Even the lady in the Kanteen at work recognizes me. One of my coworkers happily told me on one of my first days of work that the Kanteen menu is posted on the company’s internal webpage, but I think they failed to consider the fact that it is only in Danish. Typically I just wait until I get to the Kanteen and can see the food to find out what is the feature hot entrée of the day. However, this morning, needing a break from what I was doing, I decide to have a look at the menu and proceeded to translate it using the Danish-English dictionary that is provided on my computer. My translating efforts resulted in the following for the main dish, apple dumpling smoked salmon randomly spinach. While I could foresee how smoked salmon and spinach went together, I was really wondering how the apple dumpling fit in. I arrived that the Kanteen to discover, lunch was actually a thin pastry with baked salmon with spinach. Apparently, the concept of pastry got lost in the translation and got replaced with apples.
I have been told that basically all Danes under 50 years old speak English and I do believe it, since I have yet to find someone I needed to talk to that didn’t speak English. While everyone can speak English, and does it happily for me, none of the signs, announcements or food labels have any English on them. So far, I have found the biggest challenge presented by not speaking Danish is the announcements regarding service disruptions on the transit system.
Since in my apartment I have no radio (not that it would do me much good, since everything would be in Danish anyways) or TV, I miss being able to read the 24 Hours or Metro (which both exist here, but in Danish) to find out what is going on in the world.
On my way to work, I still pick up a paper though and flip through it and look at the pictures and the scores from the Euro cup. (I have figured out what the names of most of the European countries are in Danish based on the flags or colours of the teams uniforms’.)
The weather page has become my favourite section since I don’t need to speak any Danish to understand the little pictures. I am becoming quite familiar with the weather patterns around Denmark and all of Europe. However, I am starting to question why I bother to look at the weather forecast for Copenhagen. For the last 4 days the symbols have told me that there would be sun, rain and clouds everyday and this has been completely correct. If you think Vancouver’s weather changes lots, you have seen nothing compared to Copenhagen. It changes about every 15 minutes around here. Often we have to go around through the skywalks connecting our building to the one with the Kanteen at lunch since it is raining. Then as I am eating my lunch the sun coming in through the skylights blinds me. Once I am done eating, I walk back to my desk by the outdoor route, but it is now windy and cloudy.
Just to prove my point, I have taken a series of photos looking out my kitchen window as I have been writing this. The first was taken at 8:21pm with hardly a cloud in the sky. Then 7 minutes later, there are clouds but they don’t appear too threatening. The final picture was taken at 8:42pm, 21 minutes after the first and it looks like it could start to rain anytime.
Since everyone likes pictures, here are some other ones I have taken so far in Copenhagen. The first one is the view looking out my bedroom window at the front of the apartment. Next, is me with the Opera House across the harbour in the background. The final picture is of the Danish Coast.
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