A Dane criticizes Denmark and the Danes. We gape at this apparent contradiction in terms and, when we’ve got over the shock, sit back and enjoy.
http://blogs.denmark.dk/peterandreas/
Just in time for this:
Tag: denmark
Danish Diaries #7
University classes have started (first lessons last week for Media Management & Journalism 3.0, I still haven’t had a class of Digital Media Ethics or Great Works of Art, although I had to listen to Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beate Vergine as preparation for the first class — listen to it if you like big band Baroque!) I’m meeting more and more people (and I thought the ~100 people of Destination DK was a lot; how about ~1500? That’s how many exchange students are here for the semester!), and, to be honest, the novelty is starting to wear off.
Just yesterday, it was “the biggest Friday bar of the year” (every department has its own Friday Bar which opens in the afternoons of, get that, Fridays, to accommodate thirsty and tired students from all of the week’s stress. Generally, just another excuse to chug beer and party.) So, yes, yesterday was the biggest Friday bar of the year. Close to the university park lake there was a stage on which there were teams playing Beer Bowling, with a large crowd surrounding the stage and loud club music blaring on the speakers. I found a lot of other exchange students around there but I wasn’t feeling like socialising under those conditions, it was too crowded and brainless and I could honestly see no fun in it. I mean, I’d like to play Beer Bowling with friends, but as a spectator sport?
I’m trying to decide… What kind of fun do I like? On the one hand I really like quiet, personal, hyggelig situations with or without friends, watching a movie, discussing over good, just-cooked food — oh it feels so great cooking, I wonder why I wasn’t doing it all these years?! Thanks Ana and Cedric for helping with get in the hang of it! — playing a board game, subtle fun I don’t get very often these days except with very certain people. On the other hand, I can enjoy big parties and loud music, I like dancing (the alcohol percentage in my blood is inversely proportionate to my musical eclecticness, big surprise!) and I like meeting people, but yesterday I just wasn’t feeling up to it at all. Yes, there were even some girls that I wouldn’t mind talking to in there, some that I had met before and others that I wish I would, but just couldn’t. You know, I find it hard to just talk to strangers but even harder to talk to people I’ve exchanged a few words with already. I don’t know whether it’s shyness, indifference, dismissiveness or one of these masked as one of the other two…
Anyway, I decided I wasn’t having any fun and just walked from the university park back home, mp3 player alternating between the audiobook I’m currently obsessed with and Primsleur Essential Spanish… Actually I do this quite a lot these days, walking from Skoldhøjkollegiet to Århus and back. It takes around an hour, it’s good exercise, I listen to audiobooks and my favourite music, it fills me with positive vibes and it’s free, unlike taking the bus! This is the optimal walking (and I also presume biking) route, my stride took only 59 minutes yesterday. τ^^ Rain will most definitely be a problem now that winter is coming, but eh, I’ll worry about that when winter is here.
Two weeks ago my Danish classes restarted, this time in a more serious environment. I have two lessons every week, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. At the end of September I’m going to sit for my first test in Danish. If I succeed, I’ll jump from complete-beginner Module 1 to almost-beginner Module 2. All I need to do to pass is speak about either a topic of my preference (I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT I SHOULD CHOOSE TO BABBLE ON ABOUT! Greece? Food? Denmark? My hobbies? Aasfgfdlfkg?) or one of three books I’ll have to read beforehand. Oh, I had forgot the sensation of language exam stress! Missed you old chap.
I was in the mood to record some Danish for you tonight, maybe try to work on my pronounciation a little. I used a text I wrote almost a month ago for my Destination DK classes. My Danish is not much better today, but I can spot some mistakes I made back in August when I wrote this. I left them in for historicality.
