I'm seriously hoping you don't come home to two of these buggers on your driveway when you turn 60!)
Anyway, hats off to the Danes; they certainly know how to make a statement.
Going forward I will add any new birthday sculptures I find on my travels, below with the date and location:
It’s no secret that Danes are freakishly good at English. Whether it’s the smiley barista at your local café, the shop assistant ringing up your groceries, or even the taxi driver chatting away during rush hour, you can bet a Dane will effortlessly switch to English the second they see you flailing with Danish. But what’s the secret to this national linguistic superpower? You might assume it’s due to an unrivalled education system or their endless consumption of English-language media. And sure, those things help. But I’ve stumbled upon a sneaky, often overlooked factor: the humble supermarket.
Could Lidl actually be the real linchpin of English language education? Danes start soaking up English from the very moment they can read, thanks to the shelves of shops like Lidl and Netto, where many products are labelled almost entirely in English. So while British kids are learning how to spell “biscuit” and “crisps” from their snack cupboards, Danish kids are figuring out what "chicken cat food" and "anti-dandruff shampoo" mean before they even hit school. It’s a kind of passive language learning that just sneaks up on you—like picking up a language without ever opening a textbook.
From their earliest shopping trips, Danish children are bombarded with English. Scanning a normal shelf they'll come across peanut butter, New York Cheese Cake, American Spare ribs, not to mention the more mundane frozen green beans or chopped spinach. By the time they’re old enough to recite their times tables, they’ve probably already clocked up a decent English vocabulary. And the best part? Not only do they not have to spend hours learning vocab lists as I did back in the day, they aren't even aware it’s happening.
Meanwhile, across the North Sea, British supermarkets are pretty much a fortress of English. You’re not going to find any sneaky linguistic lessons in Tesco’s aisles unless you count the occasional “chorizo” or “croissant” . There’s no daily exposure to a foreign language, no subtle nudging towards bilingualism as you bag your tins of beans. You buy your rice and biscuits, and call it a day. No educational bonus is thrown in.
But in Denmark, the supermarket is practically a mini language immersion class. Danish kids don’t have to put in any extra effort. Week after week, they’re getting English drilled into them just by helping unpack the groceries. Sure, they might not know exactly what "anti-dandruff shampoo for greasy hair" means at age six, but soon enough, they’ll figure it out. Same with "frozen peas" or "double chocolate granola bars." And what’s genius about this is that the learning is painless, subconscious even. It’s like getting smarter without trying. And once you have mastered one foreign language, others are always easier. There's a reason Danish kids leave grammar school with experience of a minimum of three languages, but usually four. Even Anna who is majoring in sciences did German to Nat 5 level, and is a year away from finishing Danish, English and Spanish to the equivalent of Scottish Advanced Higher.
The reason for all this English? It’s not because Denmark is trying to force English down anyone’s throat, it’s simply practical. Supermarkets like Lidl, Netto, and even the larger chains like Bilka often stock products from international suppliers who don’t bother printing labels in Danish. Let’s face it—Denmark’s market is just too small. Instead of spending extra cash to print Danish labels, they just stick with the English ones that work across multiple countries. As a result, Danish kids are learning words like "dandruff" and "cat food" while British kids are blissfully unaware that "cheese" could ever be called anything other than… cheese.
This little quirk of the Danish supermarket scene means that by the time a Danish kid hits their teenage years, they’ve spent years marinating in English without even thinking about it. They’ve seen it on their breakfast cereal, heard it on their favourite TV programmes (which, by the way, aren’t dubbed, so teenagers are not only picking up English watching their favourite sitcoms but they are also learning to read their own language faster too as everything is subtitled in Danish). All of this means that by the time they hit adulthood, Danes are already English pros. Gaming online is another source. My kids often say you can tell in a school English lesson if a kid is a gamer or not... if they speak English with a Danish accent, they don't game, if their accent is American, however, chances are they game online with the world's biggest market.
I can see the advantage just by living here, in this small-language country. I just need to drive across the border to Germany, where the products in German Lidl are, surprise surprise, labelled in German. And immediately the standard of the locals' English nosedives. But Denmark? Nah, they’re sticking with English. In a weird twist, this international laziness of not translating for such a small market has given Danes a superpower. English words just seep into everyday life in ways that, frankly, don’t happen in the UK or other large-language countries.
This constant drip-feed of English from the day they can read is a huge advantage for Danes, and it starts way before they sit in a classroom. While kids in the UK may study French or German for a few years at school, it’s nothing like the consistent, low-level exposure that Danes get from their grocery store shelves. When a British kid decides to take up Spanish in secondary school, they’re starting from zero. But a Danish kid? They’ve been indirectly learning English for years just by existing.
