Now is the time to panic and freak out

In the last couple of weeks the whole world is united in a panic caused by the Coronavirus. First confirmed case of Coronavirus in Denmark was on 27th February. A man from Roskilde returned from his skiing trip in northern Italy. From that day on, every day, there has been reports about new cases. But life went on - more or less uninterrupted - until last Wednesday. On Wednesday, 11th of March, Denmark issued a warning for people who plan to travel outside of the country. But it was just a call for taking precausionary measures if people are traveling to countries with some reported cases of the virus. On the next day, 12th of March Denmark decided to shut down all public institutions and educational institutions from Monday the 16th of March - and has issued a recommendation to people to stay and work from home, if they can. At the same time there was a press release for people not to panic and to stay home if they can. Yesterday on March 14th Denmark decided to close all borders for at least a month, with the exception of heavy traffic. Also, all non essentials stores will be closed off from Monday 16th of March with the exceptions of supermarkets and drug stores.

Of course the panic started on Thursday 12th March. How will people not start to panic when the country is basically shuting down!? It is a clear sign of an extraordinary situation and that things from now on will not run as intended. That was the message that Danish government sent with the decision to close all public institutions. People will not wait until Monday to start panicking, they will start panicking immediately. 

And it has been/still is quite a panic indeed. People started hoarding hand dezinfection gel, toilet paper, meat and vegetables. Despite the calls from supermarkets and the goverment that there is no need for hoarding, that the supply lines will be open and the stores will keep working and as long as people continue shopping as they usually do, nobody will be hungry and all assess will be clean. It didn't help. Videos of people fighting in the stores, empty shelves in the supermarkets, reports of thefts of face masks and hand disinfectants from hospitals... At the same time the financial sector, labour unions and employer organizations started preparing for the economy grinding to a halt. So yea, bussiness as usuall... not.

But that is only the beginning. There is still a lot of unknowns... How hard will the economy be hit, how long will it last, how many companies will go bust and how many people will lose their jobs? There is also the question: how does a nation of workaholics handle a lockdown? How will people identified by working handle not working? Yesterday I saw a serious article written by a couple therapist with tips for couples on how to handle the coronacrisis. Because, imagine, people will have to spend a lot of time together and with their children. The sad thing is that they don't know how to, because they are used to spending a bit of time together in between work and all the other obligations that they have while children are taken care of by the professionals. At least it seems so, if it is necessary for the couple therapist giving instructions on how to handle your partner and kids when you are all trapped under the same roof. The horror!

It is interesting times we live in and maybe coronacrisis will bring some longterm benefits with it. Maybe it will remind some of us how to just be with our loved ones, how to define ourselves with something that does not include work. Maybe it will also remind us how fragile our whole modern lifestyle is, if you consider that it is threatened by a simple virus that is a bit more dangerous than a flu. 

Insensitive caring

Sometimes Danes have a way of showing care that may come as a bit of. The first time I wittessed it was when I started language school. We had a meeting where the teachers explained to us how is the system working. I need to explain it a bit. So, language school is divided into 6 modules and on every module you get a certain amount of time in which you should pass the exam. After every exam you can choose do you want to continue, make a break and continue later or stop. If you signed up for the module your time is ticking. If you passed the module your time stops. When you start on the next one it starts to tick again. While you are attending a module there is not a thing in the world that can stop the time from ticking, no matter what. After the teacher explained that to us, she started giving examples.

Let's take a pregnant woman, she said. Let's say she started on a module and two days before the test she goes into labor. It would be better for her to hold the baby in until she passes the exam because if she passes we can stop the time. But if she decides to give birth and because of that she won't be able to continue on the module and attend the exam there is nothing we can do about it. Her time will keep ticking and it will expire.

I was shocked that the teacher would even use such an example. And if that isn't a good exception to the rules I don't know what is. After talking a bit more about how the time system works I did get the feeling that she really cares that we do well and succed but that one example never left my mind. But I kinda sidelined it for a good six months until last week when I read a story in one local newspaper.