Jeg hedder Dimitris Hall. Jeg kommer fra Grækenland, fra byen Nea Smyrni i Aten. Jeg er 22 år gammel. Jeg studerede kulturel teknologi og kommunikation til fem år på Ægæisk Universitetet, på øen af Lesvos. Min mor er græske og min far er australsk. De er sklit 20 år. Jeg har ingen søskende. Jeg bor i Århus to uger på Skoldhøjkollegiet og vil bor her i et halvt år. Jeg har mødet mange udvekslingsstuderende. Danmark er grøn med mange træer, skov og cykler. Desværre, jeg har ikke cykel nu, og jeg har ikke mange pengen. Men jeg finde Danmark og Århus hyggelig og jeg er glad at være her. Grækenland er ikke samme måde med Danmark. Grækenland er varm og ikke grøn, de har ikke mange penge der. Men Danmark og Grækenland har mange øer og jeg kan lidt øer og havet.
Translation:
My name is Dimitris Hall. I come from Greece, from the town of Nea Smyrni in Athens. I am 22 years old. I study Cultural Technology and Communication for five years at Aegean University, on the island of Lesvos. My mother is Greek and my father is Australian. They’re divorced 20 years. I have no siblings. I’ve lived in Aarhus for two weeks at Skjoldhøjkollegiet and will be living here for half a year. I have met many exchange students. Denmark is green with many trees, forests and bicycles. Unfortunately, I don’t have a bicycle now, and I haven’t got much money. But I find Denmark and Aarhus nice (cozy!) and I’m happy to be here. Greece is not the same as Denmark. Greece is warm and not green, they haven’t got much money there. But Denmark and Greece have many islands and I like islands and the sea.
Higher Education, Lower Expectations
Higher education has been a hot topic for years in Greece. There has been a tug-o-war between the government and the academic community. The latter has been at worst trying to maintain a status-quo and at best seeking some beneficial changes in the educational system in Greece that have, however, thus far been stopped by greater social problems, for example: deep corruption, the constant loss of ground of government-owned services to private companies (the most prominent of which have indeed managed, quite [c]overtly to become caliphs instead of the “democratically-elected” caliphs) and a general collapse of any sense of unity or consensus on any subject among the Greek population, a live-and-let-die, every-man-for-his-own, a rise of absolute individualism that is in tune with the global spirit of the times. The government is under pressure by the powers that be, whoever those may, to act in accord with the spirit of these times: a deep and scary neo-liberalism that seeks to destroy any and all social and consciential conquests of the past few centuries in the name of the “free market”. It is a paradoxical aim, since at the same time this “free” market remains free only for those that already have the means necessary. The rest of the population is carefully prevented from coming close, with more severe taxation, liquid work contracts, lower salaries and worsening social care. A free market for a slave population. It reminds me of the good old tidbit of wisdom: “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”…
I decided to write this post today for three reasons. The first is that the Ministry of Education’s reform for Greek universities, a plan born by and completely in agreement with the above spirit of the times, is being discussed, agreed on in the Parliament and being set for immediate enforcement as I’m writing these lines. The second reason is that I have seen the quality of education possible and desirable in Denmark where I’m currently living — here they’re following the same spirit of the times as mentioned above, but at least they’re doing it well, with a straight face and with a clear conscience. The result is a higher education of great standards in every single way (and it’s free). To compare the situation in Greece and in Denmark just because they’re based on theoretically similar economic models would be like comparing a souvlaki bought from Plaka to one bought from your favourite souvlatzidiko. Just because they’re based on the same recipe does not mean they’re one and the same.
The third reason is that I’ve talked to Spanish people a lot about the situation in Spain, where similar laws and measures as the ones being cooked up in Greece as we speak have been in effect for a long time. Students not only have to pay for every single ECTS point they study for, if they fail their subject they have to pay for it again, and again… They have to pay for every single book, they have to pay for their enrollment, they have to pay for pretty much everything. This has neither made studying fairer nor has it upgraded the quality of education, it’s just the government freeing resources for other, presumably more important things (such as the Papal visit). My friend Ana, whenever I tell her that education in Greece is basically free, shakes her head in disbelief, uttering Spanish curses. Whenever I tell her that the Greek government wants to make things just like in Spain at the same time having a huge smile about it and shamelessly blurting out things like “national bet” and “responsible decision”, she cries: “Don’t let them Dimitris! You are so lucky to have free higher education. You must fight for it and defend it. Don’t let them take this away from you! Don’t be like us…” It’s a wake-up call, a sudden change of perspective, even moreso because I’m seeing extraordinary cultural similarities between Spain and Greece and the patterns followed in our economical problems. I can relate to the Spanish people and they can relate to us.
