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.