In Denmark there is a dog law that puts a number of dog breeds, that are deemed dangerous, as illegal to own. If people already have them, nothing will happen to them if the dogs behave - their owners keep them in check - with the police keeping the right of taking the dog away for no apparent reason. In the news, police decided to take such a dog away from it's owner, even though the dogs was not causing any problems. So, the dog was from a breed on the list of illegal dog breeds and the owner was controling him well. The dog never attacked or bit any other dog or human. Usually in cases like these, police doesn't meddle but this time it did. They took the dog away, the dog was put down and the owner had an opportunity to see the dog for two hours before the dog was put down.

What happened was that the dog owner was so attached to his dog that he just couldn't handle it and after the dog was put down, he commited suicide.

What I find unsettling in this story is that usually in such cases the police doesn't meddle if the dogs are behaving well. This time the police decided to meddle and take the dog away, which is their legal right. On the other hand, the man was solitary and that he was keeping to himself, sometimes not talking to others for weeks and his only other companion was that dog and they took it anyway. I do no believe that nobody saw how much that dog ment to him. I do not belive that nobody saw that it would break him mentaly but they did it anyway.

In this case Denmark decided that certain dog breeds are bad for its citizens and in order to protect them they made them illegal to own. Even if one man commited suicide, greater good was still served. At least no one else will be harmed by that dog anymore. Despite all this I still wonder was anyone resposible for that man death?

Do not insult me with expressing your opinion

The other day we had very interesting cultural misunderstanding. We went for a beer with our friends from the "Croatian getto" and as my girfriend recently started to work for the labour union a lot of the discussion revolved around that and at the point it became a bit heated. She is very passionate about her work and my friends and me are passionate about disucussion and sometimes we do like to play devils advocate as well. So, it was a perfect setup for hanging out with friends drinking beer and just talking, as Croatians do it by default.

At one point discussion became very heated as my friend was grilling my girlfriend and than he popped the question: "But if think that labor unions work is so important why don't you clean staircases for a living and volunteer for the labor unions?" That completely caught her off guard, she just opened her mouth and eyes wide open and stayed speechles at which point we all burst into laughter and in return we got a fuck you guys. But this didn't stop us from continuing and in the end my girlfriend even got a feedback on what should labour unions do to become more relevant and appealing to foreigners. Of course, it was just our personal opinion. We are by not experts on the topic by any criteria.

This what I described is the classical way Croatians socialize. We meet, we drink, we discuss hot and controversial topics, we solve "world problems" and we try to outsmart each other in a discussion. It is almost a sport on it's own and what is most important, none of us takes it personaly. It is just a discussion among friends. And the best discussions are when you are discussing with people who do not share your opinion because at these discussions you get a new understanding of the topic, or the person you are discussing with.

It seems it is not the same in Denmark. Personal opinions seem to have a bit of a dogmatic untouchable status. What happenes in a group of friends in Denmark when a discussion starts is the following. In case you would have a situation wher two people had opposing takes on a certain matter, the discussion would be droped at the point this realization is reached. Allegedly, everbody has the right to their opinions but people in Croatia do too. I would add that, it seems, in Denmark everbody has the right to have their opinions unquestioned.

Second eventuality is that they actually proceed with the discussion but that happenes only if everybody shares the same oppinion on the issue. But this is hardly a discussion. It is more a case of tapping each other on the back while saying "You are right." In Croatian this isn't a discussion, it is rather commenting then discussing.

Third eventality is that people who have an opposing opinions and are brave enough to start discussing would be shunned: "C'mon, why are you acting like that, you are ruining the evening for everybody. Let's do something fun instead."

The only way people can oppose their opinions on a certain matter is if they are in the group where everybody is totally ok with it, which isn't a cultural default.

When I learned about all this I was very surprised. Denmark indeed is a very liberal country. Croatia is in comparison a very closed and conservative country. Danes are easy on black humor, on talking very explicitly about sex. Their media is infamous for insulting other countries or religious groups with potentially inappropriate drawings. Whenever that happeness and the insulted party asks for an appology the media in question just replies that they have a right to the freedom of speech and the government backs them up. So how do you go from this approach to free speech to Danish citizens self-censoring themselfs when they realize that one of the people in the group has an oppinion that is contrary to their own? It is just one of many things in Denmark that looks at least a bit contradictory.