So what are we going to do about all this? Are we going to let them do as they please with our prospects and our lives? Will the spirit of post-modern individualism mark another victory this day? If it is does, I’m afraid it’s going to be another early, black celebration…
Danish Diaries #5
The past few days haven’t been all that much to write home about. The main reason for this is my almost complete lack of money. I knew before coming here that costs of living would be extreme, I thought I was prepared (was I ever…) but I didn’t expect that even going to the supermarket or downtown could be so frightening to my wallet and the full range of its contents. That together with a few unlucky money-sucking occasions have meant that I’ve been forced to put a few limits to my wanderlust and learn to enjoy the finer pleasures of looking at the four walls of my room and my laptop’s screen. Fortunately it’s not as bad as it sounds; I’ve got company in my kronerlessness, as well as grass and trees around Skoldhøjkollegiet.
For you to understand exactly how easy it is for money to disappear in ways unexpected, allows me to disclose a recent episode of my dorm life. Every week two of the twelve rooms in Spobjergvej 58 have to do the cleaning up. One is responsible for the kitchen and the other for the other common areas (the common room, the staircases and corridors etc). An inspection takes place every Tuesday to determine if everything’s clean as it should. If not, little notes are left for the respectiverooms to notify them of what they have to do by the following day. If they still fail to clean they are charged completely unreasonable amounts of money for the cleaners that do the job for them.
It was my turn to clean the common areas last week and of course I didn’t want to make my already atrocious financial situation that much horrible. So I took extra care to vacuum every carpet and linoleum surface and mop anything that could be mopped. Alas, Tuesday’s check unequivocally concluded that my vacuuming had been unsatisfactory. To top it all off, before I knew it, the common room floor surfaces were covered with grass and mud again — it was a rainy day and my flatmates were not paying much attention, why should they, it wasn’t them that had to clean up, was it? I begrudgingly did my part and slept easy, believing I had escaped the villainous clutches and voracious wallets of the cleaning ladies staff (they’re very serious about gender equality here, it’s even reflected in their language. Not that I disapprove, of course). Next day I was greeted with a beautiful 154 kr. (~20€) for “cleaning performed due to insufficient cleaning”. If they had chosen to be a little bit thorougher, costs of unwanted cleanliness could have easily reached 400kr for the likes of “vacuuming the furniture”, “keeping escape routes free” and “washing the lamps and tables”. At least they were kind enough to add “the hall of residence will collect the amount for the cleaning on the next month’s rent of the relevant resident”. Oh, it’s OK, I don’t have to pay it right away, only with my next month’s rent! >:ε What strikes me as the oddest is that none of my flatmates seems to know with any amount of detail what the cleaning entails or just care about it for that matter. The three weeks I’ve been here it’s not the residents that have done the cleaning but the company. It shouldn’t surprise me now that I think about it; my flatmates do strike me as the kind of people that would rather pay than clean up themselves, out of sheer boredom most likely.
My new Andalusian friend Ana and I have made a habit of going for walks and cooking dinner together every evening — Spanish, Greek and new experimental recipes. We are in a compatible economical situation (one that does not permit lots of going out) so we can make the best of our limited means. That includes buying beer with the highest price-for-alcohol ratio (but still the cheapest) and watching documentaries on Youtube. Joy: I’ve found yet another friend with which I can agree about how the entirety of our world is a social construction! Our discussions are sometimes limited by language barriers at a higher level, but hey, she’s already trying to teach me Spanish and doing a good job of it too, so ¿quién sabe? I totally used Google Translate for that, by the way.
