Some observations about life in Denmark vs. life in the US

I moved to Copenhagen from the greater NYC area with my family in June of 2021. Here are some observations I’ve made about life in Denmark as we’ve begun to settle into our new surroundings.

1. When Danes say something is “far away,” it’s not what I expect. I grew up in California, and frequently made trips up and down I-5 between Sacramento and Los Angeles. A drive like that would take you out of Denmark, all the way through Germany, maybe into Prague.
2. Cashiers at the grocery store sit rather than stand.
3. People actually take vacation. No guilt. July starts to roll in and suddenly — peace — talk to you in early August.
4. Debit cards (and a Venmo-like app called MobilePay) are more popular than credit cards here. I’m so used to strategizing about credit card point programs that it seems bizarre simply to purchase something, have the funds deducted from my account, and that’s that.
5. So many people commute by bike. The bikes are unpretentious, and the riders come from all walks of life. The bike lanes are protected, and drivers are relatively respectful of bike traffic.
6. Fridges and dishwashers are smaller. Not way smaller, maybe something like 80% of the size in the US. Grocery stores don’t sell cartons of milk larger than 1 liter. The tops of our dinner plates from the US hit the rotating spray arm of the dishwasher.
7. Hanging pictures on the wall of an apartment is somewhat more involved than hammering a skinny nail into drywall.
8. Kleenex/facial tissues aren’t really a thing here. Why not just use toilet paper? On a related note, the TP is a bit lacking here.
9. The average level of stylishness — in people’s outfits and homes — is really, really, ridiculously high. When I walk through a shopping center I feel like I’m surrounded by stock photography models.
10. New parents with babies have a glow about them unlike anything I’ve seen in the US. They’re all-in. Kind of like the “actual vacation” thing above.
11. The El- prefix means electronic. I had foolishly assumed the store “Elgiganten” came from Spain. Nope. It’s an electronics superstore. Next time I visit El Cotixan to get carne asada fries in San Diego I’ll be thrown for a loop.
12. Sports betting apps are huge here. Online gambling in general is big business in Denmark.
13. Ingressive sounds. Danes, and Scandinavians in general, draw in a breath of air — basically, a gasp — to indicate that they are following what you’re saying. I know about this phenomenon, and I’ve read essays about it, but when it happens, I still feel like I just startled someone.
14. Apartments don’t come with light fixtures. Tenants take them with them when they move out.
15. No jaywalking. Just wait for the walk sign, even if there are no cars on either side as far as the eye can see.
16. Hygge is not scented candles and knitted sweaters. It’s social democracy.
17. Danish flags are everywhere. Festooning store windows. In front of houses. On birthday cakes. Yet somehow, it doesn’t come across as the Danish version of the ‘Murica vibe. It’s cute and cozy. 🇩🇰
18. Cars and gas are really expensive here. Taking taxes into account, a given make & model of car is probably over 2x more expensive than in the US. Gas is around $6/gallon. That seems to be the case in most of northern Europe.
19. Handball is, like, a thing here. I don’t mean handball as in “a foul in soccer by which a player’s hand or arm touches the ball.” I mean a totally separate sport called handball. Based on this excerpt from Wikipedia, it sounds like it was invented by people who were playing soccer on opposites day: “Players are not allowed to touch the ball with their feet, the goalkeeper is the only one allowed to use their feet but only within the goal area.”
20. Danish kids love Sun Lolly frozen treats. The clever shape of the packaging (with four identical isosceles triangles for faces, making it an irregular tetrahedron, or disphenoid) distracts one from just how little frozen juice it contains.
21. Your CPR number (similar to a social security number) and NemID (two factor authentication) are the keys to pretty much everything here. Online banking, parent-teacher messaging app, dentist appointments, utility bills, rapid covid test, recycling pickup SMS reminders. Apparently the 2FA step used to require a physical card with printed codes. Now it can be done with a phone app. It’s still a whole lot of clicking and tapping.
22. Ice cream trucks aren’t messing around here. No fancy music. No singles. They roll up, clang a bell a couple times, and sell full-assed boxes.
23. Week numbers. Weeks start on Monday and follow ISO standard numbering, from 1 to 52 or 53. This is surprisingly useful for planning projects and vacations. Come to think of it, perhaps the use of week numbers in a society is correlated with having large amounts of vacation.
24. Polite drivers. Driving here reminds me of driving in Canada.
25. I’m not the American default. When people ask me where I’m from, and I say I’m American or from California, they need more information. They’re satisfied when I say my mom’s from South America. I don’t get bad vibes from this; it’s a pretty straightforward exchange. Danes are direct. A mom at my son’s school said “I knew you had a dark thing going on!” Others gesture broadly at my head, as if to say, “this is different.”
26. No screens in the windows at home. As I recall, this is the case in most of Europe. I thought the bugs would drive us crazy, but somehow this hasn’t been an issue.
27. Radio stations don’t bleep profanity. At least, they don’t bleep English swear words. You know that song “Forget You” by CeeLo Green? My kids’ ears were blessed by the original version the other day in the car. Danes cuss so much that I’m wondering whether it’s worth even trying to get my kids not to do it.
28. It rains a lot here, in fits and starts. I’ve been meaning to mow the lawn for a couple weeks. When I finally saw a sunny forecast, I started the job, and then stopped a third of the way through when it started to rain.
