Category Archives: Living in Denmark

The Danish mortgage system and the negative interest rates

A Canadian journalist contacted me recently asking questions about how it works with the negative interest rate that is going on in Denmark at the moment and what effect that had on the housing market. Could it really be true that people would be paid to have a mortgage? The short answer is no – so far the fees added on top of the mortgage means that no one has actually gotten money from the bank for lending money to their house.

In order to give a proper reply to the Canadian journalist I asked Rasmus O. Firla-Holme the blogger at Pengepugeren if he could help explain what is going on. His answer is below.

Danish mortgage are based on bonds

As far and I understand the North American mortgage system you basically take out a bank loan with security on the home.

The Danish mortgage system is different in that most mortgages are not money borrowed directly from a bank, but rather from investors. There do exist simple bank loan mortgages (I have one of these), but far more are “realkredit” (directly translates to “real credit”). This mortgage system is praised internationally for being transparent, flexible and a low-risk investment.

A Realkredit mortgage is based on bonds. When you apply for a mortgage your broker issues bonds on your behalf and the money you get for the sale will pay for your house. As with most other bonds, the interest rate depends on the time scale and whether the rate is fixed, capped or floating. A 30 year floating interest rate will be lower than a fixed rate as investors have the opportunity to get a higher profit when interests go up in the future.

So why would anyone Invest in bonds with low or even negative interest rates? The answer is security and price.

Security

As mentioned, the Danish Realkredit is praised for being a safe Investment. During crises (e.g. when Greece government bonds turned too risky and the future of the Euro seems uncertain) investors can find a safe harbour in Danish Realkredit bonds. Interests may be low, but you can keep the money there until things cool down.

Price

Part of the low interest is offset by a low bond Price. When an investor buys a very low interest bond they also buy it with a 2, 3, 4 or even higher “discount”. The mortgage may be 2.1M DKK but the investor buys it for 2M. For you as a home buyer that means you sign up for a loan balance that initially is higher than the price of the house, but you get a low interest rate and thus a low monthly expense.

In short, as an investor you get a chance to buy a bond that provides a low or (on rare occasions) slightly negative interest rate, but you also get a low-risk Investment at a discounted price.

The negative interest rate

A negative (or very low) interest rate is in my opinion a sign that something is very wrong. Why would you ever make an Investment that is almost certain to lose money? The negative interest rates are a consequence of the central bank lowering their interest rate to below zero (currently -0.65 %). This makes it a better investment for banks to purchase slightly negative short-term interest bonds instead of depositing reserves in the central bank.

Also, negative interest rate Realkredit bonds are not by any means a common thing, it even caused issues with the brokers’ IT systems. This occurred to a small group of home owners who happened to renew their short term mortgages during a certain timespan. Although it’s a good story, it’s not like Danish home owners generally get paid for their mortgages. It’s mainly a good headline for the real story: That the Danish Realkredit mortgage is a pretty good, stable system with lower interest rates than in many other countries.

For good measure: Home owners don’t directly get paid for negative interest rates. The Realkredit brokers charge a monthly administration fee which vary from about 0.3% to about 2% depending on type of bond and home equity. As the few negative interest bonds are/were about -0.03% home owners still had a monthly payment to make.

Thanks to Rasmus from Pengepugeren for a very elaborate reply and explanation of the background and current situation. If you can read Danish or feel like running his site through Google Translate check out his blog. Some of his interesting posts I would recommend are:

Learning Danish – the Lærdansk Sonderborg Way

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One of the blogposts that has had most interest in this blog mentioned the inauspicious start I had with applying for Danish lessons at the kommune. Inauspicious or not, I did manage to start learning Danish in January 2012. However, having been to Danish lessons for three years on and off, I must admit that it has only served for me to become more and more disillusioned with the whole process.

Let’s Start with the School

In Sønderborg the kommune pays for foreign students to learn Danish at Lærdansk Sonderborg. Essentially, this means that the school has a monopoly in the area. In practice, this means that the school will get money from the kommune regardless of the quality of the teaching, so there seems to be no benefit in investing in improvements. And when I talk about improvements, I am not referring to smart boards and the like, but improvements in the actual quality of teaching.

Quality of Teaching

Where do I start?

