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Launched in 2013, the “How to Live in Denmark” podcast is the longest-running podcast about living in Denmark in English. It covers every aspect of living in Denmark and Danish life, including moving to Denmark, adjusting to life in Denmark, Danish customs, Danish weather, Danish customs, and Danish people, all with gentle humor.

With nearly 150 short episodes, there is plenty to listen to as you pack for your move to Denmark, relax in your Danish summerhouse, or survive the long, dark Danish winter.

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Singing: Danish drinking songs, party songs, and foreigners who try to hum along

There have been very few international singing stars from Denmark, and that’s a surprise, because Danish people love to sing.

Joining choirs is very popular, and Danish schoolchildren often start the week with a song – in my daughter’s school, all the grades get together and sing something from the school’s common songbook.

There’s actually a kind of common songbook for all the children of Denmark, called De Små Synger, where you can find classics like Se Min Kjole (See my dress), Lille Peter Edderkop (Little Peter Spider) or Oles Nye Autobil, (Ole’s new car). Ole’s new car is actually a toy car that he uses to run into things, like his sister’s dollhouse. De Små Synger

In general, the Small Songs are a throwback to an older Denmark, a quieter Denmark where most people lived in the countryside. Many of the songs refer to green hilltops, or forests, or baby pigs or horses, or happy frogs that live in a swamp. And of course, all the humans in the Small Songs are entirely Danish – or ‘Pear Danish,’ as the local expression goes. One out of five children born in Denmark today is not an ethnic Dane, but there’s no such thing as Little Muhammed Spider or Fatima’s New Toy Car.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

More Snow Tomorrow: Surviving Winter as a Foreigner in Denmark

I’m looking out the window as I write, and it’s snowing again. It’s pretty, but it’s not a novelty anymore. It’s been like this for the past couple of weeks – Danish winter weather. Nearly every day, there’s fresh snow and ice.

When I wake up on winter mornings, it’s still pitch dark, very cold, and I can hear the wind whistling outside my window. Every day I think, “Ahhhh, I don’t want to get up.” But I do.

Of course, everyone in Denmark suffers a little bit during the winter. But I feel particularly bad for people who come from warmer climates and are experiencing one of their first winters here.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Inequality in Denmark: Private Schools and Migrants Who Sleep in Sandboxes

I was on Danish morning TV recently, which isn’t really something to boast about. In a country of 5 million people, 10 guests a show, 365 days a year – you do the math. Just about everyone gets on TV sooner or later.

Some of my friends and colleagues mentioned that they had seen me, stumbling through with my imperfect Danish, trying to promote my book, How to Live in Denmark. But just some of my friends and colleagues. Specifically, it was my friends and colleagues who work in trendy creative industries – advertising, app designers, actors.

That’s because I was on TV at 8:45 in the morning, when people in those industries are just getting out of bed in preparation to roll into the office around 10.

My friends who have more conventional office jobs, like working in a bank, have to be their desk at 9am, so some of them had seen teasers – you know, coming up next, someone who doesn’t speak Danish properly, trying to promote a book – but they hadn’t seen the show itself.

And my friends who do real, physical work had no idea I was on TV at all. Airport tarmac staff, postal carriers, builders. They start work at 7am. Or even earlier, as you’ll know if you’ve ever had your deep sleep interrupted by a Danish builder banging on something outside your house at, say, 5:30 in the morning.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Cat Bites and Dental Vacations: The Ups and Downs of the Danish Health Care System

I’ve just arrived back in Denmark after a couple of weeks in the U.S., and the night I got back, my cat bit me. This was not just a little affectionate peck – Fluffy used her sharp teeth, her fangs, to create four bleeding puncture wounds in my leg. I suppose it was partly my fault – I put a call on speakerphone. Fluffy doesn’t like speakerphone, because she can hear a person but she can’t see one, so she assumes I’m some evil magician who has put a person inside a little glowing box. And she bites me.

So I was bleeding, and I did what I did the last time she bit me – which was a couple of months ago, the last time I used speakerphone. I called 1813, the Danish government’s non-emergency line for off-hour medical situations.