In the end, it’s this steady, ongoing exposure that makes Danes so good at English. Living in a small language country like Denmark means English is everywhere, whether in the classroom, on the TV, or, even at the supermarket. So next time you’re browsing the aisles of a Danish Lidl, take a moment to appreciate the secret ingredient behind the country’s near-universal fluency. You might just spot it on the label of a box of cornflakes.
This weekend, Thomas and I went on a wee day trip to Middelfart. I found myself thinking how nice it would be to be able to stop at a Danish café. I pictured the exposed brick walls, the rustic furniture, sunlight streaming through the windows, the rows and rows of Danish pastries, brunsviger and kajkager, and, of course, the irresistible smell of freshly brewed coffee. But before I even headed out, I knew there’d be one insurmountable problem: no decaf.
If, like me, you’ve hit that glorious stage of life where sleep is already an endangered species—thank you, middle age—then you might also appreciate the magic of decaffeinated coffee. It’s not that I don’t love a good, strong cup of caffeine-fuelled energy; believe me, I do. I just took the desperate decision when I hit my fifties that my caffeine days should probably be behind me now. It was either that or spending countless hours around 4am with the lyrics to 80s pop songs stuck in my head on repeat, while anxiously trying to remember what exactly was making me so jittery!
Denmark, however, seems to have other ideas. Apparently, in this land of hygge and beautifully brewed coffee, the concept of decaf is about as foreign as someone suggesting that cycling in the rain isn’t fun. Maybe Danish women just don't hit menopause...
Why is Denmark, this paragon of hygge, a wasteland when it comes to decaf? I’ve travelled across Europe, and almost everywhere else—Italy, France, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Bulgaria etc etc—decaf is so on the menu that it isn't even mentioned on it. Just as in the UK, you simply ask for your cappuccino to be decaf, there's no need to check availability, it's a given. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve wandered into an alternate universe where 'decaffeinated' or rather 'koffeinfri' is a word that’s been left out of the Danish dictionary.
I go through phases of asking for it and am always met with a blank stare, or worse still they look at me like I'm stuck to their shoe. And it isn't a parochial Funen thing either. Even places as cosmopolitain as Kastrup airport in Copenhagen are strictly decaf-free zones.
Denmark does have a strong coffee culture. Let’s be clear: Danes love their coffee. But they love it strong and fully caffeinated - the kind of coffee that feels like it could resurrect a dead animal. Maybe that’s why decaf isn’t really a thing here—it simply goes against the spirit of Danish coffee culture.
For Danes, coffee is fuel. It’s what powers their famously efficient and productive workdays. I mean, this is a country where people cycle to work in driving wind and snow, dressed impeccably and not a hair out of place. It’s as if they’ve collectively decided that coffee needs to be as strong as their willpower to brave the elements.
So, maybe to them asking for a decaf in this environment is almost like saying, 'I’d like some coffee, but without the part that makes me feel alive.' That's certainly how they look at you.
In most countries, decaf is easy to find, even in smaller, independent cafés. One of the joys of living in Europe is discovering those quaint, local spots that serve up beautifully brewed coffee. Yet, in Denmark, as a decaf drinker, I mostly revert to my infancy, asking for a hot chocolate, that I don't really want because the alternative is not sleeping again till next Tuesday. Maybe I should start asking simply for hot milk and carrying my instant decaf in my handbag... But then again wouldn't that make me that person—you know, the one who carries specific dietary items to restaurants? I am not sure I could quite commit to that level of weirdness. Not to mention I don't own a handbag, I loathe them! Ok, so maybe I am just odd, after all?!
Sigh.
Interestingly, I've read that it’s not just Denmark that’s a bit dodgy on the decaf front. In other Nordic countries, like Finland, the problem is apparently the same. Maybe they think that if you can master salt liquorice, caffeine should be a cinch?
In these cultures, coffee is less about leisure and more about necessity. It’s what you drink before heading out into the freezing cold to shovel snow or cycle in a snowstorm. In this context, coffee without caffeine probably feels like a half-hearted attempt at survival.
But that still doesn’t explain why the rest of Europe seems to get it. Italians, for example, can be snobbish about their espresso, but ask for a decaf, and they don't even bat an eyelid. Even in tiny, family-run places where Nonna is behind the counter and probably hasn’t changed the menu since 1972, decaf is available.
