Monthly Archives: March 2014

Guest Post: Parting Thoughts

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For the past few months, Ashish Patel has been occasionally driving back home from work with me and my friends. The time has now come for Ashish to return to India. Luckily for us, he had written a post about his thoughts on his first day here in 2011. That post will come up in the coming days.First we get to hear what his thoughts are now that he is leaving for India, what he thinks of Sonderborg, and why he has decided that it is time to move on. Over to Ashish:

Sønderborg, sounds like a medieval exotic kingdom with elves and fairies and sorcerers of the middle earth.

Though it is not exactly true but what is true is the fact that Sønderborg does make you feel out of the world.

There is strange sense of calmness coupled with grandeur and serenity that oozes out of the laid back lifestyle here.

There is no hurry, no hustle and definitely no traffic jams. Most of houses are centuries old and mostly old cars to match them.

If I were to describe the experience of living here in one word, that would be cozy. Right from the candle-lit drawing rooms, to the musty study, to the nicely decorated dining rooms, there is a homeliness and coziness which comes along. People are polite and have a very private way of life here. They give prime importance to family and after dark people tend to stay at home spending quality time with their loved ones.

The best part of Sønderborg is the area around the castle overlooking the king’s bridge and the massive church. I never fail to feel amazed walking over the bridge onto the line of fabulous restaurants facing the water coloured in different shades of yellow and pink.

The park behind the castle and the harbour sucks out every inch of negative energy and tiredness and fills you with a feeling somewhere between happiness and content. Watching the water from the bench on the long promenade sometimes makes me think I want nothing more from life than to sit and admire the simple sounds of water hitting the rocks.

There is so much to soak here, the rundstykkers of Fridays,the people lining up for ringriderpølser, the Sonderborg band playing in every special occasion, the huge horses and their riders with spears in the ringrider festival, the crazy drunk teenagers who ring people’s door bells on every Friday night.

We made lots of friends at office and at the LærDansk (Danish learning centres) and fitness centres.We had many parties, we joined the Sonderborg cricket club and enjoyed playing here, we did everything to stay busy. I thought I would never get enough of the charm of Sønderborg.

Many many months have passed since we first came here and now the very thing that we loved is also the reason we want to move on. We are citizens of India and growing up we were used to lots and lots of people, lots of noises, lots of friends and lots of family gatherings. When we came here the sudden change brought peace and quite and I am thankful for that. We got time to do what we couldn’t do there. But now after spending a few years here, we miss the noise, we miss the people and we miss the fun we had with our family and friends.

The one thing we learned here was to that the most important thing in life is to have the calmness of heart and the importance of spending time with your family and that is why we want to go back to spend some time with our family.

Vi Ses.

The Art of Conversation

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I come from a country where people like to talk and discuss anything and everything under the sun. If there is disagreement, that’s not necessarily seen as a negative. Conversations don’t necessarily proceed in the way I expect in Denmark however! Having gone through many conversations with Danes in the past 2 years, I thought I’d write a bit about my experience here.

Hygge is king (or queen)

The Danish concept of hygge permeates all that Danes do. You might think that this concept of being cozy and warm and fuzzy (or however you want to describe it) is all good. Unfortunately, speaking a different language to the one they are most comfortable in or speaking slower/having to repeat, will disturb their own hygge. So unless the person is comfortable speaking English, do not be too surprised if you are not including for as much of the conversation as they can. Some will, of course, make the effort, but inclusion in a group does not seem as high a priority as I was brought up with it being.

Conversation Progress

As I said above, starting a conversation may sometimes be quite hard. However, once started, it doesn’t necessarily go smoothly from there. A typical conversation here goes like this:

Me: Question

Dane: answer

silence

Me: Question (breaking the silence)

Dane: answer

silence

repeat as necessary

Now, I was always taught that if someone asks you a question, it is only polite that you either ask it back or ask something else. However, when asking around, Danes seems to think that you asked the question, they answered, so it is now your turn to say something. So I hope you enjoy doing the hard work of carrying the whole conversation sometimes!

