Call it Thanksgivukkah or call it Chanugiving, by the time you lovely readers fall eagerly on this issue of the Copenhagen Post (as I know you always do), it will be upon us. If you haven’t heard about it already, don’t feel bad. If you aren’t Jewish and from the USA it doesn’t really affect…
Charlotte and Karl are a typical Danish-Jewish couple in their 70s. They live in a spacious, classically Danish apartment in Østerbro, where the extended family congregates regularly for Jewish holidays and for Shabbat. They serve old family recipes like gefilte fish and golden chicken soup alongside rødgrød. Grandchildren tumble around and, to me, they embody…
Some people in my class had chewing gum in the shape of cigarettes,” said my daughter conspiratorially, while I nearly choked with astonishment. Aah, candy cigarettes. I remember them well. We used to pretend to inhale from them on cold winter mornings, when our breath would look like the smoke. People smoked back then,…
They call it the sunshine island though it’s more Baltic than Caribbean. Bornholm is an utterly charming little chunk of Denmark that’s actually halfway to Poland. Having just a week to fill and limited funds, Bornholm promised to be a great choice for us for a traditional family holiday. Much to my husband’s chagrin,…
I have to admit I was feeling pretty lucky. As readers of this column know, I’ve got the house, the bike, a smattering of Danish and a job working on vaccination awareness that makes me feel like a hero every day. And in the whirlwind 18 months we’ve been in Denmark, my feet have hardly…
We all know someone who wound up in Copenhagen for a random reason. Sometimes it’s love, sometimes work and sometimes it’s just because this is where their van broke down. Many don’t mean to stay, but nevertheless, ten years later they’re still here without a word of Danish, still living out of a rucksack with…
I have just performed one of the most responsible acts of citizenship available to me in the modern world. It wasn’t voting, or writing to the City Hall or installing solar panels, and it was way easier than starting a compost heap. I got up to date with my vaccinations. As a committed fan of…
There are no swear words in Danish,” says my mate Irina as we sit together on the number 15 bus. She says it with absolute contempt, rolling her Rs and spitting out the words. “Now in Portugal, we know how to swear, there are thousands of swear words. What do they have here?” she asks…
When you came to live in Denmark, the chances are you arrived by air and so, like me, were greeted by a sea of red and white flags. From the oversized to the tiny, no Dane meeting a loved one at Copenhagen Airport would feel right about the occasion without a flag in hand, even…
Practice makes perfect, they say. But unfortunately one of the many problems associated with learning Danish is that you don’t get any practice, which makes it hard to get perfect. “The guy in the bicycle shop down the street doesn’t speak English,” I excitedly told my classmates at Danish lessons the other day. “No really,…
The blood on the tarmac is mine, dripping steadily from my nose. I’ve managed to clamber onto all fours, but the ground still seems to be swirling beneath me. Someone’s speaking to me, but I can’t understand him and I don’t know why. Then I realise he’s speaking Danish. I also realise to my huge…
Remember when Danish was a kind of pastry? Well, for me, those days are now long gone and I’ve made the commitment to start language classes. At first I thought I could avoid it – Danes all speak English, don’t they? Well yes, people speak English, but it won’t help you navigate the myriad of…