Look, I get it. This is a country that thrives on tradition, and coffee is a big part of that. But we’re in the 21st century, and decaf exists for a reason! Some of us genuinely love coffee but can’t handle the side effects of caffeine any more. Is it too much to ask for a cup of decaf now and then?
Until that day comes, I’ll keep navigating this strange Danish world where decaf drinkers are few and far between. But who knows? Maybe if enough of us ask, we’ll see a slow, caffeine-free revolution. One café at a time, but I doubt it will be in my lifetime.
I already posted this on my standard blog, but given it gives us insight into Danish culture, it probably should here too:
As promised, or threatened, on my previous breakdown of graduation traditions, the Danish student hat, or studenterhue, is such a legend that it needs a whole post of its own. These hats are more than just a piece of graduation attire; they're a symbol of achievement, camaraderie, and a rite of passage filled with quirky and memorable customs. Different schools have different band colours. A whole list is available on this website, if you are interested!
They are such a huge part of Danish culture that Thomas held this exchange with Amaia's teacher:
Literally:
Hi Bjørn,
Léon's getting his hat on tomorrow, so would it be ok if Amaia leaves 10-20 mins early?
Best, Thomas
Hi Thomas,
Yes! Of course 😊 And many congratulations to Léon! It is a big day. Send him all my best regards and tell him congratulations!
All the best, Bjørn
Can you imagine understanding these messages if you had arrived in Denmark the day before? As a non-Dane, it struck me as a truly bizarre conversation. So, someone is putting on a hat and that not only lets their sister leave a different school early, but evokes all sorts of congratulatory excitement from a former teacher! Odd, indeed!
So, let me take you on the hat journey...
Months in advance, you order it, so it can be embroidered with the name of your school, your name etc. Then, it turns up a couple of weeks before your exams start in a velvet box. (No pressure there, given you earn the right to wear it by passing your exams!) It even comes with built-in pen for your mates to write their greetings, and Léon assures me the even more expensive models come with scissors too, to cut the notches!
First off, putting on the student hat before passing your final exam is considered bad luck. But once you've aced that last oral, or for that matter screwed it up royally, the hat becomes your badge of honour, and the celebrations begin!
After your final oral exam, you walk out of school for the last time on a red carpet, reveal your final mark to your parents, and then write it in the centre of your hat before they place it on your head. It’s a proud moment, marked with cheers, confetti, and lots of Danish-flag-coloured roses.
At that point, out of nowhere Léon's mates appeared to welcome him into the graduate ranks with the famous beer bong, that seems to play quite a major role in this whole rite of passage.
Over the month of July, with nightly parties, the kids try to earn as many symbols as possible for the inside of their hat.
Traditions and Notches
The inside of the hat, including its sweatband end up telling quite a story:
Size Matters: Months ago, when they were measuring their heads with a view to ordering their hats, the students with the largest and smallest hat sizes were duly noted. And again after the graduation when they had all been issued their GPA, the lowest and highest scoring student in each class was again noted. Those four, or perhaps fewer if there happens to be an overlap, have to provide a drink for all their classmates to get the party started.
Greetings Inside the Hat: Friends and classmates write messages inside your hat, cheeky, or sincere, turning it into a keepsake full of memories.
Sweatband/Visor Notches: Various experiences earn you notches cut out in the sweatband or visor. Throwing up from too much partying? That's a triangle in the visor, a visible-to-the-world symbol of your fuck-up. Thirteen parties in and Léon’s hat remains unscathed in this regard... I don't think I'd have predicted that!
24-Hour Mark: If you manage to stay awake for 24 hours straight, you earn the right to turn your hat the other way around.
Of course, from the day after the student truck (the 4th day after Léon's last exam) Léon's has been the wrong way round, but I have noticed more and more of the kids in the photos from his nightly parties have theirs on backwards as time progresses. It's quite handy even, given that means you can read their name, if you can't remember who someone is!
The Symbolic Language
Your hat can become quite the storybook, with symbols denoting your various feats either drawn or cut into the inside. Here is a list of just some of the symbols to be drawn inside or cut into the inner sweatband that Léon has told me about, and how you go about earning them:
Wave: Jump in the sea wearing only your hat.
Square: Drink a case of beer in 24 hours.
Fish: Down 24 shots in 24 hours.
Lightning Bolt: Have sex wearing only your hat.
Circle: Run around a roundabout in your town wearing only your hat.
Cross: Run around the church in your town wearing only your hat. (Yes, nudity, is a leit motif of graduating high school.)
