1: Danish boys are tall and handsome. Haha it's true, that's why I grabbed one for myself. I think danish boys are the most handsome ones from all of the nordic countries, maybe even of the world. Girls are cute too, but I think all girls from nordic countries are very cute and beautiful so there's no big gap as there is with boys. Sorry other country boys!
2: Everyone's very smiley. I don't mean only near people (friends, family) but also strangers sometimes smile at me. Especially at clubs girls smile at me in a friendly way when they are drunk. And sometimes when I'm walking in the forest people passing by smile to me if we have eye contact by accident. I don't know why, but it's nice and I like it!
3: The danes have a song or two (or ten) for every occasion and they will sing it. Every big family party I have attended included funny danish sing-along songs. I was happy to attend a danish wedding once, and wow, the amount of singing! People were handed printed copies of lyrics to sing along every 15 minutes basically. Also the danes are very proud of their numerous drinking songs at parties! I do enjoy those drinking songs, cause they are very upbeat and fun.
4: They like hot dogs and Cocio (milk chocolate). I actually learned this from Wikipedia before I even came to DK. Also you need to note that the danish hot dogs are very different than your basic hot dog - it's much better!! They sell hot dogs in every corner here and danes like to drink Cocio with it. I thought it was just a kid thing to drink milk chocolate with it, but when I went to a hot dog stall I found out literally everyone drank Cocio and there was only adults in there. And there's a specific way to shake your Cocio too, which every dane apparently knows.
5: It smells like shit in DK sometimes. I'm not sure if this is a fact only in Jylland though. Everytime I meet my uncle in Finland he tells me the usual story how he once drove through Denmark and the only thing he can remember is that the whole country smelled like shit and he keeps asking me does it still smell and I say yeah. Well it doesn't always smell, it's just sometimes when they are fertlizing the farms or something? That's how I have understood it. I still don't understand though how can a whole city smell for many days, possibly many cities at the same time. Wut? Anyway it's not a bad smell, it's just a poopy farm smell!
6: In Denmark people prefer ordering take away instead of going to the actual restaurants. The cities are filled with small restaurants that are only meant for take away orders, cause their space is so small there's not even space to sit and eat! Only a handful of restaurants where you might want to stay in. This was pretty harsh for me, because I really love going out to eat and not always look at the same walls of my home. We used to go out to restaurants in Finland A LOT, then suddenly it just stopped for me :(
7: Job ads for "easy work" such as fast food restaurants and stores say without shame that they are looking for people under 18 year olds for work. Probably because they are cheaper workers! I had never seen this before! Thought it was pretty weird.
8: Kids and teenagers sit in shopping carts in grocery stores and malls. I still cringe at this whenever I see it happen! I don't know if it's only in Finland where you are not allowed to sit in the shopping cart, because of hygienic reasons. I even see people put their babies to lay down at the bottom of their shopping cart?! What if they poop their pants and then the next customer puts their carrots in there. Ewww.
9: You never ever have to show your ID at the store. Well I have gotten too used to this one by now actually, that I forget to bring my ID whenever I buy alcohol in Finland. In Denmark the age limit is 16 to buy alcohol, so the store clerks just never ask. In Finland how ever, the store clerks have to ask everyone who looks like they could be under 30 year old (the actual age limit is 18).
10: There's not much long-haul bus traffic in here. There was no buses from Kolding to Copenhagen at all before, but now it has changed as new bus liners have appeared finally. Also there's no buses from the Billund airport after 9pm, like what the hell man, all my flights arrive later than that since I buy the cheapest ones! I have also noticed that most of the danes I know don't want to travel domestically. They just don't find other danish cities interesting enough! So maybe this is the reason for low bus traffic??
11: There are ryebread rules. And other food rules too. Danes are famous for smørrebrød, which is ryebread with cool stuff on top. But beware, you can't put just any stuff on it! It has to be specific stuff combined with other specific stuff! A lot of it is fish. I'm not going into detail now, if you want to know just google it. But anyway, usually these ryebread dinners are served as "buffet" where you have to build it yourself, and I'm always shitting my pants cause I never remember what is supposed to go with what. Oh, and apparently no one eats ryebread in the morning. Huuuh??? I do that every morning in Finland man, don't tell me what to do! Also you can not eat nutella during dinner, even if you are having sandwiches for dinner. :)
12: It's a danish duty to write a Facebook post after your birthday, to let everyone know that you had a hyggelig birthday with your friends and family. I have a variety of FB friends from all over the world, but only the danes feel the need to write to FB the following day of their birthday what they did on their special day, and then they get tons of likes. Even people who don't update their FB that much, do this. People from other countries might post "Thank you for the wishes" but the danes will tell you in detail what happened, I think it's pretty cute.
13: Girls say "eeeejjjjjjjjjj" a lot.
14: The crazy amount of danish flags everywhere when someone has a birthday.
Well that's all I have for now! I probably find more quirky things about this little country and make another post some other time. I really love Denmark and am happy to live here! <3