Probably one of the biggest downfalls is that there is no emphasis on the basics. People at very different levels are in the same class, all doing the exact same work. E.g. when I started Danish, there were people in my class who had started Danish 3 months earlier. This meant I never got the basics. And there were still people joining 3 months after I did. In fact, I never ever heard the alphabet in class! This lack of basics means that it is next to impossible to understand the more nuanced areas of the language.

This is combined with an education system where there is no progression between one lesson and the next. It is not a course programme that builds one lesson on the previous, such that you continuously build on previous knowledge. Instead, what you get is 10 minutes about nouns one day, and 10 minutes about nouns one month later. And you would have probably missed the first 10 minutes because you hadn’t yet been put in the class.

The Teachers

During my time at Lærdansk Sonderborg I have been with three different teachers. I can sum up these teachers in this way: One came to class completely unprepared (but made sure we had fun). One came slightly more prepared (but was palpably disinterested in most of the students). And the third printed a lot of papers to give out, but there was no obvious explanation as to what we were being given and why. Teachers playing on phones, leaving the room, or showing us films with very limited if any follow up discussions all happened on regular basis.

That said, I have heard of some very good teachers on the grapevine too. Unfortunately, these seem to be very much the exception rather than the rule and I have yet to come across one.

What did I Expect?

What I expected when I started classes is the following:

I expected to learn something new every time I went to class. I expected this to be following some input from the teacher over and above being given a worksheet and being told to get on with it.
I expected the teacher to come to class prepared with a clear plan to make sure that the students are slowly but surely building their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and confidence in the language.
I also expected homework that helped us consolidate what we had learnt in class, if we so wished. When I asked for this I was told “You don’t have time for it as you work”.
I also expected students who were there primarily for the learning (although making friends is an added bonus). This was something that, overall, was true.

Of course, it could be that my learning style is completely unaligned with the Danish teaching style. However, by speaking to a lot of other foreigners, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Or you might say I am expecting too much. After all, the school is free so I should be thankful for whatever I am getting. However, it is not free. I am paying for it from my taxes. You are paying for it from your taxes.

My Danish teaching has not all been this uninspiring. The best (in an, admittedly, poor pool) was with a private teacher through work. It is, obviously, not completely comparable, but the things that really helped were that the teacher asked me where I felt that I needed help, and listened to me by setting clear goals, and an emphasis on ensuring that I had understood what I had done by setting consolidation work. This rarely (if ever) happened in Danish classes at Lærdansk Sonderborg. No questions (or apparent interest) in where we needed help, and a topic was only tackled in one individual task rather than in a more holistic way.

Where am I now?

After 3 years of being in the system, spending most of the time not actually attending lessons, I have now passed my Prøve i Dansk 3 exam in November/December. This is the exam taken at the end of the course that shows proficiency in Danish to a B2 level according to the Common European Language Framework. You might, therefore, say that I reached my aim. However, I would say most of what I learned I learnt from a private teacher, my work colleagues, and from the Netdansk online teaching system, rather than the teaching actually at the Sonderborg Laerdansk school.

A version of this blog post was sent to the school around the time I decided to stop attending classes, with clear information that I was happy and willing to discuss my issues with them in order to make things better. Unfortunately I never received a reply besides that it would be forwarded on within the school.

Chop your own Christmas tree

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During December, especially during the weekend, you will see a lot of cars driving around with Christmas trees either on their roof or in trailers (or even in the car!). This to me is one of the ways that the arrival of Christmas in Denmark is marked, especially since in Malta we typically made do with plastic Christmas trees (and garish lighting…according to Michael!).

Since moving to Denmark I have made sure that we have a Christmas tree every year, even in the years we were not to spend Christmas in our own house. Previously we bought a ready-cut tree. However, since we now have our very own house we decided to ‘upgrade’ to a tree we chose and chopped down ourselves.

Where to chop down your own Christmas tree

Chopping down your own Christmas tree is called ‘Fæld selv’ in Danish. Driving around the countryside you will often find signs during late November/December pointing the way to places where you can do this. If you receive ‘Sonderborg Ugeavis‘ you can also find a page of adverts on one of the pages (on pg. 9 this week, but for some reason this page is missing on the online version). Otherwise, in general, most places are located on Kær, near Augustenborg, near Nordborg, in Syd Als and Vester Sottrup.

