The Danes,The Swedes and A Swadesi

Blessed me...I am exposed to these two quite yet sound countries of Europe,Of Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden.
I travelled alongwith my husband,about two years back to Denmark, rated Top as 'The happiest country' in the world. I landed in January and all I could see was WHITE. It snows cats and dogs in Denmark in the winters.
(Phrase finder 'cats and dogs': http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/raining%20cats%20and%20dogs.html)
Whatever geography I read in school, "There are four seasons in a year, spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter", I could actually see them all here. It is very beautifully distinguished by Mother Nature.


The Danish population is not more than 5 Million - 50 Lakhs,so the countryside for a train journey is like heaven, lot of open space, too many colours in the other three seasons than winter...The Autumn colours especially are a visual treat!
In winter it’s just white and white all around.
The lake nearer to our house was all ice in the minus degree times, and it was fun to watch the ducks just walking on it and no need swimming.

The Danes are too too good people, honest and helping.

They speak English if required, but they are particular about their language. I went for an interview in a Danish telecom company, and found it surprising that their intranet, official emails, documents everything was in Danish. 'W' has no place in the Danish alphabets, so they pronounce it as V V when they have to spell out say WLAN for example. They have three extra alphabets and I somehow managed to learn to pronounce them, its like aa,ae and oe. My laptop was bought in Denmark and I have those three letters in the keyboard.

The danish pronounce the J as Y and Y as U. So when we pronounce Jylland the Danish are like clueless what are we saying, as they say it Yulland...:-) Funny initial days with this pronunciation stuff. We lived in Islandsgade, its pronounced as Eeslandsgale in Denmark, so if we tell the taxa(that is taxi)driver, Ilandsgade(like in English), he is like Whhhhhhhheeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrreeeeee??
And me and my husband were knocked out when we had to tell our house address to our family back in India, we said Eeslandsgale, and spelled it like I S L A N D... our family went crazy, "You people don’t know how to say Iland and you are abroad?"

The taxation is the highest in Denmark, we pay half of our earnings to the government, but the facilities are like AWESOME. The hospital is completely free of cost. The public libraries are amazing with free broadband, free local calls, and the public transportation, THE BEST.
One thing that I did not like about the Danish doctors was they were very procedural. I mean at times, there is emotion that comes first and then what they read in medical books - This is my opinion.

Denmark is not a place for Tourists. But standing on top of the light house in Skagen, the northern tip of denmark and watching the rendezvous of Baltic sea and North sea, the mixture of sea blue and green colours, AN EYE CANDY in no doubt.

The danish parties are so so wet, lots and lots of liquors. They start with white wine and then it is red wine during the meal course,vodka,whisky and what not with dessert...its not so much fun for non-alcoholics to party with danish. We have to look like dumb with coke and fanta, but how many soft drinks, can one drink really? And the person next to you is like filling glass after glass and also different glasses for different type of drink...:-)one small for vodka, and two wine glasses for red and white, and a hot drink glass...and he also at times takes soft drinks and water for a change. I think beer sales are at its peak in the weekends, I have seen people packing too many beer cases from the supermarkets.

The Danish are crazy about sun. It’s just three months in a year that they get to see proper sun, so they really love it. They wanna go beaches, get sun tanned, and have lotsa barbeques. Its funny to see some of my colleagues being proud about HOW BROWN THEY BECAME, after a sunny weekend in a beach:-)

So now Sweden, moved here about three months ago, well, not much different from denmark. But the population made it worse, when it comes to searching apartments, fixing a doctor appointment and things like that. But otherwise, an equally good country. But I liked Denmark more.

BUT I LOVE INDIA, the most most.

Useful info: Jylland(Peninsula in northern Europe that forms the continental part of Denmark and a northern part of Germany) in English is Jutland and the Southern part of Sweden, is known as Skane.
They have different currencies, the Danish Kroner and the Swedish Kroner.