Interesting Things About Denmark, Part I

Looked at from one perspective, our time here living in a little apartment in downtown Copenhagen is a sort of anthropological dig through modern day urban life. Yes, it’s only two weeks, but it’s amazing what you find out:

  • When purchasing milk, the lighter the colour blue of the packaging, the lower the fat content.
  • In France and Portugal I was (at 6 feet) always bumping my head when passing through doorways; I have no such problems here: Danes know how to make their doorways nice and tall.
  • The showers here (assuming our apartment’s setup is common) have a “flow” dial and a “heat” dial. This makes so much practical sense: you just set your preferred heat level and leave it there, just turning on the “flow” every day when you want a shower.
  • We’re learning a lot about living vertically. We’re on the fourth floor, and so getting in an out is all about stairs (lots of stairs), and looking out is all about your across the street neighbours — people you might never meet but otherwise have an intimate relationship with. Oh, and the rain passes by on it’s way down to the street. Neato.
  • Food packaging is all Danish, all the time; while Danes speak impeccable English, they package in their native language. So as a unilingual English speaker, you might be buying sugar. Or perhaps it’s salt? Or freeze-dried hydrochloric acid?
  • The hydrochloric acid problem is somewhat mitigated by the wonderful typography on the packaging; this place loves the sans serif.
  • There is something called “DAB” radio here that appears to be digitally-transmitted radio over the air; the radio in the kitchen lists the “kbps” of stations it’s tuned to.

More as we dig further down.

Comments

Jevon's picture
Jevon on May 28, 2006 - 14:18 Permalink

It is called HD Radio in North America. Many public stations in the US now broadcast in HD.

Dan James's picture
Dan James on May 28, 2006 - 14:26 Permalink

Many showers here in North America also have the seperate flow and heat shower valves..

Thomas Madsen-Mygdal's picture
Thomas Madsen-Mygdal on May 28, 2006 - 17:16 Permalink

don’t think the shower thing can be said to be typically danish.

but keep up the observations — good fun…

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on May 28, 2006 - 17:33 Permalink

I suppose the list should properly be called “things that are different here than the way things are at home.” To us, *everything* appears typically Danish here!

Daniel's picture
Daniel on May 29, 2006 - 08:35 Permalink

Hi Jevon, there is a slight (to a technician: a huge!) difference between DAB Digital Audio Broadcasting and HD Radio. Wikipedia has some on it. And yes Danmark & UK are the only countries where DAB has really gotten off the ground. That is interesting (at least to me, someone working in radio, with digital transmission and marketing…)
Peter: keep on obeserving. I lived in Sweden for 5 yrs as a german. I felt like Levi-Strauss sometimes. ;-)

Christy`'s picture
Christy` on June 7, 2006 - 06:47 Permalink

This is not interesting.

Cyn's picture
Cyn on June 7, 2006 - 14:11 Permalink

Christy’s comment may be the most honest thing I have ever read on the world wide web.