Welcome to the second installment of my “Denmark vs. Netherlands” post. In this, I’m exploring some cultural and statistical differences between the two countries. Completely random stuff, I promise. Look here for part I.

English
I keep telling people back home that the level of English spoken here is even better than in Holland where to my (unbiased!) opinion it’s already fairly good. I thought to look up some numbers (see here, PDF).

Roughly 88% of the people in Denmark speak at least one other language than their mother-tongue. That same figure in Holland is 91%. Which languages do they speak? See the following graph. The top 3 languages in both countries is English, German and French:

Remember that I stated I thought people in Denmark speak better english than in the Netherlands? Seems I was wrong… Or was I?

See? It’s just my -ahem- unbiased cultural filter showing through ;-).

Alcohol consumption
The other thing I keep telling my colleagues in Denmark is that they drink much more wine than the average person in Holland. Obviously that was completely unsubstantiated and on top that a handful of people I work with closest are complete wine-affectionado’s so I might be quite biased. So I thought I’d look it up (PDF). Wine consumption is roughly the same across both countries (percentage-wise of total consumption). However, where as the average cheese-head (Dutchie) consumes 9.74L of pure alcohol per year a Dane washes down 11.93L. That’s quite a few schnapps more. To be exact, 22.4% more schnapps!

General stats
Interested in more statistics? I got you covered (here and here). While a Dane consumes 3.443 calories on average, a Dutchie chews down only 3.282. There are on average 412 persons per doctor in Holland versus ~350 in Denmark. Life expectancy in Denmark is 76 or 77 years where as Dutchies life till 78 (I’m chalking this one up to less alcohol consumption of course). While electricity usage is roughly the same across both countries, water usage per capita is 4.5 times higher in the Netherlands. Weird. Water in Denmark is much, much harder than in the Netherlands. Up till a point where distilled water is sold in shops to fill your iron for example. (Sorry, could not find an online reference for this.)

Food
One thing that tricked me up in eateries and supermarkets in Denmark is the usage of Frikadeller. Here is a picture of a few by “Thomas Rockstar“.

But, in the Netherlands a Frikandel is something completely different (and, I’m sorry to say, much more tasty!):

(Picture by sjeemz)

Danes, whenever you get to the Netherlands, have a taste of one of those. They’re called Frikandel Speciaal and include mayonnaise, curry and unions. These things make me wonder about the etymology of the word “Frikandel”… How can two societies only 700km apart use the same word for a completely different form of food? In any case, according to this article, the Dutchies are alone with their usage of the word as in the rest of the world (Denmark included) it means “minced meat balls”. (To be fair, the Frikandel was only introduced in the Netherlands 50 years ago.)

Easter (Påske)
As we’re just going through Easter right now I start to notice a couple of differences. Easter in Denmark is a “bigger thing” than in the Netherlands. For example the Danes are getting two additional public holidays versus the Netherlands: both the (Maudy) Thursday and (Good) Friday before Easter the complete country comes to a grinding halt (as well as the actual Easter days of course). As with Christmas, the Danes brew a special beer during Easter called “Påskebryg“. I’m surprised Heineken hasn’t done this in the Netherlands yet!

Another tradition is to write a poem on an intricately cut piece of paper and send it to someone else without giving your identity away (the so called “gækkebrev“). The recipient get’s three tries to guess the sender. If he or she fails to do so, it’ll cost him/her a chocolate easter egg. The tradition seems to have grown from Valentine’s and it is not entirely clear to me if it is only done during Easter or with Valentine’s as well.

Cultural Assessment
While I was reading the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell I stumbled across a chapter that went into Geert Hofstede’s framework for assessing cultural differences. I advice you to at least read the Wikipedia articel on Geert’s definitions but to go short there are only 2 big differences between Denmark and the Netherlands:

Specifically, the Power Distance Index is much lower in Denmark indicating that Danes attach less import to status, will more readily speak up to their boss, etc. Or alternatively, the Dutch would attach more value to their status. The other metric that is substantially different is the Uncertainty Avoidance Index: “reflects the extent to which members of a society attempt to cope with anxiety by minimizing uncertainty. Cultures that scored high in uncertainty avoidance prefer rules (e.g. about religion and food) and structured circumstances, and employees tend to remain longer with their present employer”.

I must say that in my personal experience in Denmark I can attest to the Power Distance index. The Uncertainty Avoidance Index I can not relate to, to be honest.

That is it for now. I hope this series of articles helps creating insight into the cultural differences one could expect between Denmark and the Netherlands. The next article will be about learning the Danish language, which I have slowly begun. For now I am starting three different approaches:

• Pimsleur’s audio books (via iTunes): trying this out in the car. I must say it really helps with the basics but when it gets a bit more difficult I miss seeing the words written down
• Small group lessons (yet to start)
• Myngle, founded by two ex-eBay collegue’s of mine (Egbert and Marina), is a language learning marketplace that delivers language classes through (eBay-owned) Skype. How can I resist?! (Danish teacher)

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My primary computer is a MacBook Air, and as such it has “hot corners”: the upper right corner for example shows my desktop. With synergy they are a bit hard to reach since you quickly move to the other PC. If you want to make it easy on yourself, just do the following in your configuration file:


air:
right(10,90) = pc


Which defines the pc as being to the right of my laptop, but only starting from 10% of the screen untill 90% of the screen, neatly disabling Synergy in the corners.