What to Expect in Conversation

OK. You have managed to catch their eye and show the Danes that speaking to you won’t break the hygge that much. And you managed to get them away from the Me question – Dane answer scenario. What can you expect to hear? Well, this will differ based on the situation. However, 2 things stick in my mind as something that happens more often than just by chance:

a) The language question

Dane: So, how long have you been in Denmark?

Me: Two years

Dane: How’s your Danish?

Me: OK

Dane: It’s a hard language right?

Danes love to believe that their language is one of the hardest in the world

b) The Work Question

So, they now know your name, maybe where you come from, and that your Danish is OK. Then comes the next question:

Dane: Arbejder du? (Do you work?)

Me: Selvføgelig (of course)

Dane: Oh, OK

Now, this might be because I am a woman with a Danish partner. However, I rarely get asked ‘what do you do’. The question is (nearly always) ‘Do you work?’. This, to me, comes with the implication that I am expected to be sponging off the system. And no, that question rarely, if ever, is followed up with ‘So what do you do?’. Maybe the Danes are aware that I love my job, and I could talk a donkey’s hind leg off talking about it? Maybe they’re just very wise :).

 

I have tried discussing this with my (Danish) colleagues. They are not quite in agreement with me on some of the points. So I am wondering… what has your experience been, if you’re not Danish. And if you’re Danish, can you recognise any of it?

Gymnastics…Danish style

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Gymnastics is a big deal in Denmark. Talk to any Danish person (regardless of age) and the probability that they were part of a gymnastics group at some point in their life is very high. Gymnastics is seen as a sort of collective activity here. The Danish Gymnastics Association, DGI, has more than 300,000 members at this time.

As the Danish wikipedia page says, there are two kinds of gymnastics in Denmark: popular gymnastics, and competitive gymnastics. When a non-Dane thinks of gymnastics, they probably think of the competitive form. However, when Danes think of gymnastics, they think of the first kind.

So what is the difference?

First of all, gymnastics here is not competitive. The output of the groups is, instead, shown at exhibition events at various places around Denmark. During the past weekend, there was such an exhibition weekend at Humlehøj-hallen in Sønderborg. Having heard a lot about it but never experience it, we decided to check it out.

What did we find?

Well, first of all, there were groups of various ages participating, from very young kids who cannot really follow a routine, to an ‘experienced lady team’, with an average age of 74. And, of course, everything in between, though not people between 30 and 60, it seems. These people are, probably, ferrying their kids to gymnastics groups instead and no time for their own participation.

Another thing that struck me is what the routines really showed. Now, as a non-Danes, I typically think of the Olympics when I think of gymnastics. However, that is not the case here. Instead, there seems to be 2 types of routines: that which I would call tumbling, and that which I would call dancing.

The tumbling routines mostly consist of the whole group of kids, typically 10+ kids, doing the same tumble one after each other. The dancing consists of, hmm, a group dance routine. Most routines are an either/or between the two, so the dancing is not done to link the more technically challenging tumbling parts, as is the case with rhythmic gymnastics in the Olypmics. Instead, if the two are interlinked, you might have a flip-flop between the two, so say, a few minutes is done as a dancing routine and the next few minutes as a tumbling routine. The only routine that could be considered somewhat of an exception to this during the event we saw was the Vesterlund efterskole group, where, possibly as they were around 180 participants, there was more scope for amalgamating the two it seemed.

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It was an eye-opening experience to look into this really traditional part of Danish culture that is still going strong. In a way I am glad I didn’t grow up here, as I am sure I would have been absolutely rubbish at it (with even less motivation to do it). However, if you have kids it seems that doing a parent and child class is the thing to do. In that case, I think, I will have to leave it up to Michael to introduce any kids we might have to the delights of gymnastics.