Ambulance never comes

Couple of months ago my friend was working in an institution which was taking care of residents with light to mild disabilities. He was employed in a night shift and his job was more or less to be there and intervene in the case of emergency. He was always in the shift with one other person and for most of time there he was killing time until...

One of the residents went to the bathroom slipped, fell and hit her head on the sink hard. When my friend and his collega got up there, the resident was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood that just kept comming. You need to have in mind that neither my friend nor the person that was working with him don't have any medical training. Ofc they acted instantly one of them started helping the resident and the second one called the ambulance. My friend was the one who called the ambulance. He explained what had happened and asked if they could send a team over to his workplace. The doctor said that they re not comming out for that, explained what to pay attention to and hang up the the phone. In the end everything was fine, fortunately the resident just cut his skin and while it looked ugly it wasn't serious.

When we met for a coffe and he told me the story I was mortified. I asked him "but what did you do when the doctor said they will not be sending an ambulance over?" And he just replied that they helped the resident, cleaned him up, put him to bed and check up on him every half an hour." He asked me in response "Why? What would you have done?"

Well, if I was in his position, I would look up for the symptoms of the heart attack and call again in 5 min from my private phone. When the ambulance would come and they would figure out it was not a heart attack I would tell them that I called and that they refuesed to come and I needed them because a person in my care is potentialy in a life threatening situation and neither me and my colleague are not medicaly educated.

After couple of weeks I got the follow up on the story. He disucussed the events of that night with his boss. The boss praised him for his actions and said that he did everything by the book. He asked him what would have happened if his resident died because of the internal bleedeing or something similar? Nothing, him and his colleague would still get the flying colors for handling the situation because of the way they handled it and the eventual death of the resident wouldn't be their fault. He also asked what would have happened if he got the ambulance to come by missleading them. He would be fired. It seems that even in these kind of situations the priority isn't the life of the person in your care, it is following rules and guidelines and I thought it was the other way around...

After talking to a couple of other people that moved to Denmark from the Balkans, it turns out that all of us had similar experiences with Danish ambulance. They just ain't coming unless you are about to die.

I was curiouse why is it that way. The reason is that Denmark has understaffed hospitals and emergency service. I should correct myself. They are not understaffed, they are minimally staffed, they just have enough personel to keep their hospitals and emergency service running. So if have a medical emergency in Denmark, you might as well save yourself the trouble and skip on the call because they most likely will not come.

Copehagen, elevatores and people with disabilities

When I arrived to Denmark one thing surprised me, the lack of elevators. In most buildings I have been in, there is simply no elevators. Ok, truth be told most of the buildings in Copenhagen have up to 5 levels and you would think that in buildings this high elevatores are not needed. But what if most of the city has buildings of this size? Do you still don't need elevatores?

One day I took this up with my girlfriend. Her first reaction was: "But who needs elevators? And why would you waste money on elevators?"

And at first it made sense, buildings aren't that high and most people can walk, so no issues there. But when I started thinking about it a bit more, the correct answer is the other way around. There is only one category of people who don't need elevators and that is healthy adults without children. Everybody else needs elevatores: elderly people, small children, parents with small children, adults with some illness or injury, pregnant women and especially people with disabilities.

One thing, in relation to the elevators that I find a bit at odds with each other is the fact that the streets of Copenhagen are very accessible to people with disabilities and Danish healthcare system is giving out moving aids to people with disabilities. But I just can't shake the feeling that when you combine this with the lack of elevatores in the whole city you get a funny contradiction. People with some movement imparing disability will have no problems going around the city but when they reach the building where they live, unless they are blessed with an elevator, they can't reach their apartments. Maybe I am exagurating, but that contrast really seems a bit off to me. What is the point of all the mobility aids for people with disabilities when they can't reach their homes? Are there neighbourhoods for people with disabilities? If there are how is that different from ghetto areas? And what about adults that suffer some injury? Are they forced to move out of their apartments because suddenly they can't reach them or leave them?

