Take a Panodil and stop pestering us!

I am one of those people who is a bit hard to get to the doctor. It is not that I do not trust them, I do. It is just that I do not want to go to the doctor until it is absolutely necessary.
 

Something started to brew in my head in the middle of July. I started getting the weird feeling of pressure (not headache) in my head and I started to feel like I have low grade fever but all of it was coming and going. After three days of that I decided to take the COVID-19 test. Just as I have made the decision all the symptoms vanished. Week later they came back but stronger. At that point I decided that it is the time to call the doctor.
 

That first phone call was at least weird. After I have described the symptoms, I got two questions, did I go for a COVID-19 test and what do I think is wrong with me. I said that I did but that I still didn't get the results. The lady on the phone responded that they can't consult me until I get the results back and until then I should just take a Panodil. Panodil is the universal "magical" cure for everything in Denmark just like Andol is in Croatia. That was just so frustrating, I am not feeling well and they do not want to help me and they are asking me to self-diagnose myself. That goes against everything I was taught and that is one feels unwell, one should contact the doctor, describe the symptoms and receive help. What one shouldn't do is to try and self-diagnose! And they are telling me to do just that.
 

It has gotten worse the next day. The pressure in the head and the feeling of low grade fever was combined with dizziness. Fortunately for me, test result for COVID-19 came back negative, so I was hopeful that now I will get proper medical help. So I started calling again. My doctor, the one I called yesterday went for holiday so the answering machine was instructing me to call the service called "medical-assistance". So I did after work, I described all the symptoms in detail and two hours later they called me back and said that I should take antibiotics and if it doesn't get better that I should call my doctor on Monday.
 

I got a bit better between Thursday and Sunday morning but on Sunday afternoon dizziness came back in full swing. And in accordance to doctors instructions, I called in my regular doctor and told that I am getting worse and that COVID-19 test results came back negative. Despite that, she was dismissive and condescending. She refused to take me in with two explanations. Firstly, I need to give antibiotics some time to work until Wednesday and secondly, even though I have a negative COVID-19 test result I might have contracted it in the mean time and they have a strict rules for patient care (or patient non-care) during COVID-19 times. 

 

Wednesday came and there was no improvement, so I called on Thursday morning. This time, finally I was talking to the doctor who wasn't trying to get rid of me but she explained for how long can I expect the dizziness to last and that I should get a time at ear, nose and throat specialist and she will take me in for a blood test.
 

The dizziness persisted but at least now I was more at peace because I knew what to expect, because the doctor finally took me seriously and because something was being done about it and it took a week to get there.
 

By the end of the next week dizziness slowly subsided, I got a nasal spray for my breathing problems and blood test showed that there was an infection going on but nothing else.
 

But I didn't write this because of my health issues but because of the treatment that I got from the medical personnel. Why was I being dismissed at the beginning? Why did it take them a week? Why was I asked to self-diagnose myself?
 

My boss was curious about my experience with the doctors and she shared a similar story. On multiple occasions when she needed proper medical help, the doctors were dismissive and they were not taking her seriously. I heard more of almost identical stories.
 

Why is it like that? It is a public health care system and the doctors did swore on the Hippocratic out that in one part says the following: "I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required..."
 

Until doctors remember this maybe all people who are sick should apologize to them for their condition and the inconvenience they are causing to them.
 

I think this type of attitude from the side of the doctors is at least unprofessional. People don't contact them because it is a fun activity but because something is going on and they need help. Croatian health care system has its own problems and it can take moths if you need some specialized medical check up like MRI but if you need help from your family doctor they will find time to help you. If something is seriously wrong suddenly and you need an ER, you will get an ER. I was never in my life treated with such an attitude from a medical professional and I don't think anyone should. What if there was something seriously wrong and not just some benign sinus infection?


P. S. I will appologize to all the doctors who are commited to their job and patient care.

A walk through Danish past: Frilandsmuseet

Our summer holidays during the weekends continue. A month ago we went to Frilandsmuseet that is located at the outskirts of Copenhagen. 