Apart from cleaning, being with Ana, watching In Treatment and How I Met Your Mother (almost done with season 6, finally!) most of my past days I’ve been trying to make my laptop work with Skype. That would be an easy task normally. Thing is, I’ve been trying to run Linux for a few weeks now and I promised myself that this time I WOULDN’T give up and return to Windows after the 50th time I would be forced to do something the hard way, if at all. Well, this time, I’m not so sure. PulseAudio is driving me absolutely crazy. I’ve been scouring the web for days trying to get my microphone to work but it’s all been little more, or should I say less than a headache. And it’s not just Skype and all the friends and family I’d love to actually talk to instead of merely hearing. What I was also looking forward to was posting videos of me trying to speak Danish! Now I can’t do even that.
Sorry Linux, I love you just as I love free stuff and sticking to my ideology and beliefs –not to mention doing my part of anti-conformity– but sometimes you just can’t resist that […ooh, as if I’d share with you my forbidden pleasures… ~^,]
By the way. If I love something more than receiving postcards, letters and packages, it’s receiving them with no prior notice. For everyone that might want to surprise me and make a grown man cry tears of joy, here’s my address here in Denmark:
Dimitris Hall
Spobjergvej 58 vær. 3
8220 Brabrand
Mange tak!
Danish Diaries #4
Days pass faster and faster… Where’s Making Time when you need it? I think I have passed the familiarity threshold; everything is making less of an impression on me now and I don’t feel like I’m in a foreign place anymore. I am quite at home at my dorm and taking the bus is starting to feel natural. I must say the speed in which I have adapted is scaring me a little. This comes with its own costs: I’m slightly less inclined to meet new people or ready to try out new things and more likely to get in a routine as I have for the past 10 days or so with my daily morning Danish classes, for which I yesterday signed up to continue into Autumn (paid from none other than the Danish government). It follows that there hasn’t been any groundbreaking stuff going on. I shall share with you some non-groundbreaking tidbits:
- Danish is a strange language. It’s not only the sound (it’s still almost impossible for me to understand anything if it’s not written in the semi-recognisable script Danes have for written word), I also find some words very funny. For example: øl means beer. Øl (pronounced like ö), if you say it this way in German, means oil. If you say it a lot of times, like (øløløløløløløl) it sounds like: A) a retarded version of lololololol and B) this.Danish also has a unique and specific way of denoting family relationships. In Danish you can’t just have grandmother or grandfather; you have to be very specific about whose mother or father it is. So you get things like mormor (mother’s mother), farfar (father’s father), any combination really. I was wondering how far it could get, like a series of zeros and ones. “My morfarmor is 104 years old” -“Oh, my farmorfarfar is still alive! They had him on a TV show the other day!”
They also do it with uncles. You have to be specific about whose parent’s brother or sister it is, too. I guess it makes things easier but it’s also funny. - I went to a sushi dinner party organised by the Japanese students in Skjoldhøjkollegiet. It was really fun, all kinds of different delicious food our hosts had spent days preparing. Everything was very delicious and there was a lot more people than I had imagined! But then came the alcohol: Danish beer, Japanese beer, several different kinds of wine, including cherry wine and fighter wine (a Spanish expression for cheap wine that fights with you the next day), liquorice, uh, liquor shots — mind you I hate liquorice, oh, one new thing to add to my list — and after the party we topped it off with 4 vodka shots at Camill’s place followed with more fighter wine and gin with fruit juice. Seriously, I should have been worse when I woke up this morning. The only thing I didn’t remember was how I had gone to bed and my hangover only lasted a few hours… f you don’t take into account that I slept in all morning and missed today’s Danish class.
Danish Diaries #2
Yesterday, after another long walk in Aarhus, it was time for the first official Erasmus get-together! Studenthus Aarhus organised a Welcome Dinner for all the new-comers and their empty stomachs. There I met my first Erasmus people! I have no idea if they’re going to be my friends for the rest of the semester — it’s only 5 out of 100 Destination DK participators (the early goers such as me for the language and culture program) and over ~600 exchange students in total for this semester– but who knows, right?
Today with said friends we headed a bit outside of Aarhus to the annual Viking fight and horse-riding show. It was part of a greater Viking festival with tens and tens of tents with all kinds of craftsmen making everything and anything related to Vikings, from mead to shields with runes, from traditional Viking food to ornaments. Everything was produced on the spot. The fight and horse show were sure impressive, with all the combatants yelling and their swords and spears clanging. No picture will do this experience justice of course, maybe in time some videos are going to find their way on Youtube.
