Private-equity pastry and the decline of bodegas: How Denmark is changing

Hello and welcome to the How to Live in Denmark podcast. I'm Kay Xander Mellish. I help out at a flea market sometimes near Copenhagen. A flea market that's held a few times a year to benefit my daughter's marching band. We sell things that people have sent for recycling. But we have one persistent problem: too many shot glasses. Each week brings dozens of beautiful crystal shot glasses, prized for a lifetime by someone from the older generation— perhaps now the dead generation. These people used to use their shot glasses to drink clear snaps before fancy Easter lunches, or drink a dark, bitter alcohol called gammeldansk before breakfast. People in Denmark don't do that much anymore. They go jogging before breakfast and drink wine for holiday lunches, if they drink alcohol at lunch at all. And most people already have a set of grandpa's old shot glasses gathering dust somewhere at the back of a cabinet. They don't need any more shot glasses. So week after week, these lovely little etched crystal glasses line up like fragile soldiers on the storage shelves at the flea market. Nobody needs them, nobody buys them, but we just don't have the heart to throw them out. Every place changes, and so does Denmark. When I hold How to Live in Denmark events, people often ask me how Denmark is changing or has changed since I got here 15 years ago. Now I could name a hundred things, but the first one that always comes to mind is food and drink. Shot glasses are out. Snaps and gammeldansk are out. Fine wine is in, although it's almost always bought on sale at the supermarket. The small food stores that used to be on every corner in Denmark—the poleg or sausage shop—they're out. The fish shop, the mejeri or the dairy shop. That's out. There also used to be an odd type of Danish store called a kolonial, which sold canned goods and dry goods— basically stuff from the old Danish colonies in Africa and India and the Caribbean. That's out too. Supermarkets are in. Now, in some ways this is a good thing. When I got here 15 years ago, all the stores in Denmark closed early Saturday afternoon and were closed all day Sunday too. Except for one ragged little shop in Copenhagen train station. I think a lot of Sunday dinners were saved by that ragged little shop. But now the big supermarkets are open all week and, and most evenings. And so is the new breed of food specialty shops, mostly bakery chains. Now I have to admit that these trendy new bakeries are pretty good. Actually, they're a lot better than the dusty little independent bakeries that used to be open on every street corner. Serving flat croissants and stale pastries. My favorite bakery chain is called Laukehus. When I first arrived here, Laukehus was a single bakery in the Christianshavn neighborhood of Copenhagen. People would come from far and wide to buy bread and pastry there. On Sundays, it was so crowded that you had to take a number and stand in line for an hour to get a loaf of bread or some pastry. I mean, it's excellent pastry, but come on, an hour? Anyway, a private equity fund ended up buying that single bakery, and now there are dozens of Laukehuset, including two at Copenhagen Airport and one at the main train station. I think they're still as good as the original. I wish someone would make a chain for traditional Danish håndmad, or hand food—the little open-faced sandwiches also known as smørbrød. This is the traditional lunch of the Danish working class. Hand food is still sold at a few little shops that open at 7 in the morning, when painters and plumbers and other people who work with their hands are on their way to work. These little small shops are usually run by large cheerful ladies who do all the cooking and slicing themselves. They have only a limited number of sandwiches per day, so when they're gone, they're gone, and they don't make any more. In fact, the shops usually close at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. And the ones near me will only take cash. I mean, I love smørrebrød, and I would eat a lot more smørrebrød if these shops didn't make it so bloody difficult. I see fewer smørrebrød shops than I used to, and a lot fewer bodegas. A bodega in Denmark is a type of bar, a bit like British pubs, only darker and smokier and usually populated by the old and the poor and the disabled. Maybe a few random hipsters or some working-class guys or gals having a beer after work. Bodegas tend to serve flat beer in scratched glasses or wine that tastes like the bottle has been open for a couple of days. Yet I like bodegas because they're a place for people who might otherwise be lonely to hang out and enjoy some togetherness. If poor and displaced Danes didn't have a bodega to hang out in, I'm sure the Danish state would end up creating some day center for them to hang out, which would basically be the same except for the alcohol. That said, I don't see any private equity funds creating a chain of bodegas anytime soon. There are other changes too since I arrived in Denmark. You can really see the impact of digitalization. There are very few paper newspapers in Denmark these days, very few letters, and hardly any post boxes, and not much paper money. In general, you can also see that Denmark has become more prosperous. It was common 15 years ago to see apartments that had toilets in the hallways. And a few houses that still relied on wood or coal stoves. But you don't see that much anymore. And of course, Denmark has become a more multicultural society over the past 15 years. At the flea markets, I find myself selling a lot of plates and cups and kitchenware from recently deceased Danes to new arrivals— sometimes students, sometimes refugees— people like I was 15 years ago. People who are just setting up households in Denmark. They need everything: chairs, tables, pots, pans. The only thing they don't seem to need is shot glasses. And that's the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. The How to Live in Denmark book is now available at the Danish National Gallery, the Statens Museum for Kunst, in the gift shop, as well as the gift shop at the Danish National Museum. Or you can get it online at howtoliveindenmark.com. You can also get the electronic version at Amazon Kindle. Tell me how Denmark has changed since you arrived here. Leave a comment on Facebook on our How to Live in Denmark page or on Twitter at How2LiveInDK. The 2 is a number. See you next time. Bye.