The Experience

We opted to go and look for our tree on Kær, since this was the closest to us. We borrowed a trailer from our lovely neighbour (an upgrade from putting the tree inside the car as we have previously done, and contending with tree needles all year round) and off we drove till we found a place close to the airport. We parked our car and walked to the Christmas tree field.

Once you arrive at the field you then have free reign to walk over the place till you identify the perfect tree for you. Everyone will have their own preferences…wide at the bottom, full on top, 2m high, 1 m wide or whatnot. We saw a perfect tree as soon as we walked in, but thought we’d look a bit further. Nevertheless, we returned to the first tree we saw!

Once you identify the perfect tree you can then pick up a saw and go at the tree trunk till the tree is free. You then drag it over to the field entrance, where the owner is there ready to take your money (200 DKK in this case) and also put your tree in a net to make it easier to carry. At the place we visited we also could get some cake and a tractor was there ready to carry you back to the car.

The result? A Christmas tree in our front room, all ready to be decorated, receive presents, and to be danced around in the coming days!

Buying a house in Denmark

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We have just completed the process of buying a house and have spent quite some time looking in to various aspects of property buying and owning in Denmark. This is a compilation of the things we have learned.

Most of the links in this article will unfortunately be to pages in Danish. I have not been able to find that much information in English.

Where to look?

There are two good websites that collect more or less all houses for sale in Denmark. They both offer you the possibility to create a user profile and get alerts when houses matching your criteria come for sale. Neither has an English interface.

Boliga.dk is an independent site that collects data from the differentreal estate agents. Some of the good features about Boliga are:

Get email alerts to let you know when new houses are for sale in your area.
Get email alerts when houses on your watch list have an open house.
You can see what a house has been sold for previously and what the reduction in asking price is.
Houses sold by owner are only listed on Boliga not Boligsiden. Same goes for (very) few real estate agents.

Boligsiden.dk is owned by an association of real estate chains. Some of the good features of boligsiden are:

They get new listings a day before Boliga
You can limit your searches to an area you mark on the map
If you add a house to your “Huskeliste” (favorites) you can see how many other people have “fav’ed” it and how many people look at it.

Some of the interesting facts you can see on the sites are:

How to compare?

The mantra for real estate agent are location, location, location. But there is a couple of other things you can look at in your hunt.

Ask thereal estate agent of a house for the reports and they will send you at least four documents:

Sales Report (Salgesopstilling)
Building Survey (Tilstandsrapport)
Electricity Survey (Eleftersyn)
Energy Report (Energirapport)

These all follow the same standard for all houses so there will be a multitude of parameters which you can use in comparing two or more interesting houses. Here are some of the ones I would like to highlight.

Price per square meter

From the Sales Report you can see the price per m2. It is public data what the m2-price is in any area split by postcode. So by looking at the m2-price of a house you can get an idea of whether it is above or below the average for an area.

Condition of the property

The building survey will give an overview of the house comparable to its age. A surveyor will go through the house and check for visible faults and errors. The damages are rated according to this scale:

K0 = Cosmetic
K1 = Less serious damage
K2 = Serious damage
K3 = Critical damage

This does not tell you how expensive it will be to fix the error but how critical it is to maintain the property’s integrity. For instance, often bathrooms will have lose tiles (K1s or K2s) and outside wood on the house needs painting (K2s or K3s).

The electrical survey is done in a similar way.

Energy rating and costs

Denmark is a cold country and energy costs are a big part of having a house. All houses for sale have to have an energy rating done and you can use this to get an idea of what heating the house will cost you.

The scale goes from A2020 where a 140m2 house costs 1800-3500dkk per year to heat up to G where a 140m2 house cost 26000-35000DKK per year. Compound that to 10-20 years of ownership and you can see that energy costs is a factor to consider.

Roughly speaking moving one step to the left of the scale is equal to a price increase of 800dkk per m2 according to research. If you make certain energy saving initiatives you can improve your energy rating and thereby lower your costs and improve the (potential) value of your house.

In the Sales Report you can see the current owners’ yearly cost of heating. This can vary greatly from the Energy Rating of the house as they might not heat parts of a house or have it colder or warmer than the norm.

Find background information

More and more data in Denmark is getting digitized and the public sector is making good efforts to make it accessible for free. This is to your advantage as you can find a lot of things for free and some sites make it very easy to check things.

