Kay Xander Mellish recounts her first year in Denmark 25 years ago, when she was constantly awkward, got called the "Hamburger Girl," and couldn't figure out how to make friends outside group activities. She bought a vintage bike, worked two short tech jobs, and spent a year unemployed taking Danish classes and visiting every free museum in Copenhagen.
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Hello and welcome to the How to Live in Denmark podcast. I'm Kay Xander Mellish. I'd like to share with you the introduction to my new book, The Danish Year: 12 Months of Customs, Quirks, and Rhythms of Everyday Life in Denmark. It's called My Awkward First Year in Denmark. One thing no one ever tells you about moving to a new country is the incredible awkwardness of it. As a newcomer, you are constantly doing or saying or planning the wrong thing, something that would be perfectly reasonable in your home culture, but it's weird or laughable in your new location. Like eating alone in a restaurant. When I arrived in Denmark 25 years ago, I already had a job as a content creator for a small tech company. What I didn't have was any friends or any more than a superficial knowledge of the Danish language or culture. My new colleagues were very pleasant, but like most Danes over 25, they had already built their social networks and weren't really looking for someone to hang out with after work. So I spent most of my free time alone, living temporarily at a small hotel by the Copenhagen lakes. Where I chatted aimlessly with the receptionist, who believed I was in love with him, I later found out. Then I went out to eat by myself at a local restaurant. Danes generally don't eat alone at restaurants, so after a while I became a familiar figure that the staff called the Hamburger Girl, after my standard order. When I wasn't eating, I wandered around Copenhagen looking in shop windows, taking photos of mannequins wearing the local fashions. At the time, there was a fad for miniskirts worn over a pair of jeans. I was impressed by how many shops selling summer clothing chose to close for a 3-week holiday during summer vacation. I bought a bicycle at Urania, a 100-year-old bike shop near Vesterport, Choosing a silver Batavis model that I still own in very beaten-up condition. Bicycle culture was one of the reasons I moved to Denmark. While I have a driver's license and I like to drive, in particular on the wide-open highways of the American West, I don't like to be locked away in a car all the time. I like to look at people's faces. Having noticed how feral the Danish bike lanes can be, with speed demons zooming up behind you, I asked the people at Urania to fit my bike with a rearview mirror. My Danish colleagues found this to be hilarious. They said rearview mirrors were only for old ladies and people in motorized wheelchairs. So I took it off. Over time, I learned how to use a bike for every kind of transport, even in the rain, even carrying large or bulky objects. Living in Manhattan, I'd been hailing taxis whenever I felt lazy, but Danish taxis are very expensive. So I learned how to transport groceries on a bike, filling up the basket with bottles, suspending lighter items like packaged toilet roll from the handlebars. I learned how to transport plastic-covered dry cleaning on a bike, carefully folding my newly cleaned outfits and propping them up on top of the basket. When an elderly man died in the neighborhood and his family, having chosen a few sentimental items, allowed neighbors to take their pick of the remaining furniture, I transported a 6-foot-tall, 3-headed floor lamp on a bicycle. The base of the lamp on the seat, the lampshades sticking up in the air. I still own that lamp today, too. Making friends took me a long time. I tried to do it the New York City way, going to cool events— art openings, chic nightclubs— striking up conversations with cool people, and then asking them if they would like to hang out on another occasion. But that's not how Danish people meet each other. Danes meet each other through groups and group projects. The group hangs out, and then perhaps 2 or 3 people from the group spire off into a separate friendship. Talking to people outside of a group is unusual, and my attempts at spontaneous conversation were taken as annoying and sometimes misunderstood. I remember one of my first weekends in Copenhagen, I joined a boat trip to Flækfort, one of the islands in Copenhagen Harbor. I thought I'd meet people on the boat. I mean, I'd been chatting up people on boats and buses and Eurail trains my entire adult life. But the people on this boat had come for an afternoon with their friends, and they didn't want to meet me. I ended up sitting by myself on the island. Fortunately, it was a nice day. Slowly, I did make friends. The waitress at the restaurant who served me hamburgers every day asked if I would like to hang out sometime and practice my Danish. A colleague from work reached out to me when she saw I had no plans for one of the multiple Danish spring holidays. At a business event, I discovered I was wearing the same distinctive Dabjerga in Mikkelsen trousers as another attendee, and we began talking and became friends. I joined groups and events and gradually built up a social circle. My first year in Denmark was rocky professionally. The company that brought me over ran into financial difficulties and let me go. I found another job with a similar small tech company, which also ran aground after a few months. And then I was unemployed for a year. While slowly going through my savings, I took Danish classes and visited every museum in Copenhagen on its weekly free day. Culture museums, history museums, art museums, technical museums— I did them all. And I learned a lot about Danish culture and started to recognize the patterns of the Danish year. Knowing how the Danish year evolves can help you in your planning and help you understand which upcoming events and traditions the Danes around you are so excited about. It makes life in Denmark a little less confusing. When I later trained incoming corporate employees on how to survive and thrive in Denmark, I would always include a section on the rhythm of the Danish year, and that is the basis of this book. Having lived here so long, I suppose my life now follows the same rhythms. Some traditions still aren't mine. I don't have a summer house. I don't send gækkebrev, and I don't follow Danish handball or badminton. And one more thing. I still think a rearview mirror on my bicycle would be very practical. And that's the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. You can get the book, The Danish Year: 12 Months of Customs, Quirks, and Rhythms of Everyday Life, is now available for download on Amazon Kindle for only 35 Danish It's about $5, €5, £4. And to celebrate, I have set the prices of all my other books down to 35 crowns, also for download on Amazon Kindle. So you can get How to Live in Denmark, a humorous guide for internationals and their Danish friends, or How to Work in Denmark, tips for finding a job, succeeding, Meeting at Work and Understanding Your Danish Boss. You can also get Working with Americans: Tips for Danes, Working with Danes: Tips for Americans, or Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English, all for just 35 crowns for download on Amazon Kindle. See you next time.