Triangle: Stay awake for 24 hours.
House: Achieve the 24-hour triangle, square for drinking a case, and feel free to add a chimney if you smoke a pack of cigarettes that day too.
Corn: Run through a cornfield wearing only your hat.
Crown: Run around your old school grounds wearing only your hat.
Signpost: Climb a road sign and drink a beer on top.
Tree: Climb a tree and drink a beer sitting on top.
Car: Flag down a random car and have the driver feed you beer from a funnel.
Funnel: Drink beer from a funnel while peeing against a tree.
Submarine: Drink beer from a bong with your head underwater, usually alongside the wave symbol.
So, basically, do anything in the nude and draw whatever you fancy inside your hat! Just as well the nights are reasonably warm at the moment!
Rotating symbols
On the front of each hat is a button-sized burgundy-coloured symbol. Most have a cross, as Denmark is traditionally a Christian country, even if there isn't much church-going still going on. But you can get it with a crescent, or a star of David if you prefer. Léon has no religion, so opted for the initials STX, which is just means grammar school. This symbol can rotate, and you apparently earn the right to turn it upside down by kissing someone of the same gender, if you are straight, or the opposite gender if you are gay. As far as I can see, everyone in Léon's photo has this upside down currently, though it is slightly subtler on the cross ones than on the STX option!😂
Biting the Skip
Lastly, the pristine hat gets a makeover from day one. Friends and teachers bite into the patent leather brim, leaving tooth indentations to symbolise leaving a lasting mark on someone’s life. I became aware of this when during the after graduation buffet, Léon's politics teacher came over to congratulate him and Léon offered to let him bite his hat, and the teacher obliged without a puzzled look. I guess that tradition was probably paused during Covid. I'm so glad the kids weren't hit by that during Gymnasium.
These are the hat rules Léon has mentioned to me but the list is even longer according to the official site (in Danish)!
By the end of the celebrations, the hat is a well-worn, personalised memento of your student days. I must have a wee look inside Léon's next time he's taking a shower, though do I even want to know?! I know he has already clocked up most of the naked ones!😂 In saying that, having a shower wearing only your hat is probably a challenge too, just to guard against your mother getting a peak at what you have been getting up to all night every night!
I already posted this on my standard blog, but given it gives us insight into Danish culture, it probably should here too:
I left school in Scotland in 1985. If truth be told, I didn't particularly want to leave school at that point as, at 17, I felt too young to go off to uni, but being a February baby in Scotland before age deferrals existed meant I had been sent to school at four and had therefore completed all 13 years of education on offer. This is why both of my kids who had the option of deferral (ie who were born after Jan 1 and before Mar 1) were deferred. I felt I spent my whole childhood catching up socially, and I didn't want that for them.
When I left school, I sat my three CSYS exams (Advanced Highers these days) and on the day of the last one, German, I believe, I was told I needed to 'sign out'. Signing out consisted of going to the school office and asking for a form where I was to write my name and the names of my French, German, and Maths teachers. I then visited each of their classes in turn where they signed on the dotted line to say I had completed their course and the corresponding exam.
My best friend back then was studying CSYS History, English, and Higher German, so we had no classes together and that meant she left school on a different day and we didn't even see each other. In fact, as the only pupil in the school sitting CSYS German, my signing out was quite a depressing and solitary anti-climax to thirteen years in the school system.
I handed my form in to the office and was told I was no longer a pupil and was therefore no longer allowed on school grounds. I remember slowly walking down the school driveway to the exit for the very last time. It felt like a sad and solitary end to that era.
There was no graduation, no prom, no party, nothing.
So, when my two older kids left school in Scotland 30/33 years later, I was pleased to see they now got not only a graduation ceremony in the April before the exams, where they were presented with a certificate, and the teachers and pupils gave uplifting talks that made them feel warm and fuzzy but also a prom at the end of the June term so they could all meet up dressed in all their finery in a fancy hotel in town and touch base a last time after the exams were completed. It felt like they were being celebrated and encouraged to remain in touch rather than simply tossed out into the rain, alone. I secretly wished things had been like that back in my day.
Then we moved to Denmark, which meant that my three youngest would be completing their schooling here rather than there and I hoped things would be as celebratory for them as they had been for their older siblings. I needn't have worried!
My oldest Dane just finished school, and omg, do these people know how to celebrate! I'm actually beginning to think the two oldest were hard done by, and my experience was bordering on abuse! The order and magnitude is different, but here is what his Danish school leaving consists of...