Dingeo is a fairly new but really interesting site. If you have an address it lets you find useful information about things like:

Radon level – This is on kommune level, so don’t panic. For Sønderobrg area the kommune is in a risk zone of Radon, so don’t sleep in the basement if you smoke – or measure the Radon if you do.
Ground pollution (Jordforurening) – What polluting businesses have been on the plot or vicinity in the past. The house might sit on top of an old landfill (as is the case with Møllegade in Sønderborg).
Risk of flooding (Oversvømmelsesrisiko) – Climate change has meant warmer and wetter climate in Denmark and that is probably only going to get worse. Avoid buying a house built in a place that used to be a bog or a meadow.
Traffic noise (Trafikstøj) – At the moment this feature can only be used in bigger cities but as the data gets better this may have an impact on house prices as air and noise pollution get more focus.
School rating (Skoler) – Grade averages (Karakter gns), parents net income (Bruttoindkomst) and absent rate (Gns. Fravær) might be used to give you an indication of the people in the neighborhood.

Tinglysning is the public record of who is the legal owner of a property. (Enter street, house number and post code to search). You can also see which mortgages or pledges there are on the property. So you can see how much the current owner put in a mortgage at the time they bought the house. You can compare that to the “Salgsopstilling” where it often says how much they still owe on a house.

Mortgage and costs

Today there are a multitude of ways to borrow money for a house in Denmark. So here is the simplified version.

80% of a loan can be made as a mortgage (Realkreditlån). The rest of the borrowed amount you either have to pay as a down payment or get a bank loan (banklån). Depending on your relation with your bank they will require you to make a down payment of somewhere around 5% of the borrowed amount.

The two main variety of loans are Fixed Rate Loans (Fastforrentet lån) or Adjustable Rate Mortgage (Rentetilpasset lån). What to choose depends on your risk profile, life choices and finances, so you need to talk to a professional for advice. To see what you could end up paying for different loan amounts try this Loan Calculator.

The traditional mortgage model in Denmark (PDF link) is well regulated by law so you are fairly protected as long as you pay your dues. There are four mortgage institutions in Denmark: Realkredit Danmark, Nykredit, BRFKredit, Nordea. All of them are now owned by banks and the prices are pretty much the same – here’s a price guide. You can’t bargain about the interest rate but if you let your other bank business follow your mortgage you can negotiate about fees.

For the bank loan bit it is all up to the bank to decide, so here the different banks will offer you different products and prices depending on how they evaluate your finances.

You get a tax discount of about 33% of the interest you pay on a mortgage per year. So if you borrow 2 million fixed at 2,5% for 30 years your monthly payment is 9500dkk before tax and 7680 dkk after tax.

The “bidding game”

It is quite common that there is a negotiation going on about the price of a house and unless you are buying in a red-hot market it is of great financial benefit for you to know what the market price is and how much to bargain for. The longer the house has been on the market the more likely it is that you can squeeze the price.

The good thing with the publicly available data on, for instance, Boliga is that you can see how other people have bargained. In Sonderborg at the moment houses sell for 6-10% lower than the asking price. (And the asking price might have already been reduced if the house didn’t sell quick) See Actual house sales and how much they were reduced in price.

Get professional help

Remember that the real estate agent is the “seller’s guy”. He is typically paid a percentage of the sale, so his interest is in creating a quick sale for the highest possible price.

The bank “advisor” is also not there for you but to make money on you and he can be paid a commission based on what loan you chose.

So do yourself a favour and either do a lot of research into the field or spend money on professional help. You only have to get professional help to sign the deed but the money is most likely well spent.

The advisors I would suggest you consider consulting are:

– A builder/carpenter or construction technical advisor (Byggeteknisk rådgiver) can help you asses the general condition of the house and which repairs you need to plan and what they might cost. The Building Survey covers some of these areas but it does not give you a complete picture of the house. If you have a local network you can also ask around for a reputable carpenter to see if they want to consult for you.

– A lawyer to write the deed but also to guide you through the legal implications of a house sale.

– An independent financial advisor who can help with financial overview and explain the different loan types, help you choose the right loan and negotiate with the bank.

Buying a house as a non-Dane

If you are not a Danish citizen there are special rules for buying a house.