Frilandsmuseet is all about Danish agricultural history and countryside life between 1650 and 1950. It is, what you call, an Open air museum. You are walking through open plains and small forest areas as you are moving from one exhibition to the other. Older buildings are located closer to the entrance and the further you go the closer you get to the modern age. We were lucky that the route we took at the end led us to the buildings from the 20th century, after the Second World War, so we indeed had the feeling of walking through time.

The buildings in Frilandsmuseet are from all over Denmark and that includes: Southern Sweden (it used to be Danish territory), Bornholm and Faeroe Islands. As you are walking around the exhibitions you can see next to the every building where was it located, in what time period and who used it and for what.

Most of the building where residential buildings, but one can also see various types of farm buildings, production buildings and one windmill. We even saw a set of a bit bigger stones assembled in a circle and they were used for the village council meetings.

As I had the opportunity to see something similar before in Croatia, a lot of exhibits didn't surprise me at first but when I gave it a second thought, they did. Even though there is 1700 km between Denmark and Croatia and living conditions differ, the solutions people reached are strikingly similar between the two cultures and that was a surprise in itself. 

As my archeology friend explained. Some inventions were so practical that after they appeared, they spread around like wildfire, stayed for a long time and they were not changing much. That is why you can see a lot of similar living solutions in cultures that are so far away from each other.

 

Closet beds

But there were a couple of things that I haven't seen in other places. First thing that stood out, and it was present in all the houses up until 19 century were beds.

Beds weren't placed in rooms that would then have the function as bedrooms but they were built into something we would call today, a built in closet.

So, we were walking through the house and watching different rooms and then suddenly on the wall you see a small closet doors and behind them wasn't a built in closet but a tiny bed. Tiny, for modern day humans but if we take into consideration how tall humans were couple of hundreds years ago, tiny beds were all they needed. Bed doors could be closed from the inside, so you could have closed yourself into the bed. At first I was surprised but as I started thinking about the living conditions in Denmark it started to make sense. 

Denmark is cold, even today. In the warmest part of the year you need to wear at least a thin shirt with sleeves. There is a couple of days a year that are warm enough so one could walk outside without clothes. And days in the summer are very long, with sunset coming as early as 4:30. With these two things combined, maybe they made closet beds in order to preserve the heat and darkness? Since I moved to Denmark, when the days become long, with the beginning of May, it takes me at least two weeks to stop waking up too early, with the sunset, so I can see the benefit of sleeping in the closet in Denmark, especially during the summer months.

 

Sea weed rooftops

Second unique thing that we saw in Frilandsmuseet were roofs made out of sea weed. Which also surprised me at first but after giving it a bit of thought, it didn't. If you walk around any Danish coast, you will see that a lot of beaches is covered with sea weed. It is just washed ashore smelling bad. With resources being scarce, back in the day and people having to go by with what little was available, sea weed roofs start to make sense. If there is a lot just lying there on the beach and it will keep the house dry, why not. But I recon it was a fire hazard at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Faereo Islands houses

As the whole buildings, I found the Faereo Island houses as unique. They were built on the slopes, half-way dug into the ground. When you would be walking around the house, you would see only one long wall with a grass rooftop, two shorter walls were visible only half way, the other half was just disappearing into the ground. If you would walk behind the house, you would be standing above it and in theory you could walk on the natural grass roof. Very special indeed and most likely an adaptation to the sloppy terrain of the Faeroe Islands (I have never been there, so it is possible that I am wrong).

 

 

Hay beehives

We also had an opportunity to see at least in part how people were making honey between 17th and 19 century. Next to one of the houses beehive was displayed. It was shaped as a cone, made out of wood and hay.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

If you are interested in seeing and learning how people used to live in this part of the world in the past Frilandsmuseet is indeed a place to see and it will feel like a walk through the past. In addition you will get a healthy workout since the area is big and you will need to walk far. There is also an opportunity to ride in a real horse carriage if one fancies that.

The whole experience made me thinking how wasteful we have become, how far away we have moved from living in sync with the environment around us and how incompetent we have become for a life outside of the modern society.

I am not trying to romanticize now. I am fully aware that it was a harsh, short life with not much creature comfort. And I acknowledge that our quality of life today has radically improved in all aspects. With that being said it still used to be a life where people where living from what was around them and using it to the best of their abilities. People didn't have much and what little they had was valuable. Not like today, when things are so cheap that we change out our clothes, phones and cars like they are perishable goods and with that lifestyle causing the unprecedented trash pollution of the planet.

