The long days

In the summer, Denmark heavily overcompensates for all the grayness, sunlessness and darkness that lasts between 6 and 7 months. Last year it started with September 1st. On that day the clouds came and they stayed all the way until March 15th. In that whole period, there was in total 4 weeks of sunny days but they were spread out far from each other.

But then the sun came and now the situation is completely different. Rainy days are few and spread out thin. Weather is beautiful but not too hot and the days are long. And when I say long, I mean loooooong. Today on 22nd June sunrise is in 4:28 and sunset is at 21:59. But in reality it means even more daylight, that I had the opportunity to experience firsthand. Last year I was volunteering on Roskilde Festival and one shift was a night shift, from 10 o'clock in the evening to 8 o'clock in the morning. It was completely dark from 11:30 until approximately 3:30. At 3:30 it slowly started getting brighter.

Some time ago I read a comment, from another foreigner who also lives in Denmark, where he said that Danes are taking their holidays in the wrong part of the year because in the summer, parks in Copenhagen are one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

The longer I live her, the more I see reason in his thinking. Denmark is indeed a beautiful place to be in the summer months. Days are long and sunny, temperatures are moderate, it rarely goes above 30 degrees and nature is beautiful in a gentle Danish way. It will not leave you breathless though, like some beautiful sceneries from the Alps, Greece or Norway might. In summer months Denmark is indeed a place to be. You don't need a break from Denmark in the summer, you need it in the winter. You need it when the clouds return and when you experience first hand why does the word 'sky' in Danish stand for a cloud. That's when Denmark gets hard to endure, that is a part of the reason behind the whole hygge 'concept'. It is basically danish coping mechanism against the heavy Danish fall/winter weather. That is the best time to go for a holiday to some southern European country or a north African country.

Even though I miss my family and I would rather go for a summer holiday vacation then not. But corona makes planning a bit tricky and there is a real risk that you could get stuck outside Denmark. It is just the fact of life and it is the same for everyone. Spending the summer in Denmark actually isn't that bad at all. This year hopefully I will have the opportunity to get a break from Denmark when it is really needed.

Bad teachers and language learning

Last year, in September, I started attending Danish lessons. The other day it occurred to me just how fast I have progressed. Last September Danish sounded like white noise to me. When people around me would be talking in Danish I wasn't getting anything. Today, 9 and a half months later I am ready to start reading books in Danish (real books, with the help of the dictionary of course), I can hear what Danes are saying and depending on the topic of conversation I can understand, from the general topic of the conversations to the details, but I still need to focus. If my mind is wandering I still get very little. But the point of this blog post isn't bragging.

When I was finishing elementary school and I needed to choose high school, one of the important criteria for me was the second language. I wanted to avoid German, I didn't feel like learning German and I was lucky. There was an option to sign up for the class where primary foreign language was English and secondary foreign language was Italian. I immediately jumped for the opportunity.

As it turned out, maybe I wasn't lucky at all, maybe it would have been better if I went for German, despite my reluctance. At least today I could say that I know two foreign languages and am currently working on the 3rd one.

I was motivated to learn Italian, not as I am today to learn Danish, but I was motivated. I was always a bit of a geek for learning and school and social and humanistic sciences always appealed to me. But today, the only thing I can say in Italian is "My name is Bruno." I don't even remember how to spell it though. And the lessons were equally intensive as I have them today in language school, two times per week.

The problem was that we had a horrible teacher. She neither could teach nor keep us in check. Every class was mayhem and it was like that for 4 years and we weren't happy with that either. There was a couple of students in my class who learned Italian in the elementary school. I remember one of them saying to me at the end of the fourth year that now he knows less Italian compared to when he finished elementary-school.

So after four years of learning Italian from a person who wasn't supposed to teach, I got nothing. After 6 and a half months (from September 1st to middle of March when school stopped because of corona) of learning danish, taught by good teachers, I got enough knowledge that by working at home I brought myself to the level where, with the help of the dictionary, I can read real books in danish and news. Tthere is still a lot to do for me. But compared to where I was at the beginning of September, today I am light years ahead.

The tragedy of Croatian educational system is that bad teachers that unfortunately work in schools, like my Italian teacher, are not uncommon. While I was working on university I was talking to my students about it often and there wasn't one student who didn't encounter at least one, sometimes more teachers who were like that. The problem is that, as I was joking around, when you get a permanent employment contract in Croatian schools, you can get fired only if you kill a student or arrive into the classroom naked. How it is in Denmark, I cannot say. My experiences for now were positive but very narrow in scope to make an assumption on a bigger scale.