And there is actually one thing that I see as a cruel joke, that was, I guess ment as an aid. I saw it in a couple of buildings. In one particular building there are a couple of old ladies that have a very hard time walking. When they are walking on the flat surface they need to stop and catch some breath every 15 to 20m. You know what the building administration did to help them? They installed a small foldable metal chairs on levels between the floors so they can sit down. While I understand that is supposed to help them but to me it looks like a cruel joke.

Instead of elevatores most buildings in Copenhagen have frontstairs and backstairs. Frontstairs don't need explaining, it's just normal staircases that people use to get to their apartments. Backstairs, now that is something that needs explaining. Back stairs usualy connect the apartments to their backyards, if the building has one. But the main reason for them is second escape option in case a fire starts. 

Copanhagen had a number of nasty fires through out it's history and back stairs were implemented as a second fire escape option. You need to understand how does the average backstairs look like. They are very narrow, steep with very sharp turns and they are not uniform. When I say not uniform what I mean is that the number and form of steps can vary between different floors. So there can be lets say 10 steps of a certain height between 1st and 2nd floor and then 12 steps between 2nd and 3rd floor. Out of those 12 steps two of them have bigger surface area and are lower then the other steps and so it varies between the floors. Trust me, back stairs ain't a thing where you wanna run in the case of a fire. The chances are you will trip, fall and kill yourself if you need to run from a fire on the backstairs. I would rather chance it with a blanket on the mainstairs then on the backstairs. 

I must say that for me, in the modern day backstairs seem just obsolete and useles. I don't see a good reason why shouldn't backstairs be replaced with an elevator so that even non adult healthy people can reach their apartments without problems. Just tear down the back stairs. Some people told me that building an elevator would be too expensive. How come that building balconies on buildings without them isn't too expensive?

Dogs

One common mistakes of all Scandinavian countries is that they are a bit overprotective of their citizens. When they figure out that some activity has the slightest chance of causing harm. They will immediately regulate it by law so that the possiblity of harm comming to you is reduced as much as humanly posssible.

I had an opportunity of witnesing that when I was volunteering at Roskilde festival. I was assigned to the refund station, where we were basicaly sorting cans and other refundable wares. On the beginning of my second shift a woman came to me, waited until I finshed my work and then she told me: "In one of the refund stations, one time a person went in with her arm straight into the bag with cans and a needle got stuck under her fingernail. Because of that we do not do it that way any more but...". After she told me that I started to think about how huge Roskilde festival is. You have more then 20000 volunteers running it and there was one accident of that type once in more then 20000 people. So, it was a freak accident and they are trying to regulate it. I do feel for that person, it was certainly painful and maybe dangerous but it was still a freak accident. I do not think you can regulate against freak accidents. If there was a pattern I would understand but when it is a one off...

And that is how it is in general in Scandinavian countries an allegedly even people living here started to realize it is going a bit to far with this overprotective behaviour.

One moment where I find it really sad is with dogs. Even though I miss my ex-wife dog that I left in Croatia, I must say that I wouldn't like to have a dog in Denmark. With overregulation they knocked out all the charm of it. Often times I get the feeling that dogs are being treated like a vicous blood thirsty animals that are just waiting to slay a human. Since I came to Denmark I haven't seen dogs playing anywhere ever. The reason is that the fines of having a dog walking without a leash are huge and the only place you can let it roam free is in the so called dog forest. Yes, it is just what it sounds like. It is a fenced patch of forest, far far away from other humans where you can go and let your dog run free. 

On couple of occasions when we went to some nice nature site, where you see couple of people here and there. Even in those places dogs were still being walked on a leash because someone may call the police, I must say that is just sad. But one time, I was smoking out on the street at the small intersection and I saw a woman passing by with her small dog and then I heard she said sorry in Danish. I turned around to see what is she appologising for, there was another man walking his dog and that woman appoligised because her dog wanted to sniff the other dog. I described the situation to my girlfriend and asked her what was that all about. She said that the woman appologised because her dog went to sniff the other one and that is looked down upon because it is taken as a sign that you don't have a control over your pet. At that point you know it is going too far, since sniffing is just so basic and instinctual dog behavior and that is being looked down upon.