The Island at the Center of the World
“An epic story of dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America”
Inspired by a holiday I took last summer to New York and Miami I started interesting myself for the dutch influence and history on the island of Manhattan. Lots of facts have been pushed out of our collective memories nowadays. I’m hoping this book will let me in on some of the more arcane facts that surely must be out there.

Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman!
“Adventures of a curious character”
After watching a series of guest lectures and having general interest and admiration on the LHC in Switzerland this seemed like a natural follow up. Feynman is both funny and really smart and was actually able to teach me a few things through his recorded lectures. Things like the LHC and books like Godel, Escher, Bach/Song of Ice and Fire/Lord of the Rings really strike a personal cord with me as I admire the epic scales these things take place at. Respect for those that dare to stick out their necks and create something!

The Unfinished Game
“Pascal, Fermat and the Seventeenth Century Letter that made the World Modern”
A book on probability, a topic that recently found more and more interesting (read Critical Mass, Tipping Point and Black Swans couple of months ago). Especially the notion of “betting” on positive outliers (writing a book) vs. negative ones (stock market crash) seems an undervalued notion in our societies.

Outliers
“The story of success”
Kind of the same reason why I included Outliers. Not sure what to expect really, but written by Malcolm Gladwell I can not imagine it is going to be a hard read.

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What follows is a first (necessarily) relative comparison between the Dutch culture and the Danish one on those aspects that stood out to me. Mind you, I wrote this after being in Aarhus, Denmark for the relatively short period of 2 months. Also, I chose to publish this before finishing all the topics I have in mind, I’ll be looking to publish those later.

I hope someone might find this interesting.

I have been very fortunate with the chance my employer gave me by offering me a job in a foreign country that fitted precisely what I wanted to do next in my career. So there I was, finding myself moving to Aarhus, Denmark. I need to add that before this I had not been an expat before, having lived my life in the Netherlands. I hadn’t even visited Denmark before.

I knew well in advance that that this was happening and unconsciously I was starting to build up expectations. I figured there would be a lot of similarities: North-western country in Europe, socialist government, small, rainy. Some obvious differences I knew about as well. The Danish didn’t ratify the Euro as their currency, keeping their Danish Kroner.

Taxes
The first, and most obvious thing for Dutch (and perhaps other) expats moving to Denmark will be the taxes. The VAT in Denmark is 25% versus 19% in the Netherlands. Both DK and NL have what I call a bracketed income tax scheme: on the first X euro/DKK you earn, you pay Y% taxes. Both countries then define three or four brackets. In NL the highest percentage comes in at 52%, whereas in DK this goes up to 62%. A quick example: assume someone is earning 100 euro/DKK extra and is being taxed in the highest bracket. In the Netherlands that gives you 48 euro extra to spend, which gets further taxed (VAT) so you are able to purchase net goods for 40,30 euro. In comparison for DK you get to keep 38 DKK after income tax, and reducing it by the VAT you end up with 30,40 DKK. That is a whopping 25% less spending power. That is, unless…

… you buy a car in Denmark. This is probably the most talked about feature of the Danish tax system abroad. New cars get marked up by the goverment tax system for 180%. Yes, that is hundred-and-eighty percent. Again, for comparison, in the Netherlands this is 42,3%. After hearing this it occurred to me that for some reason the Danish still get by as there are not an exceptionally large amount of really old cars on the road. I can not do a full comparison here since I do not know the first thing about what road-taxes and insurance premiums are doing in DK. But it is astonishing none-the-less.

Now the Danish get payed more for a months work but up to this day it does not add up. There are other aspects where the difference in the economy becomes clear. For example, in the proverbial supermarket around the corner you will find much less fresh vegetables and such–I am assuming here that that becomes too expensive. In short, I do find life more expensive in Denmark.

The upshot of this is that the health care is cheap, roads are fairly good (comparable to the Dutch roads), etc. The one thing that stood out for me were the two public TV stations: they are commercial free. Now when I say commercial free, I do not just mean movies do not get interrupted for commercials but in between movies there are no commercials. An absolute unexpected and pleasurable experience!

Family live, Work/Life balance
It becomes apparent quite quickly that what the Danish find important is different from what the Dutch find important. The amount of time the Danish spend indoors with their family and friends is much more. The Danes invite family and friends over for dinner. It is not that there are no restaurants, nor that there are not any people eating there but the difference is noticeable. You will find a similar story in bars for that matter. I have not spend enough time yet in Denmark to judge how easy it is to make friends outside work but the Danes will be the first to tell you that that is not easy: they are not really (as) open to this. The bonds that they entertain with their friends are presumed to be much stronger/long lasting..