In the same time we live so far out of sync with nature and environment around us that most of us have become completely incompetent to live "off the land". Ask yourselves the following, if modern civilization collapsed for one reason or another, would you be capable to grow, hunt or pick your food? Would you be capable of preserving your food for the winter? Would you be capable of building and maintaining your house? Would you be capable of making your own clothes and shoes? I think that most of you, including me, would answer these questions with a no.

Well those people were capable of doing all these things and they were capable of withstanding much harsher living conditions, than we can even start imagine. Now ask yourself-  what does that tell about us?

Danish vs English

Influx of English language into Danish sometimes seems ridiculous. Here is a sample of some "danish" words that are considered as a part of the standard Danish language:

housewarming

weekend

Walk-in-closet

Issue

Clutch

I will not even go into the IT words at all. For a much longer and more detailed list, look here: http://cphpost.dk/news/many-new-danish-words-come-from-english.html

I figured this out on one class at language school. After the class I asked my teacher are these words in danish language and he confirmed it. My next question was, but how do the linguist take it? Are they trying to find substitute or try to fight it in some way. He said that they just conclude that is how it is, that is the modern trend and that is that. I must say that when I heard it I was shocked and then I was shocked by my shock.

The reason is that in Croatia language patriots are trying to resist modern day influx from English language with everything they got and sometimes they go so far that it is just ludicrous. I must say that Danes look like the opposite extreme. They are just looking at it happening without even trying to do anything, but they just shrug their shoulders and say that's how it is.

It seems to me that in the long run danish could completely lose the battle with English and here is why. To start with, today in Denmark 80% of the population speaks English. Most of the people who don't speak English are old people who are about to retire. When older generations slowly fade out of the working market, country will be bilingual for all practical purposes. Secondly, modern day danish children are bilingual, they speak English as good as danish and they start learning English at the start of their education. Third, "official" language in the most of the business sector is English, "official" language in the IT sector is English. When you are looking for a job in Copenhagen, a lot of job postings is in English and a lot of the positions do not even require knowledge of Danish language.

To continue, the topic that I covered in the last post, danish is a hard language to learn both for foreigners and for danish children. And there is a couple of reasons for that. One is a large number of vowels and then an even higher number of vowel sounds in speech, it adds up to 40 vowel sounds in total in spoken language. That makes the pronunciation very mushy and then to complicate things more Danes do not pronounce a large number of letters, mostly consonants and in the process they fuse words, so in speech it sound like they said one word, but they actually said 3 or more. All of these things taken together makes the danish language difficult to master. And it is not only difficult to foreigners but it is difficult to danish children also. Danish children start talking much later then the average child. Average child starts talking between 18 months and 2 years. Average danish child starts talking around 3 years of age because of the trickiness of danish language. To top it up Danish researcher, Dorthe Bleses compared vocabulary acquisition in young children and she realised that at the age of 15 months Danish children have the smallest vocabulary of only around 80 words, Swedish children at the same age know 130 words and Croatian children around 200 words. Danish children do catch up later. The reason for their slow start is because of a lot of vowel sounds in Danish and a lot of letters being swallowed in speech, Danish children need more time to crack the language code but when they do, they will catch up.

If, on one hand, we assume that the modern trends in Denmark will continue indefinitely into the future by which I mean: continuous influx of foreigners (which is necessary for Denmark in order to replace the population because Denmark has too low birth rates with 1.79 birth per woman), growing strength of English language in the business sector, growing influx of English words into danish vocabulary, bilingual trends among danish youth.

On the other hand, if we take into consideration that English language is a bit simpler to learn and a lot more forgiving in pronunciation and that English will be the language that is common to most of the population, both foreigners and locals. Than if we take language as a tool that facilitates communication and if we have two languages in a population that are equally spread out, without outside interventions, language that is simpler will slowly but surely take over. Also, danish language has one unexpected drawback. Legally, Denmark does not have an official language. Danish language isn't defined by law as the official language in Denmark. The only place you are legally obliged to speak danish is in courts and nowhere else. Maybe this is something Danes should consider, protect their language at least as a part of their national heritage because if they don't, in the long run, it will have troubles competing with English.