In order to buy property in Denmark you need to be residing in Denmark (be in the country for at least 180 days a year). If you as a EU citizen live and work here this is just a checkbox on a form. If you are not from EU or you do not live here permanently you need a special permit from the Ministry of Justice.

If you do not comply with the rules you can be forced to sell your property. So if in doubt talk to a lawyer.

Costs of buying a house

These are some ball park figures of what the one time costs are to buy a house in Denmark:

Deposit: Minimum 5%-10% of the sales price
Notary of loans (Tinglysning) from 8,000dkk – 37,400dkk depending on current loans in house and cost of house.
Standard lawyer fee for writing the deed from 4,000 – 10,000dkk
Owner change insurance – 10,000 – 20,000dkk (optional but advisable)

The running costs depend on the house but they include:

House insurance
Utilities (Water, electricity, power)
Garbage removal
TV license
Property tax
Property value tax (for the kommune)

An example of different types of family budgets can be found here.

Updated 11/2/2017: Link to budget changed as old link was dead.

To dash or not to dash

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International family law can be complicated. When couples join up across borders cultures, norms and bureaucracy can get tangled up in the process. Some of it can be enlightening and charming but sometimes it’s just frustrating. This is a case of the latter where two countries with equally bureaucratic systems butt heads.

We got married this spring in Malta and wanted to change our name in the process. We figured there might be a bit of bureaucracy involved but figured we could work it out.

We wanted to join our two surnames so both of us would be called “Fenech Andersen”, so we could have the same name and Ann could have the same identity in Denmark and in Malta.

We got married in Malta where the husband doesn’t change his name. So after our marriage Michael kept his name and Ann changed hers to “Fenech Andersen”.

After arriving back in Denmark, Michael went and changed his surname to “Fenech-Andersen”. In Denmark you can change your name to a lot of things but you cannot have two surnames (a double name) without them being joined by a dash. Unless you are Spanish – or from a Spanish speaking country – then you can…

Although people often think Malta is a Spanish speaking country it is not. So when Ann came back to Denmark she went to the kommune to ask to have her new name registered. They sent her to the church (because in Sønderjylland the church handles all name changes (when they are not done within 3 months of the marriage)). The church disagreed and tried to send her back to the kommune but we ended up back at the church. At the end of that loop de loop we got the verdict that Denmark would not recognize Ann’s new double surname from Malta. Had she been double surnamed when she moved here it might have been a different story.

So Denmark has spoken: it had to be the dash. So now she is changing her name in Denmark to “Fenech-Andersen”. We contacted the embassy to hear if a name change made to a Maltese citizen in Denmark would be recognised and they came back and said a name change will be recognised but, no – in Malta you cannot have a dash in your last name.

Maybe it’s not a big deal – it is after all just a dash. But still it’s a strange realisation that Ann in essence will end up having two identities. In Malta, in her passport and when she books flights she will be Ann Fenech Andersen. In Denmark, on her health insurance card, at her bank and to her colleagues her name is Ann Fenech-Andersen. Her two “home” countries has diverging naming laws that can’t agree whether to dash or not.

Want to know more?

The Danish Act of Names

The Danish tradition of Polterabend

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Michael and I got married a few weeks ago (*yeay* to us). This has meant trying to navigate through a lot of Danish traditions, deciding how to mesh up both of our cultures, traditions and expectations. One of the traditions I have been (happily) initiated into is the ‘Polterabend’, also known as a hen’s night or bachelorette party in other parts of the world. And, surprisingly, it was my (super lovely) colleagues who planned it for me!

The first characteristic of a Danish polterabend appears to be that it should be a complete surprise to the person getting married. This was very easy in my case – I didn’t suspect a single thing (not least because I had no idea this could even happen). There was collusion in the plan by all at work, with my manager calling me in for a (bogus) meeting, and coordination with Michael so I don’t have the car on that day.

Another characteristic is a lot of planned events. We first had cake and coffee. Then some painting. Then a dance class. Then a visit to a shooting range for some target practice. Then on to health and beauty centre, to have fish munch around our feet. And then dinner. But that was not the end! After dinner we had a quiz prepared by one of my colleagues on Danish design. We finally went home when we were kicked out of the restaurant!