At the beginning of May, a week before exams began, they held their equivalent of prom - 'galla' as it is called. Every kid arranged to be driven to school in a fancy car (or, as it turned out at his school on horseback, on a vintage tractor or in a horse-drawn carriage!) They turned up in their evening gowns, suits or in the case of Léon... well, you can probably guess how he dressed.
That night started at 6pm. They had a fancy three-course meal, and the staff gave speeches. One of the students had been chosen a few weeks earlier to give a talk on behalf of the kids. Three guesses who? Shy, he's not. Despite me asking on several occasions whether he wanted me or Thomas to vet his speech for appropriateness, he kept it under wraps and his reminiscing about their three years together was apparently a great hit with the 150 or so kids, though I am not sure what the staff or headmaster made of it. Especially the point in the speech when he thanked everyone's favourite and most diligent co-student 'Chat-GPT' hahahaha.
Things then became serious for a couple of months. In May, they sat written exams in all their 'A' subjects, and then in June, they sat oral exams in their 'A' subjects and defended their SRPs. The SRP is a thirty-page dissertation written in Danish on two subjects and submitted in the spring of their last year. Each student chooses their own topic and which two of their subjects are to be the main focus and those two teachers plus the ministry examiner then mark it for content. Having not seen their mark, the kids are then taken to an oral to defend the dissertation.
Léon chose Samfundsfag (Politics) and English, analysing Scottish Independence political speeches and ads for both the Yes and the No sides back in the Scottish Independence referendum from the perspective of populist content.
A fortnight before the end of June, I heard there was to be a graduation ceremony two days after the final exam, so figured Danish graduation was following the pattern of Scotland. Little did I know that the galla and the graduation were merely the warm-up acts for the main events!
Days before Léon's last exam, a mate asked if he'd been into town to buy his 'white clothes', to which Léon replied 'what white clothes?'. That's when they sat the poor foreign kid down and talked him through his next few weeks.
Firstly, at his final exam, he was meant to wear his white shirt for the first time. His parents were to take the afternoon off work(!) and turn up with his student hat, Danish flags, and a picnic to greet him as he left his last oral. At oral exams in Denmark you are given your mark on the day. After your 25 minute oral the class teacher and the exam board external discuss your mark then call you back in and tell you it. It's not for the faint-hearted, I can tell you, having sat exams here too!
And orals aren't like back home. For starters they aren't a language thing, you get orals in everything from PE to Physics, from Maths to Psychology, from History to Ancient Culture, and of course also in languages. Every kid does at least Danish and two other foreign languages to one of the two highest levels. Léon's 'foreign' languages are English and Spanish, others have English and German or English and French, and before you say he's at a bit of an advantage over his classmates having English as a foreign language, remember, unlike them, he's not only doing Danish at advanced Higher level as it is compulsory, but he's also doing his History, Politics, Spanish, and his dissertation in Danish, which more than balances that out, poor bugger.
So, after the oral you come out of school on the red carpet which has been put down for the graduates, where your parents shower you in confetti, hand you bouquets of red roses and place your hat on your head after you tell them your mark. Possible marks are -3, 0, 2, 4, 7, 10 or 12. If you get -3, or 0, you've failed. If you get 2-12 you've passed. 7, 10 and 12 correspond to A (with 12 being like 90-100%, 10 being 80-90%, and 7 being 70-80%) in Scotland, 4 is B, 2 is C. No one had told us about the confetti or the roses, so we stood out as the weirdo foreigners when we only had his hat and flags, though some of his middle-school friends who hadn't gone to grammar school turned up with fireworks, so that kind of distracted people from our faux pas, especially when the headmaster came running out to tell them exams were still going on, so could they maybe cool it just a little😂.
The last exam is completely random, so Léon was more than pleased to draw English out of the hat, so came out to announce he'd got 12!
The disadvantage to that would unfold later...
Having had his hat placed on his head, it is now meant to stay there for the whole summer! Everyone knows what the hat means. Different types of institutions have different colours. Dark red means grammar school, but I've also seen light blue, dark blue, purple etc. If you have this on, it means you just passed your final school exams, so the streets are full of kids in these.
We had our family picnic in the school grounds with Amaia, who had been allowed out of school early, Anna who was already on study leave, and the kids' friend from Scotland, Emma. Again, looking around I could see so much Danish culture. Despite being a mere picnic, families had brought along crystal champagne flutes complete with fancy red and white ribbons attached to the stems for the occasion. The most intricate Danish smørrebrød were assembled, and stunning cakes pulled from boxes as champagne corks popped. Tablecloths were unfurled, and glass vases of tiny flowers placed on tables. Everyone's grandparents were in tow too, elegantly clad. Danes are such sticklers for detail when it comes to table dressing and formal occasions. Our tablecloth-less, rose-free bench with plastic cups and baguette sandwiches looked like a pigeon amongst a party of peacocks.