High living standard

The reason why Danish living standard is so high because of their labor unions. When labor union movements started in Europe, they spread to Denmark as well but with two key differences. One was that they were super successful in organizing workers and the second one was that they decided not to take the path to communism. If we boil it down to the essentials these are the two key reasons for the high living standards in Denmark.

At it's high point, between 1973 and 1982 membership of all labor unions in the whole country was a bit over 2 million. That is, 2 million people in the whole country were members of some labor union. Just for the comparison, in 1980 Denmark had total population of 5.1 million people. I think that portrays the picture of just how strong the labor unions were.

To simplify it, that gave negotiating power to the unions. Their membership was high enough that they could mount a serious pressure on the employers. Because of that employers organized themselves in unions as well and the negotiations started. Through and because of this balance of power between union organizations and employer organizations virtually everything related to work, working conditions, maternity leave, vacations etc. at the start was exclusively negotiated between these two groups and politicians stayed away. And this is what the Danes proudly call "The Danish model". This model and its huge success from the end of the 19th century to mid 1980is brought the prosperity Denmark is enjoying today.

But Danish labor Unions didn't buy in on the labor union ideals all the way. They stopped short of communism. Which means that while they did ask for better working conditions and shorter hours they never questioned the employers right to delegate work tasks. So importance of the employers was acknowledged and respected.

But maybe Danish labor unions were too successful. From 2007 membership in the labor unions is in a steady decline. Could it be that young Danes forgot why do they live such good lives? Foreigners most likely don't since they weren't brought up in Denmark. But that is a story for another post. Important point to take from this one is that Denmark is a well off country because it adopted a model in which profits are more equally distributed. Where middle and lower middle class have high buying power and that is the thing that makes their economy run around. If it weren't for the labor unions and the collective mentality "we are all in this together" Denmark wouldn't be where it is today.

How to kill a Croatian

Croats are very proud people and they hold their nation and national accomplishments in a very high esteem. They will say, full of pride, that they chased away the Turks (Ottoman Empire), French (Napoleon), Germans (WW2) and successfully defended against the Serbian aggression in the last war even though Serbia had the full might of ex-Jugoslavian army in control. When you hear it this way, you would think that Croatians are sturdy folk and that you shouldn't mess around with them.

But, there is also the other side of the medal. Croatians are also very soft and tender souls who are prone to succumb to ailments to which the rest of the world is immune. Unlike the rest of the human kind, while a Croat thrives in trenches and being under siege and will withstand it no problem for the indefinite amount of time, draft, direct contact with wet or/and cold surface without protection and exposure of his wet hair to cold outside air may cause his untimely and unexpected demise.

In Croatian culture, since your earliest age there are three things that are an absolute no no. They are more important then the 10 commandments and don't forget that Croatia is mostly Catholic country with very strong religious feelings. The 3 absolutely forbidden activities are:

1. Thou shall not sit in a draft!
2. Thou shall not sit on a cold or wet surface without one layer of protection!
3. Thou shall not leave the apartment with wet hair!

As I said, failure to abide by these three commandments may result in an untimely death.

In Croatian culture children are told by their parents, grandparents and all other care takers that failure to follow these three rules will always result in sickness. Whenever someone gets sick the conversation goes in accordance with these lines:

Sick person: " I am not feeling well. I have a slight fever, headache and I can't get out of bed. I have no energy for anything."

Healthy person: "But what did you do? Why did you get sick?"

Sick person: "I don't know, I was taking all the precautions."

Healthy person: "But the other day, when we were at your place didn't you make a draft?"

Sick person: " I did but it was because we needed to get that awful smell out of the apartment."

Healthy person: "And then we came and you forgot to close the window and you were sitting in the draft for hours. There you go, that is why you got sick."

In essence, when someone goes ill in Croatia and the Croatian think tank tries to pinpoint the source of the disease, they will inevitably be led to either draft, exposure of wet hair to the outside air or sitting outside without a protective layer between the but and the sitting surface, depending on what did the sick person do in the last couple of days. Croatians do not get sick from viruses or bacteria they get sick from the draft.

There is one caveat though. Sitting outside in the cold in the cafe bar does not count. That can't cause any diseases. The biggest culprit for getting sick in that category is concrete. If you sit with your but on a concrete surface without additional layer of protection will get you sick.

When a Croatian finds himself in such a situation he must apply one layer of some material between his but and the concrete surface. And you would be surprised how easy it is to protect oneself. All you need to do is put one plastic bag or one side of newspapers between your but and concrete in order to be safe from all kinds of nasty diseases that type of activity can cause.

So, if you have a Croatian national in your surroundings, of whom you are not particularly fond, invite him to your home for a coup of coffee. Coffee is the perfect lure for Croatians, offer him a seat next to the window and open another window at the opposite side of your apartment and watch him disappear into nothingness.