But I’ll admit it. What I was most fascinated by was not the vikings, not their cooking or their runes but the location of this happening. The viking festival took place on a grassy hilly clearing next to a beach. But surrounding this clearing was a beautiful forest with trees so tall, leaf canopies so thick they were practically hiding the sky, creating the musky, cozy atmosphere of the deep forest. It was complete with running water and light washing in on the streams from the few openings among the leaves… We reached the festival through that forest starting at Moesgaard Museum. It’s very easy to reach from the center of Aarhus (we just hopped on bus 6 from Nøregade), so I can definitely see myself returning preferrably together with my bike!
The other big thing of today was that I went to the hospital. When I woke up in the morning I could feel, together with my dry and brambly throat, my left ear just clogged with fluid and hurting as hell. “OK”, I thought, “this is not another of those my-throat-hurts-for-a-few-days-it’s-gonna-take-care-of-itself. Reluctantly, I decided to get checked up after returning from the Viking festival (as Dulce said: ‘why miss it, if you’re not about to die…’ and I hold the sentiment close to my heart) Turns out I’ve got a “mouth infection” and that only penicillin can put an end to the bacterial menace once and for all. If I had a CPR number (I’ll get it when I get my Danish residence permit, that is next month) I’d be eligible for completely free examinations and medication, in contrast with today when I had to pay for my penicillin in the end because I didn’t have a CPR number and thus belonged to the ‘tourist” category…
But these Nordic people… They make even their hospitals good to look at.
I have to sign off now, get some sleep and let the antibiotics do their thing. Tomorrow we’ve got brunch at 10:00 at Studenthus Aarhus and eat well we must cause it’s Museum Day! Gotta get my rest, no? I’ll up new pictures as soon as possible.
Danish Diaries #1
Yes! My Erasmus is on, I’m writing this using some stolen unlocked invisible waves from a nearby dorm… And I’m sick. My throat is killing me and I must have a fever. Must be from sleeping everywhere I found a suitable surface in Prague airport (where I had an 11-hour stopover) and in a park in Prague itself, so sleep-deprived was I… I don’t know where I caught the bug but right now it’s killing all of my energy and fun. Anyway…
I’m in Denmark two days already. I like it VERY much. The area in which I live is in the middle of nowhere, almost 10km from the centre of Århus, but that means that it’s really quiet with lots of beautiful nature everywhere. It’s also in a side of town which is considered a “ghetto”, and so yesterday when riding home on the bike I rented from Studenterhus Århus I saw lots of Muslim and black immigrants. I also found a few local supermarkets run by immigrants that had all sorts of spices, Turkish products, an aroma from the Middle East and shopped at a couple of them. I can’t shake the feeling that they overcharged me because they realised I was a foreigner but then again that might be my subconscious little anti-multiculturally indoctrinated side speaking. From what I found out by visiting another nearby supermarket today, things are expensive everywhere. Three bell peppers of various colours: 15 kr. A little can of Somersby cider: 20 kr. Pears: 2,95 kr per piece.
By the way, 1€ =~ 7,5 Danish Kroner. Do the math yourself. 😛 Yes, things here ARE expensive.
The University in all of its grand location in the middle of a large park and in the city centre, complete with lakes etc has been a big help already and I can feel that they’re really caring for the exchange students, what with organising the language and culture course that’s taking place in the next few days, ensuring everyone is OK etc. On arriving they gave me a big bag with merchandise, including a raincoat! Even though the weather as long as I’ve been here has been excellent, something tells me I’m gonna need it!
God! I feel terrible. I so want to continue writing, there’s SO much to share already but I’d rather just lie in bed… Some pictures (from my Denmark flickr set):
Push on, pack in and move out
July 10th
I’m sitting on the floor aboard European Express, one of the worst ships of the line that connect Athens with Mytilini. Very few seats, the lounge has some weird round tables that are useless and it’s almost entirely made of huge spaces with lights too bright. Never mind. I’m travelling to Mytilini with a mission.