In Malta, ‘hen’s nights’ are typically friendly events, if often a tad embarrassing. In Denmark, what you should be aware of, however, seems to be ‘danger’! I am lucky that my colleagues are mature, responsible people. But they did mention a couple of times that we were going to the dentist. Oh! And they brought a swim suit for me, and took me to the Viking bathing club…in March! Luckily for me, no swimming was involved. It was only a ‘threat’. We just got lovely sparkling wine just outside on the bridge.

It was a great day, especially coming from my colleagues. For the non-Danes out there, it is good to mention that people here tend to keep their work and home life very separate, and they find it baffling to be called friends when they are ‘just’ colleagues. So it was extra special that they went through all this effort just for me.

All that was left was then actual wedding. Unfortunately for you guys it won’t be a ‘typical Danish wedding’, but a mish-mash of our two cultures. However, you can read about traditional Danish weddings in a previous blog post.

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?

Views on my Return

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Before moving to Denmark, we lived in London. By the time we came to move, we were ready to leave the big city for somewhere new. However, that doesn’t mean that there is nothing I miss! Having returned for a short holiday a few weeks ago, these are the things that I miss the most:

London Transport

Now, I think you will struggle to find a British person who extols the virtues of London transport. It is crowded, possibly confusing and, incorporating the oldest underground railway system in the world, often has breakdowns or big maintenance projects. However, when I compared my experience there with the experience I had in Copenhagen less than a week before my London trip, this is what I miss:

1. People wait for you to get off public transport before getting on

Copenhagen transport seems to be a free for all, with the idea of a ‘functioning queue’ far from most people’s in built concepts. It was a pleasure being able to get off the train without struggling against a flood of people, or being shoved by people from behind if you refuse to push in on getting on.

2. Stand to the right, walk on the left on escalators

Another concept that doesn’t seem to have reached Copenhagener’s inbuilt concepts. If you see a person on London transport that is standing on the left of the escalator, you can be pretty sure that that is a tourist. Otherwise people beautifully line themselves on the right if they don’t want to climb the escalators, or walk up on the left. If you’re not in a hurry you can let the escalator do the work, but for you who needs to get things done, you can power up at the same time.

Shops & Shop Keepers

I could always moan about prices. After all, I never thought that I would live somewhere more expensive than Denmark. But, actually, that is not my main gripe about Danish shops. It is actually the shopkeepers!

3. Do you need any help?

I have learnt that in Denmark you can go to school to learn how to become a shopkeeper. It seems that the one thing that all of them have learnt (besides how to wrap gifts beautifully!) is that ‘as soon as a client comes in go right up and ask if they need anything’. In the UK, they let you browse around, and then after a few minutes, after you have had some time to look around and think about what you need, come over and ask if you need some help. Unfortunately, by this time, the Danish shopkeepers typically have disappeared to somewhere where I can never find them. Much more useful for me!

Getting Clean

We have been looking at houses recently in Sønderborg. Unfortunately, it seems, whenever a bathroom gets remodelled here, the bath is one of the first things to go. Our apartment is similar: no bath, just a shower. Being in London, this is what I realised that I have missed:

4. Getting properly clean in a bath

I struggle to believe that I can get completely clean by washing myself with a point source on top of my head. Unfortunately, unless we buy a house and remodel the bathroom, I don’t think I will get this here. The estate agents I have seen have looked at me as though I am completely bonkers for wanting a bath. And then remember a house with an ugly 60s-80s bathroom that is in desperate need of remodelling to offer us. It was utter bliss to be able to relax and feel completely clean for once!

What about you? What do you miss when you return to Denmark that you never thought you would?

Voting in Denmark

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Being an EU citizen living in Denmark I get the right to vote in local elections (though not national elections) as soon as I get registered here. I really believe that if you get the opportunity to vote you should, as this is one of the (few) ways you can get your voice heard. Useless complaining afterwards if you didn’t bother to make an effort to vote in the first place.

Updating my Political Knowledge

I am used to a mainly 2-party system, so getting my head around all the different parties and all the different politicians was a bit overwhelming at first. I tried to read up, though most information was available only in Danish (and maybe in German). Luckily, the university organised a debate in English, so I took the opportunity to learn a bit about the parties represented there. Slowly I started to separate the parties out. I’m nowhere near clear what all the different parties stand for, but I have a much better grip on it than I did a few months ago. Watching Borgen and Michael telling me how real-life parties are similar to Borgen-parties also helped!