In terms of Work/Liffe balance I find it hard to make absolute statements since I don’t think my personal W/L balance is quite typical for the Dutch. Even so, the Danes work 36 or 37 hours a week, start working days quite early (there is quite a portion of people with office jobs that start before 8am) but leave the office early as well. It’s not an exception for danish offices to be empty at 16:00 or for stores to close around that same time. On saturdays stores are not open the full day either. I’m quite sure that it is an objective statement that the Danes make less hours per week than the Dutch. Please don’t mistake this for “the Dutch work harder than the Danes”, etc.

Traffic

Traffic in Aarhus is light any which way you look at it. Of course there are cars as it is a city but I have not been in nor seen a traffic jam in Denmark. For someone that did an hour of traffic-jams per day this is a true blessing. Trying to determine the cause for that is way to complex but factors like car prices, bike-adoption, city planning, etc, come to mind. The Danes are a bit more rude in traffic than the Dutch, if someone would be pressing for my opinion.

In terms of how the infrastructure is setup there are some differences though. I have definitely been caught a couple of times into the “trap” (as I keep feeling it is) of roads that go from one lane to two for all of 75 meters. This was quite confusing and I still do not understand the rationale behind this. I had a much more positive experience with traffic lights: they do signal orange before jumping to green which is handy and for bonus points extra sets of lights are mounted on the other side of the crossing which yields better views. Taking left turns on most crossings with traffic lights is invariably a pain as there is always oncoming traffic which is different from (most of) the Netherlands where oncoming traffic is stopped by the lights before you turn left.

(Update: See here for part II in this series)

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Looking at this picture, I realized I was seeing a visualization of something I’ve been telling people around me: that it seems everyone in my social circle is having a baby. What you are looking at is one page of friends on a local social network in the Netherlands called Hyves.

There are 6 babies depicted, out of the 12 possible (if you do not count some of the adults as babies). In, as a should I add, a “random” screen shot. It kind of underlines, for me, what has happened in the last 12 months: I can count at least 25+ couples/individuals that have been pregnant. All of which luckily delivered without any (lasting) incidents!

Now I should not be surprised by this of course, statistics will have it that there are just not many 18 year olds that become pregnant, but still: it happens so fast!

I guess these are the beginnings of a mid-life crisis?

This is the Den Bla Avis building (the company that created http://www.dba.dk) from their parking lot in the marina of Aarhus, Denmark:

These are three pictures stitched together on the iPhone itself (and cropped in iPhoto on the MacBook Air).

The PanoLab application works great, stitching the photos together is really user friendly. My only gripe with it is when exporting the results you need to crop to a certain size–I just want to export the whole picture.

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Here is a breakdown of which keywords people use to end up on my site:

• kaprun austria: When I got back from my ski trip, I posted a video and some pictures.
• php website architecture (and variations thereof like “website architecture with php“): I’ve posted a few articles on this topic, ranging from a presentation of the high level architecture at Martkplaats.nl, an article about the use of Memcache at large deployments. Most people land at the category page actually.
• database versioning: I’ve written exactly one article about how to version databases in large applications (like very popular websites). It’s a topic that has a lot of my interest (other topics are version control systems and relevance in search engines).
• Westendorf map: Each year I’m going down to Westendorf, Austria, for a ski holiday with a really nice group of people. Years ago I found this “interactive” map of Westendorf that was based on an arial photo that was usefully annotated. I copied the zip-file that was offered. Years later the original was gone, so I decided to upload it on my website for others to use. The funny thing is, that another popular search for that page is the actual URL of the page.
• cvs branching strategy: As stated above, version control systems are a pet peeve of mine. I wrote an article asking the question “What branching strategy do you use?“.
• economic disaster: Recently I wrote a quick article pointing to two blog entries on the Fractals of Change weblog that is describing the current economic disaster in clear words.

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(reference)

Exactly! This is quite hard to do, though. What happens when there are multiple people involved in the listening? People will fall into three categories:

• Not listening: don’t listen to your customers at all, instead driving your own strategy
• Only listening: start executing on exactly what your customers are asking for
• Listing & think: listen to your customer, but define your own business strategy and stick with that

This of course, needs the quote by Henry Ford about people asking for a faster horse. It is while you listen to your customers you validate and refine your strategy.

Draw up your own plan, validate it and stick with it: don’t breed a faster horse!

The faster we spend, the more money there is available in the economy. Money we put in our mattresses might as well not exist as far as the economy is concerned even though it may be very important to us.

Another article outlines the positive aspects of the current financial crisis:

This correction from excess has been violent and in many ways harmful but it HAS cured many of the excesses; the goal shouldn’t be to reestablish them. We don’t want housing prices to boom out of reach again; we don’t want oil prices to go up or credit to be extended promiscuously; we don’t want a banking economy based on the third derivative of valueless debt.

Some of the other blogposts over there are interesting reads as well!

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