Get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.
The past few months I’ve been preparing, mentally and practically, for the next big thing in my life. That is my Erasmus. I’d been dreaming of doing it for many years now but this year was my last and best chance since I’m also moving out of the place I’ve called home for the past five years.
So I did pursue it. I sent out requests, I got denied, I meddled with bureaucracy and had my share of incredible stories anyone going through this brutal procedure no doubt have as well. My big thanks to the Aegean University International Office who helped a lot along the way while also tolerating my sluggish ways with filling in applications, agreements, doing this sort of paperwork thing.
In just 14 days now, in the early hours of July 26th, I’m flying to Denmark and I’m going to be living there for the next six months. More specifically I’ll be studying at the department of Information and Media Studies in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. The first few weeks of August I’ll be doing a language and culture course and September will see the beginning of my three courses! I’m so very excited about all the things I’m going to experience and learn there, the different cultures I’ll witness and sink my teeth into, the trips I’m going to make, the sights I will behold, the parts of me I will create and explore all at the same time.
But here I sit, comfortably numb from it all. When changes come creeping closer I never find myself ready to deal with them and flow along as I typically do. In fact, the closer they come, the less active I become. I find myself getting lazier and lazier (and I’m not THAT lazy under normal circumstances) instead of taking advantage of my countdown. I hate it when I do that but it’s very strong with me, for some reason. It’s something I’ve come to call προθανάτιος μηδενισμός in Greek, something you’d call pre-mortem nihilism in English if you’d want to sound especially obnoxious (it sounds obnoxious in Greek too but sometimes the minimum common denominator is not fit for the very truest of verbal expressivenesss). There, I did it again.
That is part of the reason I haven’t written anything about all this until now, the reason I’ve been writing less on here in general. Another reason is that I was afraid of writing this in particular because it is, inevitably, a sort of farewell post. If I’m not good –nay, if I get really nervous, anxious about– at something, it is farewells. Is anyone…?
It’s a farewell post to the five years that changed me from deep inside. The place that was chiefly the background for this change and my coming of age. It has been the equivalent of discovering the New World for myselves. It is a chunk of spacetime, the kind that burns itself into our memories really close to our scent centres, wherne I can say I had the most fun and significant experiences till now. Of course, I met lots of good people during this period some of whom became my friends, others something more, yet others something less. With certain people (I wouldn’t be able to point them all out yet) “Mytilini was the first chapter”. For most, as it happens, it’s also going to be the last chapter. I’m not sure how I feel about that — at least for now.
Now my mission, as stated above, is to push on, pack in and move out of Mytilini in the minimum number of days in order to buy some time to see friends, family and everyone that, if I won’t be seeing for over six months, I’ll miss (in case they don’t visit me in Denmark, of course ~^,) Truth is, I’m not really feeling it. Maybe that’s the reason I’m comfortably numb. It’s the difference between having played a new game for ten minutes and having only read the manual: knowing something and knowing about something…
Who knows? Maybe the empty boxes and the sight of things lying around as they do when a change of residence commands it will kick my ass into (emotional) action. It’s just as possible I’ll only realise the gravity of the impending change when I’m already in Athens, Denmark or somewhere else…
Great, obscure Danish ’70s prog. This, along with The Wall and Calling All Dawns, is the soundtrack of my last days here… Thanks Villy for sending me this.
4 days later
After four days of more lazying around and finally “accepting” what lay ahead I did what had to be done. The empty card boxes I gathered from around town I filled with my stuff. Most of it anyway; I’m leaving a lot of things behind, such as cutlery and kitchenware, dead cockroaches and all of my furniture. If I had the time I would have tried to sell it but it seems its destiny is to stay here waiting for the next resident of 1, Lavyrinthou St.
The moving company came this morning and picked everything up to take it to Athens.
After I’m done writing this, I’m packing my remaining stuff, shutting the windows, locking the door and leaving. I never locked the door.
Life after Mytilini:
So it begins…
