I am a number

A few weeks ago I finally joined the Danish brigade - I got my CPR number. A CPR number in Denmark is akin to an official identification proving that you exist, if you don't have one, you really struggle doing just about anything in this country, and I mean anything! I guess it is probably similar to a social security number in the US, but I have a feeling it is so much more important here. So I now identify myself with a 10 digit number which tells the world my birth-date and my sex. Most importantly, along with the CPR number comes an ID card which entitles you to free healthcare in Denmark (and throughout Europe), and something which I hope to make use of, free Danish lessons.

On a totally separate note, one thing so many of us expats notice here is that unlike English which is spoken in so many countries, with so many accents and variations, and there are always so many foreigners in English speaking countries speaking broken English, Danish is very strict. If you don't get the pronunciation 100% right, people seem to have no clue what it is you're on about. A perfect example of this was when I went to the bakery yesterday. I wanted to purchase some berliner kage (kage = cake). Berliners are pretty much the same as jelly donuts, but since donuts are foreign here, berliners they are. So I'm in my local bakery and I ask the lady if they have any berliner (I ask all this in English since they speak English so well). She looked at me and asked me what it is that I wanted. I said "berliner, berliner kage". Again, she just looked at me funny and implied she hadn't a clue what I wanted. She got a second person over and she repeated the word, then I repeated the word, and then the second person said, "ahhh, berliner!". Then told the first lady in Danish that I wanted berliner. However, you have to use your imagination a bit here because it's hard to convey in text - I swear that when they finally knew what I was talking about, the word they said sounded EXACTLY the same as not just what I had said, but what they had kept on repeating when they were trying to understand me! This is but one of a million examples of such an experience here...