29. Reduced economic rent-seeking behavior. Perhaps in exchange for the high overall cost of living, I don’t encounter a lot of nickel-and-diming or scammy charges. For example, a popular mobile parking app allows you to stop the clock early and just pay for what you used.
30. There are no Apple retail stores here. Just resellers, like Humac. I bet there’s a juicy reason for this.
31. I haven’t received a single spam text or phishing call on my DK mobile number. On my US number I still get 1–2 auto warranty scam calls or Rayban clearance sale texts per week.
32. We need to talk about ice. My days are powered by ice and caffeine. Denmark has me covered 110% on the latter, but leaves me hanging way too often on the former. “Why do Americans need everything to be so cold?”
33. Kids start to learn English at school in 1st grade, but the YouTube-effect results in kids starting their English journey much earlier.
34. Customer service in stores is not readily available. You can certainly get it if you ask, but you are rarely approached by a chirpy employee asking, “is there anything I can help you find today?”
35. “Why did you move to Denmark?” I get this question a lot. Basically, people are digging to find out the Danish-spouse thing. I do my best to explain the appealing aspects of living here, but they smile and nod till I get to the point.
36. “Bro” means bridge. So you see “bro” stuff all over the place. And then there’s “fag” and “fart.” “Fagperson” is a professionally trained person. And “fart” is speed. No surprises here if you already know German.
37. Post-Christianity. Like its neighbors in Europe, Denmark’s culture is deeply influenced by Christianity, but the kind of evangelical Christianity one sees in the US is virtually absent.
38. Denmark is a village. Don’t like your landlord? Had an issue with your Airbnb host? Be careful when you vent. If you’re in Denmark and in academia, it’s not a village, it’s a studio apartment.
39. That lamp looks familiar! Danes love high-end interior design, and they’re willing to shell out big kroner for it. And they all get the same memo, apparently: PH pendant lamp, AJ floor lamp, the Y chair. And I’m here for it. These are beautiful, functional, long-lasting objects.
40. American type-A folks struggle with things like “the busy trap” or the “efficiency trap.” They share thinkpieces from The Atlantic on social media and ask how to break the cycle of overwork — always behind, always stretched thin. Danes have this aspect of life relatively under control. On the other hand, you don’t want to be the tall poppy here.
41. There are sounds in Danish that simply don’t exist in English, unless you’re gagging. Or choking.
42. Numbers. Counting in Danish is very logical and predictable until you get to 50, where you encounter vestiges of a vigesimal counting system. If you know French, you’re familiar with this. Example: 50 = –(20/2) + (3 × 20) = halvtredsindstyve, shortened to halvtreds.
43. Denmark often polls high on the list of the world’s happiest countries. To the American eye, this might come as a surprise, since Danes don’t seem outwardly happy. These surveys are actually getting at something more like contentment, as many of life’s basic needs are met at a foundational level in Denmark. In contrast, an American might radiate joy upon successfully getting their health insurance company to reverse a decision on out-of-network coverage, dropping a bill from $3000 to $250, after hours of phone calls and waiting on hold. They might even celebrate this achievement with a nice little dinner at The Olive Garden. Danes don’t know that kind of joy.
44. Anders and… who? Donald Duck comic books are weirdly ubiquitous in Denmark. He’s called Anders instead of Donald, and the comic book series is called Anders And & Co. It looks like a typo until you realize ‘and’ means ‘duck’ in Danish.
45. Our rental home has a ventless clothes dryer. After you dry a load of clothes, you have to empty a plastic container that fills with water. Maybe these are common in Europe; I hadn’t seen them before. It has the advantage that you can install them pretty much anywhere.
46. I attended a US Embassy event for Cornell alumni and got to chat with a US Department of State employee. I asked her what she and her colleagues think about being assigned to Denmark. She said — like many things in the US — it’s a polarizing question. She loves living here, but several of her current and former colleagues hate it, since they had hoped to get assigned somewhere where they can have a bunch of domestic servants and live like kings.
47. One of the big dairy companies here prints ‘ofte god efter’ (often good after) next to the ‘best before’ date. The idea is to reduce food waste, and encourage consumers to trust their judgment about when milk has gone bad.
48. The Danish language is infamous for having words in which many letters are not pronounced. Norwegian, by comparison, features spelling that closer matches pronunciation. If you’re into etymology, however, simplifying spelling is a risky proposition. For example, the word ‘sphere’ is ‘kugle’ in Danish and ‘kule’ in Norwegian. Indeed, the g is silent in the former. But dropping the g hides the fact that this is a loan word from German, ‘kugel.’
49. I took a train trip to visit Aarhus University recently. After I arrived I wanted to figure out how to ride the local busses there to get to campus from my Airbnb. It turns out the same Rejsekort (transit card) I use in Copenhagen also works in Aarhus. This simple feat of interoperability should not have blown my mind, but it did.
50. Bathroom stalls are fully enclosed here. In fact, this seems to be the case everywhere I’ve visited outside the US. I can only imagine the “who does no. 2 work for?” scene from Austin Powers must have been very confusing to international audiences.

The Danish notion of long distance travel is different than what I remember from growing up in California. Screenshot credit: https://thetruesize.com