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.

The sun

It is difficult to explain the happiness you feel when you finally see the sun in Denmark, if you haven't experienced it personally. Danes go bonkers in the spring when the sun arrives. One guy even told me that it is ok to stop working and go for a bit of sunbathing. That is huge, coming from a Dane and their high working ethics. That happened last year at the end of March, it was the first sunny day after a long winter. Last year I found it funny, but this year I don't anymore, because I lived through the Danish fall and winter and they are hard, but that is difficult to imagine. You must go through it at least once. And it isn't because of the short days, it is because of the lack of sun. On the winter solstice, there is 7 hours of daylight, which is an hour and a half less then what I am used to. Day in Zagreb lasts for 8 and a half hours on winter solstice. But the sun went away last year with the first day of September and it didn't return until middle March. It was worst at the beginning. I remember I called my old neighbor on 20th of October and told her: "Can you believe, today is the first day after the beginning of September that I actually saw the sun?" There wasn't one day with any sun for a month and a half. It was horrible! It was just gray, grey and gray and rainy and grey without end. It was like living under a boring, uniformly grey cloud. No wonder that in Danish language the word "sky" means cloud. That really gets to you, but it creeps in slowly, you don't even notice it. One day, while I was raiding home from work, I caught myself thinking: "Can't these clouds go away just for one day? Why does it have to be cloudy all the time?"

And I was going like that from day to day and my mood kept getting worse and my back started to hurt more and more. Until I started having really depressing thoughts. At that point I started drinking vitamin D and through two weeks it got better. Vitamin D took the edge of.

This type of depression is different to the depression that you get when life smacks you on the head. It is a bit tricky to describe. I was happy with the way my life was going and still am but there was constantly some heaviness that was creeping in from somewhere and I couldn't pinpoint where does it stem from. When I started taking vitamin D, it became easier. The heaviness vanished and the only thing that stayed was the longing for the sun. And that went away in the middle of March when the sun returned after a long winter slumber.

The other day I was talking to my girlfriends father about it and he told me the story where it hit him especially hard. He is working as an electrician and one winter they were working in the basement of a building. The thing was that when they entered the basement, they had to walk a long way in order to reach their workplace. The walk was so long that for the lunch break, they didn't go outside but they just had it in the basement. He worked through winter like this. He hadn't seen the sun in months because he would arrive to work in the morning, before the sunrise, spend the daytime in the basement and go home at night. That year he said was awful. It got him so hard, he was barely able to get up in the morning and get going. After work he was worth nothing. He was only capable of staring at the TV and nothing more.

So, the lack of sun during wintertime is a serious issue in Denmark and the only thing that can offset it a bit is vitamin D. And trust me, the fact that quarantine went into effect at the same time the sun returned to Denmark, is a proper little tragedy. Now that the sun is out, few people can enjoy it. I think that will hit a lot of people hard. The worst case scenario would be that quarantine rules are in effect while the sun is up and that they lift when the sun retires behind the clouds in the fall. That would be a serious problem indeed, let us hope it will not come to that.

Christmas, Danish style part 1

Orange stage, Roskilde Festival

It was a beautiful sunny day in June, summer finally arrived and I was super excited about Roskilde festival that was starting in about two weeks. My girlfriend was lying in the sofa crocheting and I was fiddling with something in the kitchen and then the question came:

"Are you planning to go to Croatia this Christmas?"

My curtains rolled down and the feeling of dread loomed in, I am not the biggest fan of Christmas.

"Why are we talking about Christmas? Summer barely started, it is not even July jet?"

"Well, I need to know your plans for Christmas, so we can organize ourselves. This Christmas I am spending time with my dads family and I need to inform them are we coming together or not so they can prepare in time."

"But how much planning do they need? As I said, summer didn't even start yet?!?"

Christmas decorations in Roskilde

Christmas is huge in Denmark and it is not a topic it should be taken lightly. Plans for Christmas dinners are set in place for couple of years in advance. "This year I have Christmas dinner with my dad family and next year with my moms family" she said. I wouldn't be surprised, that now with my tiny Croatian family Christmas dinners will have to be planned on a three years cycle or on a four year cycle.

Conversations about Christmas dinner continued through the whole summer. At the end of August, after we came back from holiday and her dad and his wife came back from holiday we didn't share funny holiday stories and events. And why should we, it's not like we are full of fresh holiday impressions. We planned sitting arrangements for the Christmas dinner. Which was at the same time amusing and annoying because Christmas is just around the corner and summer is in the ancient past. I mean, who thinks about summer on a beautiful warm August night when you are having a cozy time outside in shorts until 22 and it's still daytime, it's time to buy Christmas presents and talk deserts and sitting arrangements.

But things start to get really interesting with Christmas dinners on a work place. So allegedly, (un)fortunately I haven't tried, Christmas dinners on a workplace can go really wild in Denmark. They can turn into an orgy?!!? So, after drinking and eating themselves blind, sometimes Danes can also fuck each others brains out on a Christmas dinner and never mention it afterwards, just like it never happened. I am not certain, should I be looking forward to experiencing one such Christmas dinner or not...

God Jul! What are your Christmas dinner plans for 2033?