Jamal learns Danish

For one homework from the language school I read a short text about Jamal. In short, Jamal came to Denmark and he is working hard to integrate himself into danish society which entails learning the language. Unfortunately, learning danish isn't easy for Jamal. He needs to practice his speech but every time he tried talking to a Dane he would have at least one of three problems. Either a Dane wouldn't understand what Jamal is saying, or Jamal wouldn't understand what a Dane is saying or when a Dane would hear Jamal trying his best to speak Danish he would switch to English and would keep talking in English to Jamal because it is just easier that way.

That little story portrays accurately what problems the foreigners who are trying to learn danish face with every day but it also portray elements of the danish language that make it so difficult to learn.

Danes do not understand Jamal

Problem with speaking danish when you are learning is that you need to speak more to natives, but when you try they do not understand you and you can't figure out why because you are doing everything the teacher told you in the language school and that of course causes frustrations. The problem lies in the fact that Danish language has a lot of vowels that sound very similar to one another and an untrained ear can't tell the difference but the difference is huge. For example:

"Jeg vil gerne have en kylling kebab."

"Jeg vil gerne have en killing kebab."

Words "kylling" and "killing" sound very similar but the difference in meaning is huge. In the first sentence you expressed a wish for a chicken kebab and in the second one for a kittens kebab.

This exemplifies one big problem when learning danish. It is very unforgiving to pronunciation mistakes which makes it very difficult to practice because you have very few people to talk to who will understand you.

Jamal does not understand Danes

When you try to speak to Danes they are not helping with their pronunciation as well. When Danes speak normally they are speaking so fast and they swallow so many letters that often it can sound like they said one word but in fact they said three words and it is very difficult to separate them. Additionally the problem is that, that way of speaking is officially called assimilation and it is a part of Danish standard language. So until you are not capable of fusing the words together in speech you are not talking proper danish.

For example:

"What did you say?" is in danish "Hvad siger du?" and it when a native pronounces it, it sounds like this "Vesiru?". So they fuse three words with 11 letter in total to something that sounds like one word of 6 letters. And this is the starkest contrast between Danish and Croatian. If you would pronounce in Croatian the same sentence "Što si rekao?" as "Šsireko?" you would be considered as an illiterate fuck who should learn how to speak. To think that the total opposite is true in Denmark.

Danes do not want to speak Danish to Jamal

When you find yourself in a real life situation and you use danish, if Danes sniff out your non native danish speech they will momentarily switch to English and insist on English. That is not surprising at all. All danish children are bilingual, 80% of the population in Denmark is bilingual. Danish children start learning english in the first grade of school. Since I move to Denmark I found myself only two times in a situation where the other person couldn't speak English. Maybe with this fact Danes acknowledge that English is simpler and there will be no misunderstandings in communication, so why even bother with Danish. I am just thinking out loud.

Sad Jamal has a hard time learning Danish

So no wonder Jamal is having problems in learning Danish. He should practice his speech but whenever he tries, Danes do not understand what is he saying because of the small mistakes he makes in pronunciation, which is totally expected since he is trying to learn the language. But a lot of pronunciation mistakes Jamal makes changes the meaning of his sentences so much that native speakers have hard time understanding him. Jamal is making a lot of pronunciation mistakes and that is the reason why he should practice his danish. He does not understand Danes because from their brains to Jamal ears comes only about 40% of the letters and most of them are vowels which is very difficult to decipher for Jamal. And when they realize all the problems they need to face while talking to Jamal, they will just use English because they know it is simpler and there will be no lost in translation problems. So it all goes in a bad spiral that makes learning Danish hard for Jamal. But Jamal should find some solace in the fact that he is not alone in this problem. Danish children have the same problem. At the age of 15 months danish children have a very small vocabulary because they are having the same problems as Jamal. It is very difficult to separate/extract "Hvad siger du?" from "Vesiru?". But more about that in the next blog post or should I say "Bureoutthaitnxblgpst!" because that's how it sounds sometimes to Jamal.