That day Léon and his mates went into town to see the Denmark match, and went on to a club till 5am. Technically, it's a great ruse for getting into a club too. No one IDs a kid in a hat as the youngest you can be is 18, but you're more likely to be 19 or even 20. So, if you're 17 and fancy a clubbing holiday, buy one of these hats and go to Denmark the last week of June!
The following day the other half of his class had their final oral, so again it was out clubbing till sunrise and Thursday was even worse as there was a music festival on in Odense... Funen's answer to Glastonbury. I was in serious doubt that Léon would make the 'white clothes photoshoot' at 8am the next day, and the graduation, but he surprised me by being out and showered by 7am despite coming home after 1am.
And it seems almost everyone was sober enough to remember the memo about turning up in white!
We then went along to the graduation ceremony which seemed very un-British to me, or at least very un-Newton Mearnsy. Back home my kids had gone to Mearns Castle High, a state school that prided itself on its consistent place in the top ten in the country. It was a lovely school, caring, and friendly, but also concerned about protecting its image. Speeches at graduation were grandiose, about achievement and the perfect futures the kids would all be able to obtain thanks to their outstanding results etc etc. Not so here, graduation speeches by the head of each of the five main study lines were anecdotal and fun, describing the kids as having arrived in the school as wild beasts who'd needed taming, joking about kids who were less than diligent, whole classes with reputations for doing anything to avoid assignment deadlines. It all seemed more laid-back, and more relatable, given they also praised them for their ultimate success, and the futures awaiting them. There was no covering up the real or less desirable side of things, which was interesting for me as a non-Dane. Those speeches would just never have happened in the school they would have attended had we lived in that parallel universe.
After the ceremony, they disappeared to celebrate again! But given Saturday was to be the biggest day yet, studentervogn day, Léon wasn't too late home. The studentervogn is the thing the majority of the kids had been most looking forward to from the first day three years earlier when they started grammar school. In fact, some kids probably only do the three-year course for this reason, and I am not exaggerating! A studentervogn is a large truck, decked out with banners prepared by the kids, a dance area, drinks etc. Here's a photo of Léon's.
The disadvantage touched upon above is this: If you get 12 in your last exam, you don't get to join the studentervogn till the second stop, having to run behind it all the way, mind you getting the lowest mark in the class is worse as that person apparently has to run in front of it instead, trying not to be run over!
A route is planned stopping at everyone in their main class's house where food, alcohol, and other refreshments are served. Each stop takes around 25 minutes, other than the stops for breakfast, lunch, and dinner which take longer. Between stops the truck is a mobile dance room and the kids party, drink, dance, and sing. With 27 kids in Léon's class and distances of up to 15km between stops, the truck tour was scheduled to take 15.5 hours so had to set out at 7am! They even dropped by their English teacher's house on the way to give a farewell cuddle to Mummy Sussi as they call her. At each person's stop the classmates lined up to welcome the student to their own stop with a beer bong ceremony. I'll include a video of the arrival of the studentervogn, and the beer ceremony. We got it from 5:35 - 6:05.
Apparently another tradition is to moon at passing cars! Danes love nudity! Given it was Léon's stop he got to moon at the car passing our house, except the car didn't then pass, it stopped and the driver and passengers came up the driveway to congratulate the students as it turned out to be Léon's coworkers driving to the local restaurant for their shift. He had to laugh that his workmates were now in possession of a photo of his bare arse hanging out the back of a truck!
Thomas had set out sandwiches and sangria and they were more than pleased with how exotic (ie un-Danish) that was! We did water the sangria down with a bit of ribena just so they would survive the 15 hours, but no one seemed to notice! We were spontaneously joined by the neighbours too which was lovely!
That night they were determined to earn the right to wear their hats backwards - apparently you do that by staying awake for 24 hours, they were also determined to win the right to draw the symbol of a wave inside their hats by skinny dipping in the sea wearing only their hats, not the most sensible combo, but I did notice his phone pinged at the coast around 2am and he returned home the next day looking like this, complete with wave!
