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.

Earth Overshoot Day and Danish living standard

A while ago I read an article about the switch to green energy and consumerism. The author was placing an argument saying that while the push to move away from fosile fules to green energy is admirable and needed but that on it's own is not enought. We should also do something about our consumerism and economy that insists on 3% growth of GDP per year. Growth of GDP of 3% per year entails that we should double the amount of goods and services we produce every 24 years. It is not difficult to see why the insistance of economic growth of 3% per year is missalligned with a green energy push. Let's say that in the end we sucessfuly ween ourselves of the fosile fuels, if we keep the insistance on economic growth of 3% per year we will still be "trashing the planet" because we will be using more resources then the planet can regenerate per year and we will be doubling the amount of resoruces that we need every 24 years and even now we are using more then that.

Earth Overshoot Day is a day in the year when humanities need for resources excedes the resources that Earth can regenerate in a year. In 2019 Earth overshot day was on July 29th. That means that by July 29th humanity used up the resources the Earth can regenerate in a year. Which also means that in order to maintain this level of living standard and consumption for an indefinetly long time we would need the equvalent of a bit less than 2 planets. Now add to that the 3% of growth per year and in 24 years we will double our need for resources, which would be a bit less than 4 planets... etc etc. If you want to read more about an Earth Overshoot Day, here is the link: https://www.overshootday.org/

July 29th was Earth Overshoot Day when averaged out for all countries in the world. There is also a break down of individual countries Overshoot Day. Individual country overshoot day basicaly means if the whole world would be using up the resources in the way the country in question does, then it would use up all of the resources the Earth can regenerate by the day in question.

Danish push for the renewable energy is admirable indeed and they are doing a lot both on the home front and internationaly. Vestas is one of the strongest companies for windmills production in the world. But when it comes down to resources usage Denmark is actually doing quite bad. Denmarks overshoot Day in 2019 was on... you ready...? Denmarks Overshot Day in 2019 was on 29th of March. So, if all countries in the world had the Danish living standard humanity would need a bit more then 3 planets in order to sustain it.

In Denmark, living standard started to improve at an accelerated pace since 1960ties. Until then living conditions where modest and from then as wealth of the country was increasing, so did the apetites for living space and commodities. Today the minimum criteria for the size of an apartment if you want to have two children is 100 square meters or more. As a comparison I grew up in an apartment with my parents of 30 m2, then 56m2 and later I was sharing a room of 9m2 with my ex-wife. And I lived, without any mayor issues. I am willing to bet there is a lot of people in the world who would consider my living standard a luxury as well. When did the apetites grew so much that apartments are so big that if we see the people who live with us twice a day it means that the living space is too small? This is just one example from one aspect of life, it is the same in other aspects as well.






In order to make a significant difference in the over-consumption department, it isn't enough only to buy "ecological" stuff. It is necessary to take a good long look at your lifestile and think how you could turn it down by two-thirds on average. I wonder how many people would be willing to do that in Denmark and other developed countries in the world? But without it, buying ecological products and churning out windmills will make little difference in the end because Earth is only so big with only limited amounts of resources, through which we are going way too fast already.

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.