Election Day

We arrived at the polling station (the library) and was surprised to see a bit of a queue forming. Where I normally vote there are maybe 2-3 people maximum in front of me. Here there were around 20-25. Voting was held in a big room, with around 10-15 polling booths, unlike the 3 I am used to. Therefore, the queue moved quickly (less than 5 minute wait).

I was quite surprised a the informality of it all. There was no ‘proving of identity’. Since I wasn’t sure what was needed I took my driving license, my national ID card, and my passport – just in case. But they only asked me for my date of birth. It could have very easily have been someone else with my voting document as there was no picture. Didn’t feel that was very secure, but if it works and speeds things up, I will trust in their judgement. Another thing was that, unlike in Malta where you only enter the polling booth room when there is an empty polling booth, here you are given the voting document and then wait till a polling booth gets empty, when it becomes a free for all: whoever gets to the polling booth first gets to go in :D.

Another surprise was the length of the ballot. Having 17 parties for the local council election, with many candidates on each list, the ballot was LONG. Once you get the document and grab a polling booth you then get to vote. Having seen the length of the ballot, the tinyness of the tables on which to vote was, however, quite comical!

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How do I vote?

Once we got to the queue I realised that there must be a lot I didn’t know about what to do in the polling booth itself! In Malta there is always an information campaign telling us what needs to be done. I didn’t come across anything here. To be honest, the system here is much easier: You only get to vote for one person or party, and you just mark it with an ‘X’.

The Outcome

I am used to elections on a Saturday, where I spend the day listening to election news and keeping track of what is going on. Election being held on a work day meant that I missed out on this part, so it was only after work that I could keep myself updated by the progress.

Counted was completed for Sønderborg kommune around 11:15 pm, so that is around 3 hrs after polling booths were closed. We now have a Social Democrat mayor, which is a change from the Fælleslisten mayor we had after the previous election. The complete list of elected candidates can be found here.

Election is coming and you should vote

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Local and regional council elections are coming up on Tuesday 19th of November and you should vote – yes you!

You get to vote on two things:

The local council (Kommunalbestyrelsen) that makes decisions about things like schools, roads, planning, culture.
The regional council (Regionsrådet) that makes decisions about higher education and health care.

Who can vote?

You are able to vote in local and regional elections if you are over 18, reside permanently in Denmark and if one of these apply to you. You:

Are a Danish citizen with an address in Denmark
Are a non-citizen who has lived in Denmark for the three years leading up to the election
Are a citizen of a EU country, Iceland or Norway, living in Denmark

So for instance if you have studied here for more than three years or are an EU national who just moved here to work – then you can vote in this election.

How can I vote?

You might be surprised to know that you can already go vote today. From the 20th August to the 16th November you can “vote by letter“. That means you can go to the Borgerservice office, show passport and the yellow sygesikring and give your vote. If you are out of the country you can also go to a Danish embassy or consulate to vote in this way.

Most people vote on the day of the election – Tuesday 19th of November. Depending on where you live you have to go to a specific location to vote. Here is a map of the voting places in Sonderborg Kommune. You can vote from 9am to 8pm on the day so you should be able to make it before or after work.

Bring your voting card (valgkort) that arrives in the mail and some ID (sygesikring, passport or EU driving license). On your voting card it will say which table you should go to collect your ballot.

Once you getting your ballots (one for city and one for region council) you step into an enclosed space with a small table and a pencil. You have to go in here on your own to ensure that you cast your vote in private. The voting ballot will be long with approximately 100 names on it. You need to put one (1) X next to either a party or a person. If you make a mistake you can get a new ballot.

Once your ballots are filled out you put them in the voting box and you are done.

Who can I vote for?

In Denmark you can vote for either a person or a party. Here is a page where you can see the results of last election in 2009.

The final list of candidates and parties is announced on October 22nd. In Sønderborg the parties you can vote for are:

List A – Socialdemokratiet
List B – Det Radikale Venstre
List C – Det Konservative Folkeparti
List F – Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF)
List K – Kristendemokraterne
List L – Fælleslisten
List O – Dansk Folkeparti
List S – Slesvigsk Parti
List V – Venstre
List Ø – Enhedslisten

Why should I vote?

Sønderborg City Council manages a yearly budget of 4.7 billion DKK regarding the kommune and in the election your vote is they way you can influence how this money should be used.