I waited about five minutes for a nurse to take the call, and she asked me some questions about the size and location of the bite, and whether or not I’d had a tetanus shot recently. I hadn’t, so she made an appointment for me at the local emergency room for about an hour later.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Cheating on Mother Nature: Danes and Environmentalism

It’s been a beautiful autumn here in Denmark. Golden sun and blue skies, red and yellow and orange leaves on the trees. Just gorgeous. And unusually warm for Denmark. It’s always exciting when, instead of wearing your winter coat every day from October to April, you can wear it every day from November to April.

But this unusually pleasant weather can’t help but spark conversation about global warming. So far, the biggest impact climate change has had on Denmark are some severe rainstorms, which end up flooding a lot of basements and overwhelming a lot of sewer systems. It’s intriguing to think that plumbers may become the great heroes of the twenty-first century.

Danes care about climate change, and they’ve made a business specialty of green technology, or what they like to call clean technology. Cleantech. Denmark sells windmills to create wind power, and burns most of its household garbage in an environmentally friendly way to create home heating.

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Podcasts

Are you a good foreigner or a bad foreigner? How the Danes categorize newcomers to Denmark

 

Have you ever seen the movie The Wizard of Oz? It’s a classic. When Dorothy arrives in the land of Oz, the first thing she’s asked is – are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I was having lunch with a friend this week. Over club sandwiches she said, its a shame there’s only one word for foreigner in Danish, when actually there are two types of foreigner here.

I got her point, even though I think there’s only one word for ‘foreigner’ in most languages. What she was really saying is, there’s no single way in Danish to say, Are you a good foreigner, or a bad foreigner?

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The 8:00 meeting is not an 8:05 meeting: Faux Pas in Denmark

I did a little crowdsourcing for this week’s podcast. I asked some of our listeners, and some people on Facebook – what were some of the small cultural mistakes – the dos and don’ts, the faux pas – you made when you first arrived in Denmark?

I got a whole selection of answers. Don’t keep your shoes on while entering someone’s home was one thing. Don’t arrive even a few minutes late was another. The 8:00 meeting is not an 8:05 meeting. Trying to bum a cigarette – not done in Denmark. Telephoning a friend after 9:30 in the evening or so – if you’re beyond university age, this is not done in Denmark. Dropping by to see a friend unannounced – not done in Denmark. Danes like to plan in advance – and they are proud of their homes, and don’t want you to see them messy.

One girl mentioned that she had eaten the last piece of cake on a plate. You should never eat the last piece of anything in Denmark, at least without asking every single person present. If you don’t want to do that, the proper etiquette is to slice the piece of cake in half, and take half. And then the next person will slice that half in half. And so on. In the end there will be a little transparent slice left to shrivel up in the middle of the plate.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

‘Friendship in Denmark is a slow-growing plant’

I was in London this week, and did a little fall wardrobe shopping. I got tired after walking for awhile, and it was lunchtime, so I sat down in a pub. I had a beer and a fish and chips and a British guy next to me was also having a beer and fish and chips and so we just chatted through lunch. We talked about politics, the weather, the job market. After lunch, we waved goodbye and I went back to shopping. It was a fun lunch, but I never found out his name.

The reason I mention this is that it never could have happened in Denmark. Danes don’t talk to strangers. They talk to their friends. The idea of a casual lunch with someone you will never see again makes no sense to them.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and English, or “Can I get by in Denmark without speaking Danish?”

I get a lot of mail at the How To Live in Denmark podcast, and some of it is from people who want to move to Denmark, but they’re not sure what to do to make money once they get here. But, I do speak English, they say. Can I make money in Denmark just off of just speaking English?

Generally, no. No you can’t. I mean, I do, but I was an experienced journalist before I got here. But English is not a rare commodity in Denmark.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Authority: The giant penis on the wall, or how to deal with Danish civil servants

When you think you’re talking to the authorities in Denmark, you’re often not talking to the authorities. If it’s about bus service, train service, unemployment compensation, homeless shelters, even fire protection and ambulance services – you will be talking to a private company hired by the authorities.

Denmark has a really high level of privatization. Of course, these companies get subsidies from the government to provide transport service, or to counsel to the unemployed, or to put out the fire you started while trying to barbecue, but their employees are not civil servants. They can be hired and fired and trained and promoted – they work for private companies.

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