School trips - Danish style

I remember a teacher friend from the UK once telling me she felt quite stressed whenever she took the kids abroad on a school trip because she was expected to be with them 24/7, or follow their whereabouts using an iPad tracker program whenever they were out of her sight.

Léon's off today on a two-week school trip to the south of Spain, where he will be living with a Spanish host family and attending Spanish school. But the Danish approach is quite different to what I know from Scotland.

He and the other seven or eight kids in his class were given:

• a train ticket from Odense to Copenhagen Central
• a train ticket from Copenhagen Central to Kastrup airport
• a plane ticket to Brussels
• a plane ticket from Brussels to Malaga leaving three hours later 
• a note of where in Malaga to go to meet the Spanish teacher from Colmenar high school
• and the same in reverse for 2 weeks later

And that was that! There was no boarding pass, there are no accompanying teachers. If they get lost in Brussels, I guess the eat some moules frites and waffles, then have to come up with a survival plan themselves! Denmark empowers its young people in a way they really don't back home, and I am not sure why we don't question that.

I'm sure he'll manage, but I may just turn off my phone until he gets there, just in case!

What's in a name?

I remember singing Incy Wincy Spider to the kids when they were little, at bedtime. Oh, I know that one too, said Thomas and he happily sang:

Lille Peter Edderkop kravled op ad muren.

Så kom regnen og skylled Peter væk.

Så kom solen og tørred Peters krop.

Lille Peter Edderkop kravled atter op.

So, apparently Incy Wincy was just a stage name and the wee spider was actually called Little Peter Spider! Who knew?

Roll forward a year or two and the girls are playing with the two big Winnie the Poohs that mum and dad had given them when they were born. What are you two up to? I ask innocently, only to receive the reply: Playing with Peter. Peter who, I wonder, given the only Peter they know is their German Grandpa and they call him Großvater, not Peter. The girls show me Winnie the Pooh and call him Peter. I am seriously puzzled till they pick up the book daddy has been reading them as a bedtime story and it is entitled Peter Plys, Peter Plush.

Ok, so whoever was in charge of naming kiddie things didn't have much imagination, but whatever... 

The following Christmas they are watching a DVD their Danish aunt and uncle have sent them on the TV. I can see a little monkey, with a bloke all dressed in yellow. I make a coffee and snuggle down on the couch to watch with them muttering something about Curious George when the three wee ones look at me completely blank. I tune in mentally and hear the audio is in Danish. It's Curious George, I repeat louder and they chorus back, No it's not, it's Peter Pedal! I give up!

So, here's my rule of thumb, if you find yourself watching TV with any Danish kids at any point and you don't know the name of the character in the show, just call them Peter and you're likely to pass for a native!

Addendum!

Not a week after writing this, Thomas is chatting to the kids (as always in Danish) and mentions the word væltepeter. What on earth could that be, I ask myself, understanding the components of the word but not its meaning. At vælte means to topple or knock over and Peter, once again is of course, Peter! So what on earth is a 'topple Peter!' I put it into Google images and come face to face with a faded vintage photo of a penny farthing bicycle! Poor Peter taking the brunt of it all again! Danes are weird...

Superabundant taxidermy

Is it a Denmark thing? Is it maybe a Funen thing? What is it with primary schools and their endless displays of stuffed dead animals? Everything from hares, to birds, to every type of rodent you can expect to find under the sun, the Danish sun at least? All with those creepy beady eyes staring maniacally at nothing in a vaguely menacing manner. Perhaps Denmark accidentally trained too many taxidermists back in the 50s and 60s and needed to find something for them to do? I'm puzzled!

I first noticed it when we were visiting folkeskoler (Danish state schools for kids aged 6-15) back in 2019. Even the tiniest of village schools had a proud display of dead stuff. I wondered if they were used in biology lessons, or maybe in art lessons? Are they simply remnants of a time when introducing young kids to what the native animals looked like wasn't as simple as googling 'Danish water shrew' or the likes?

As a child I remember vividly finding the stuffed dead things exhibits in Glasgow's magnificent Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum a bit alarming too. Did their eyes follow me as I walked by? My other half subscribes to an amusing Facebook group of exceedingly poorly stuffed pathetic little beasts. But in a way, I think all stuffed animals look kind of like that to me. I've never looked at a dead owl with its glassy eyes staring through me and thought, how magnificent, I've simply thought yeuch!

Over the last week we've been to see most of the gymnasier (an upper high school/college for kids aged 16-20 ish) within driving distance of our house as Anna is in her last year at state school and needs to apply to one in the next six weeks. We've been to open nights and we've been on school tours and once again we've been met by corridor upon corridor of rigid corpses staring at us willing us to choose their school. I would love to know how and why this tradition came about and whether I'm weird in my slightly squeamish attitude to it all!

Håndbold

Today the whole of Denmark is going wild because they have become the first country ever to win the men's handball World Cup three times in a row.

It's funny when you immigrate to somewhere not too far from where you started out in life. I guess subconsciously you assume the culture in the new place will be more or less the same as at home, but here we are with nearly 6 million people interested in a sport I had never seen and only knew the name of until a few years ago.

Given the hype, I decided to watch a couple of matches. Now that was an eye-opener. Having grown up in a football and to a lesser extent rugby country, I am used to seeing the football World Cup. When you watch football, you watch in anticipation, hoping someone will score a goal. In the 90 minutes, you rarely get more than two or three, so you could miss the goals if you blink, or nip into the kitchen to make a coffee. 

Now that I'm a seasoned handball watcher (I've seen three matches including the final), it seems to me (Danes may correct me if I am wrong), you watch handball for the non-goals, the misses. The match takes a hour in total. One team scores at one end, then the other team gets the ball and rushes to the other end to score in turn, this pattern repeats approximately once a minute for the entire match, so the goals become boring, the exciting bit is when a team misses their turn on goal and the other side get ahead for a few minutes.

It is strange to watch a sport where you are essentially only interested in the misses and not the goals.

Finally, with Denmark four goals ahead last night with only two minutes to go, the French team simply stopped playing, knowing they could not catch up, and simply started milling about the court looking dejected and hugging each other. I can't imagine that in a football match.