What makes Denmark so Danish? Who knows? I can always try and guess. Here something about Danish food, Danish education and Danish healthcare!

Dansk Food

The Danes like their bread sweet and crumbly, so to me it’s more like cake but it’s definitely bread. Everyone here loves it including international students so take their advice not mine because I’m boring and like my bread uninteresting and toasted.

Danish bacon is famous and is absolutely the best bacon going. Although in England I feel like most of our bacon is Danish anyway. I mean, it is just amazing bacon. Nothing weird like the bread.

Frikadeller is a Danish dish of meatballs with onions and breadcrumbs and things. You can click here (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/111291/frikadeller-danish-meatballs/) to a link to a recipe I found online. It is apparently a recipe from the author’s mother-in-law, who quite possibly invented this dish. Danes are incredibly inventing people so everyone has a claim to something. All I know is a middle aged man was so keen to invite me and my friends round to cook this dish for us he insisted I gave him my number (I didn’t).

In most shops Danes have pick and mix sweets which is amazing. It’s also perfectly socially acceptable for adults to get these which is exactly why Danish people are so progressive. Some of the sweets don’t look like liquorice but taste like liquorice so be careful or you’ll ruin your evening.

Smorrebrod is the Danish term for an open-topped sandwich which sounds like it would be difficult to eat because it is. It’s worth the effort though as Danes have no problem putting every ingredient they can find into mega sandwiches all the time. You’ll never order a sandwich and get some dry bread and a piece of lonely bacon. There should be international medals awarded. If you are wondering how Smorrebrod is pronounced according to Wikipedia it goes like this “ˈsmɶɐ̯ɐˌb̥ʁœðˀ”.

Dansk Education

The Danish have one of the most successful education systems in the world, with over 99% literacy which is amazing considering how difficult Danish is. English is incredibly common as a fluent second language as well. The “Folkeskole” is attended from 6 to 16, so it’s an amalgamation of the English primary school and high-school and is compulsory. After this, many Danish people attend college, known as secondary education until about 19 or 20 when they start university. This was the main difference I saw, that many Danish University students tended to be older (and possibly more responsible).

Dansk Health and Wellbeing

Health care is free like the NHS. Luckily I didn’t have much first-hand experience with the system, but I do know as an international student you receive a CPR number. Your CPR number is an insurance number like the British national insurance number, but you also use it for opening bank accounts and paying your tax, and taking books out of the library and signing up for university and actually everything. You have a little card with this number on, and the card also has the phone number and the address of the medical practice you signed up for in case you forgot. You make an appointment and take it from there. It’s all good.

TAK!

PS

I’ve currently finished exams, and these next few blogs are a little retrospective. I’ll do a nice review of my experience for the last update so if you think ERASMUS is for you hopefully it helps and provides inspiration!