Do I need to mention that some dog breeds that have the reputation of being more agressive are illegal. It translates into that if you already own a dog of that breed, you can keep it but it must be constantly on the leash with a muzzle and if anything happenes, fx. display of agression to another dog, he will have to be put down. Also, these breeds are illegal to grow, buy, sell and import. 

Funny enough that law backfired a bit. Couple of years back, wolves migrated to southern part of Jylland and some danish farmers started having problems with wolfes attacking their livestock. In order to protect their heards they wanted to buy some mastiff dogs but they couldn't because they are illegal. So their possibilities, legally are very limited because all dog breads that would be good protection against wolfs are illegal. I think that also tells that Denmark went too far.

I love dogs and I miss having a dog but I think that because of all insane restrictions for dogs and dog owners in Denmark, neither dogs nor dogs owners are having a great time here.

Having too much

I come from a country that doesn't have the best living standard in the world but it definitely isn't that bad to live in. While paychecks are lower for more then half of what you get in Denmark, you can get by if you are just moderately careful with money. Main difference that I can notice in spending is mostly on fluff stuff. You still have plenty of money to buy and have everything you need to live a normal life like: place to live, food and other basic necessities. What you will lack after you pay all that is for other things. You will have less to spend money on things you do not need, like candy, rice cookers, carrot peeler, newest versions of smartphones etc. As an acquaintance from the Croatian ghetto said : "We have everything the Danes have, the main difference is that in Croatia it will take you 3 paychecks to buy new iPhone and in Denmark 1/3 of the paycheck." After living in Denmark for some time I started wondering are there any detrimental sideffects of high living standard? I think there are.

Higher living standard entails greater buying power and greater buying power leads to couple of not so great consequences.

First one is that you can pay your way out of a lot of things. Often people will choose to pay for some things rather then do it themselves. Even though they are perfectly capable of doing it and they have the time to do it but they have money so they can pay to somebody else to do it instead of them. While that on it's own doesn't sound bad, but it can lead to complete incompetence in executing some everyday tasks that I would never even consider outsourcing to somebody else, like cleaning the apartment or painting the walls or cooking.

I think this is one bad consequence of living in a first world country. The excess of money basically leads to people going into a very narrow specializations in life that makes them very depended on others in every single aspect of their lives. Literary for everything other then what they do for a living, they kinda become idiot savants that are great at what they are doing but can't do anything else.

Second bad consequence of having too much money is that people just become too trigger happy at spending it. It seems to me that is one of the causes of an obesity epidemic running wild in Denmark. If you have much more money that you need and you like munching candy and chugging down sodas, there is nothing to stop you from doing that, because you don't need to think if you are going to have enough or not. So you can just stuff your face with it all you want, so latter you can start crying how you have gotten fat and spend money on gyms, spinners, dieticians, slimming food supplements, healthy food, personal trainers etc. But none of that helps anymore 'cause you can't control yourself anymore but it doesn't matter anyways you have more than enough so why not?

Third bad consequence of too much buying power is excess! And you can see it everywhere. Articles that are on offering in the normal stores, number of stores like Offertisima or Pepco that sell useless shit that no one needs, number and type of a wide variety of different hobby stores which are obviously thriving. You can also tell about excess in peoples needs and wants. In stuff that are considered necessary for normal everyday life (cheese cutters, potato peelers, rice cookers etc), having a pot and a knife just doesn't cut it anymore. 

You can also see it in the people criteria for the adequate size of the living space. Newest example that I saw was when we visited a friend. He just moved in to a new house with his girlfriend. The house is huge: two bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, one huge living room plus kitchen. That is a house for 4 people but not more! I grew up with my parents in a 30 square meters apartment with one room, kitchen, bathroom and hallway. While I was a kid it was ok but in this apartment you could have 4 children and parents.

I must say that after I moved here I see what does it mean to live above the level of what is actually needed. I think that people could live with much less and be happy, but consumerism and modern economy is taking it's toll and there is no way back which may not be the best thing in the long run but that is a topic for another entry.