That was 30/6. And since then Léon has rarely been seen! Every night he's at a studentergilde (a graduation party) from 6pm to 6am, always staying at someone else's house. He drops by occasionally for a shower, or to pick up clothes, showing off new symbols in his hat. An ear of corn means you have run the length of a cornfield naked, apart of course for the hat! And so on... He's having the time of his life.
Graduation isn't a prom, and a ceremony here, it's a prom, a ceremony, a hat, a picnic, a truck and a party a night for over a month. They sure know how to graduate in style. And now I know why most Danes take a gap year before uni... it's to recover from the graduation ceremony and sober up long enough to actually decide what course to take at uni!
I don't think I've missed any details, but I will update if he fills me in on anything else!
I saw this on Facebook the other day; a Swedish friend from Scotland had uploaded it.
It is so sweet, but both endearing and deeply disturbing too, if like me you have somehow landed in the strange place that is Scandinavia.
Connecting to Danes is not something I have figured out how to master, well other than the obvious one that is! And it feels almost as if the five year mark is the point where you should throw in the towel! Up till this year, I have thought through different strategies on how to connect, this year, I have kind of reached the stage where I think 'Meh, what's the point in trying, there's always zoom?'
Sometimes they come across as stand-offish, at other times painfully shy. To say they are hard work, from someone with my cultural background at least, is an understatement, so I found this tongue-in-cheek videoclip interesting. I guess they probably find me too in their face and difficult too.
I come from a culture, like this Kurdish guy, where people also 'talk too much'. We chat to people in queues in shops, on public transport, at the school gate, in the doctor's waiting room, you name it. Meaningless and superficial conversations become deep and meaningful if they are the only human contact you get, and I am left with many questions from how Danes get any kind of input and how they make friends or acquaintances? Was I simply too late to the party? Do Danes stick strictly to the people they know from childhood, adolescence or their student years and thus shut down the idea of making any new friends in their 50s? Do they only talk to family and colleagues perhaps?
Because Thomas joined a workplace which had been transferred (forcibly) from Copenhagen to a small village nearly 2.5 hours away, his colleagues mainly work from home, and live so far away that no afterwork socialising occurs, so he can't say what's normal in the workplace here either. And we have no family within a couple of hours of us, so no chance of meeting people through them either.
I was so used to, from home, chatting to other parents, either at the school gate, or when picking and dropping kids off at each others' houses. We'd often invite another parent in for a coffee when they came to pick someone up from a sleepover, but here from the outset parents happily dropped their children at the end of the driveway without even meeting us, which I found quite odd. There seemed to be no need to check out the weird foreign family who'd invited your 9 year-old to dinner or overnight, no curiosity, and no worries, just blind trust.
By the time Amaia had been visiting and having sleepovers with a classmate for 3 years, I had still never met any of her friends' mothers. Then last year both Amaia and another child she was close to signed up to the same summer camp activity which was taking place in August. I felt like the man on the video that day.
First I got Amaia to text saying I was happy to drive both kids as I was passing the other's house en route. I'd have jumped at the chance had she offered but the friend replied that her mum was happy to take her separately. Fair enough, maybe she was going somewhere anyway... The activities were taking place in a school I didn't know, so I found the class where the kids had to go, and sent Amaia in. At that moment her mate arrived too. We bade them farewell and both turned simultaneously to walk the 250m back to our cars.
We walked out keeping apace but saying nothing... a silence I, as a Scot, found painful, I am not sure if the Dane felt it too though. It suddenly occurred to me she might be reticent to speak as she didn't know whether I spoke Danish or not, so cunningly, I thought, I asked in Danish 'It's 4pm we've to come back for the girls, isn't it?' She simply replied in the affirmative. We walked on again with nothing but the chirping of the birds to accompany us, so I guess it wasn't my language ability that was the issue. 'What a summer,' I said, 'it's been so much colder than usual.' Again she barely looked at me, and continued with the merest of nods. Strangely though, she neither sped up, slowed down, nor faked a phone call to shake me off!
