We’ve got something similar, called “soup balls” (”Soepballen”), but obviously we don’t call those Frikandellen I’m voting for the Dutch being the odd one out here!

Great blog, and great articles! keep’em coming!

While browsing your weblog I found the following article on buying internationally online:

http://intodenmark.dk/?p=178

This has tripped me up the first time I had my regular orders coming from Amazon.com. And again last week when I thought I was ordering from a UK based store, but shipping was done from the US (my parcel is now held hostage at customs ;-)).

Jilles

Thanks for your extensive comment, appreciated. To go short, as a first time expat I’m quite amazed by all the differences just 700km can make. There are obviously way more similarities than differences, but still.

Good luck with your blog, I’m subscribing!

Jilles

I am often confronted by small differences between the two countries myself even after many years in DK. We (the Danes and the Dutch) might initially think that the countries are quite similar, but I think that there are some clear differences. For example in
- Religion (separation between State and Religion to start with)
- Education (Danish children in a kindergarten (they are there until the age of 5-6) are not taught anything factual, like anything about reading or writing, geography. The focus is just about only on functioning well socially and as a person)
- and last but not least I think there is a major difference in the attitude of people (media) towards foreign news. In the Netherlands I had the feeling (in the ‘90ties - I must admit) that “the rest of the world” is more important than the Netherlands, but I don’t sense the same here about DK.

Concerning languages: It seems to me that the Dutch are well aware of their language capabilities and think themselves that their English for example is quit ok. But some Danes however speak better English than they care to admit.

About alcohol: One of my first impressions about Danes was that their were quite a number of them walking around with a bottle of beer. It turned out that some groups were very keen on drinking beer (as in the Netherlands of course, but that would be slightly less in public) and at some point I came to think that beer can be used in stead of the national currency Kroner.

On Water: 4,5 times higher per capita? Weird indeed, I can not understand it. Might it have something to do with industry? And about “hard water”, I grew up in the west of the Netherlands where the drinking water is being filtered in the Dunes. It was pretty hard (I mean: the water).

Good luck with learning the language!
(I don’t know if it is true for all words, and you probably noticed it already, but:
“Sch” in Dutch is “Sk” in Danish - > “Schip” - “Skip” -> “Schimmel” -”Skimmel”
“ui” is “u” -> “Huis” - “Hus” -> “Muis” -”Mus”)

Rune, no I didn’t! (Check the references). But after I tell you about kroketten, bitterballen and arretjescake you are definately want that factor 10