Jesus, this is hard work, I thought. By then I was finding the stoney silence and the walk side by side quite uncomfortable so like any good Scottish woman I descended into wittering on mindlessly in Danish 'July's been such a disappointment. We were in Spain for a couple of weeks and it just feels so cold after that. We were at a wedding last week, my nephew and his new wife, she's Canadian but her family's Indian, and I felt so sorry for all the guests who'd flown over for it as it was so chilly.' I paused again and probably looked pleadingly at her to engage, but nope! So I continued 'In fact we have a guest staying with us at the moment. She's a 15 year-old Spanish girl. You see my older daughter, not Anna who's also 15, I mean Charlotte, the one who is in her 20s. She used to be an au pair in Spain and she still helps the family with teaching their girls English, so now the oldest one is 15, the family wanted her to spend a month with an English-speaking family and here she is with us and she's never been north of Madrid in her life. Poor girl looks half frozen to death... In fact she's so cold all the time that I now know how to say "Madre mía, qué frío!"' Not even a smile, I swear! Finally my car was in sight just off to the left, and the other mum had still not said a single word to me, not one! 'That's me over there,' I said pointing at my people carrier, half relieved, half wondering if I was either the most boring person in the world or if my Danish was so diabolical, she hadn't understood a word. I mean she gave me absolutely nooooothing back! Finally, she replied 'Bye'. So, she definitely wasn't mute! And I might add, I drove back home following her all the way, so it turned out she wasn't on her way out either!
Jesus, I mean really?! I guess I'd committed some kind of cultural faux pas to try to have an actual conversation with someone I didn't know, but whose kid was good friends with mine, but how are you meant to make acquaintances otherwise, I mean if you're not meant to chat? I have lived in other countries and found their culture so much easier to understand than this one. In fact I was in Spain at Xmas and I spoke more to Spaniards in five days than I have to Danes in five years despite the fact that my Spanish is not nearly as good as my Danish!
And this isn't a one-off. I have tried various ways of meeting people and I always feel not only that I am the only one talking but that everyone else is quietly hoping I'll soon shut up and bugger off so they can go back to whatever it is Danes do when I am not about!
I know it isn't, because Danes do genuinely seem to be nice, but to an outsider it feels like a lack of empathy. Back in Scotland I knew some first generation immigrants. I always imagined how they must feel miles from their home, their family, the places they knew and felt happy, struggling with a language that wasn't their own. I thought it almost my duty to help them out, knowing how much easier it would be for me to invite them in, chat to them, help them, than it would be for them to have to make all the moves.
I always thought till I moved here that I was an introvert. Now I am beginning to question that because I sure as hell seem to need more human contact than most people I have met here!
People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world…🎶
Anna got herself a wee job in Lidl out of school hours about six weeks ago. After a few training sessions and some shelf stacking she was finally the main checkout person last weekend and she decided it was a bit of a culture shock!
Firstly, she knows it's Scandinavia, but still can't understand the multiple bags of salt liquorice bought by individual customers and she was in shock when one 80+ year old granny bought 38 bags of it and nothing else! They even ran out of liquorice-flavoured alcoholic shots last Saturday afternoon. How can that even be a thing?🤮
The Danish pastries are a cultural divider too. Anna's not a very sweet girl, preferring savoury offerings so hasn't fully learned the names of all the different Danish baked goods. She says people look at her as if she's landed from the moon when she doesn't know her hindbærsnitter from her spandauer. They cannot conceive that someone lives in Denmark, looks and sounds Danish but doesn't know such items. I guess it would be the equivalent of a teenager on the checkout in Govan with a very Glasgow accent asking the customer whether a tatty scone was in fact a tatty scone or haggis!
Contrary to my experience in Danish supermarkets when checkout staff and customers alike ignore each other as best they can, the checkout operator of course needs to tell them the sum owed, but that counts as a conversation here in this land of few words, Anna finds the customers positively chatty by Danish standards! The mere donning of a badge stating she's a trainee, or ny kollega, has the older ones addressing her as pigebarn, literary girl child but equivalent of sweetie or similar, and offering all sorts of encouragement, advice and anecdotes about how hard new jobs can be. It plays into my theory that Danes aren't actually as anti-social as they come across, they are simply much more in need for an in into a conversation than I am used to from back home. I'm tempted to stick a ny dansker badge on and walk up and down Odense main street to see if I can finally make a friend over here!
But as a Scottish person, the thing that has surprised Anna most about Danes is their honesty. Scots are an honest nation too for the most part but I think it is more in our psyche to be honest to individuals than corporations. If someone drops a tenner, of course we pick it up and alert them to the fact that they have done so, we'd usually hand in a lost phone or wallet, but if we notice we've been minimally undercharged on a receipt, we'd just take it to be the sign of a good day, justifying ourselves that we've certainly been overcharged on an equal number of occasions. That's my Glasgow experience anyway. But not here. If Anna accidentally puts through a baguette as white rather than brown, thus undercharging the customer by about 30p, they actually come back and ask to be debited for the full amount! She says this or the equivalent happened half a dozen times last weekend. Mind blown!
I'm sure her wee job will lead to further cultural observations in the future so watch this space!😀
