My latest YouTube video is a short introduction to a Danish pharmacy. You can read more about what you can get in a Danish pharmacy here.
Remember if you enjoy my YouTube videos and find them useful please do subscribe to my channel!
Danish bureaucracy can seem confusing at times but it is a lot simpler than in some countries (Germany I’m looking at you!). Nevertheless there are many ways you can fall foul of various elements of bureaucracy when you are settling here.
I have written a useful guide to all aspects of bureaucracy with loads more details about how to get your CPR number, opening a bank account, digital services such as NemID and E Boks as well as how to pay bills, the media licence (and yes you do have to pay this!), insurances and much more. The guide is concise, easy to use and has all the check lists you need. You can get the guide here.
If you want a quick introduction I’ve prepared an easy to understand infographic about some of the key elements which you can get hold of here for free and you get to be on my mailing list. I promise to protect your data and you won’t get spam from me, just information you need. It goes without saying you can unsubscribe at any time but I hope you find it a useful list to be on!
Its been a bit of a scorcher here the last few weeks and it looks like it will be continuing well in to June. I shall resist the urge to talk about the climate but share some places to cool off!
Usually when it gets hot in the city, everyone heads down to the sea, whether it in the inner harbour, one of the urban beaches or out in a boat. I have always wanted to live by the sea and now that I do, I try to make the most of it. It only takes a quick walk along Amager Strandpark to remember why I love this city so much.
Here are some of the ways you can enjoy the sea right here in the city…
Public Buildings and bridges in the harbour – over the last decade or so city planners have been building a number of iconic modern public buildings such as the Opera, the Royal Playhouse, the Black Diamond and now Blox along the central part of the inner harbour, drawing people into this area and also complimenting the existing historic architecture. It is possible to walk along almost the complete length of the harbour from the Black Diamond to the Little Mermaid, with a few inland deviations.
The b promenade with a kayak slide and amazing views of the harbour opened a few years ago and has drawn people into what was previously a business area.
Halvandet and Reffen at Refshalevej, are great places to enjoy food and drinks with stunning city views. You can reach this area by using the harbour boat bus and it a great place to chill out and watch the sunset.
Free swimming in the harbour – just fifteen years ago it would have been unthinkable to be able to swim in the inner harbour. But now, not only do you see people simply diving from the edge of the harbour when the whim takes them, but there are also a number of purpose build harbour swimming pools at Islands Brygge, Sluseholmen and Fisketorvet, which opened on June the first. There are pools for both adults and children and they are very popular.
Beaches close to the city – Again the city planners have come up trumps with the development of urban beaches within a fifteen minute public transport ride from the centre of the city. Amager Strand being the biggest, offering a long stretch of sandy beach, with a boardwalk and a swimming area as well as a lot of sport and leisure opportunities. It feels as if you are on holiday somewhere a lot further south than Copenhagen here. There is also a wooden swimming structure at the Kastrup end of the beach (close to the airport) called Kastrup Søbad, which is a great place to swim in the sea, without being in the open sea.
More recently, in 2010, Svanemøllen Beach was inaugurated. It provides 4,000 square metres of beach with family-friendly low waters as well as a 130 metre long pier providing direct access to deeper water. It is amazing to live in the urban area of Østerbro, hop on your bike and be swimming in the sea in less than fifteen minutes.
Just a short train ride away and you can find yourself at Bellevue Beach, where swimming is heavenly. My mum delighted in telling her French neighbours that she had swum in the Baltic sea on this very beach. The water here can reach around 22 degrees C on a hot day, as it can at Svanemølle Strand.
Boats – getting onto the water in the harbour and on the canals is an everyday thing for many people. Kayaking is very popular in Copenhagen and it is not uncommon to see people paddling at speed past all the main sights of the harbour. You can, of course, take a tourist boat tour but for the price of a normal public transport journey, why not hop on one of the harbour bus boats and see the harbour from one end to the other. For a leisurely pootle around with a picnic Go Boats, solar powered boats, can be hired from Islands Brygge.
If you want to see what the inner harbour is like on a sunny day check out my video on YouTube, where I take you up the harbour on the harbour bus.
I have updated my popular guide to having a baby in Denmark and it is now available in my online shop as an interactive ebook.
Having a baby is one of the most exciting and scary things we do in life and that is when we are in our own countries. Having a baby in a new country can be even more daunting as you are navigating a different languages, process and culture. This was one of the reasons I decided to write a ebook guide to having a baby in Denmark (and it covers the first year too).
For many expat parents to be in Denmark this may be your first baby and you need a lot of help, advice and support in the journey through pregnancy and into that first year. Equally you may have other children but had them in your home country or somewhere else completely.
Almost nine years ago I had my son Frederiksberg Hospital. He was one of the last babies born there before they closed the maternity unit. As he was my first child I had no idea about anything really, not having been a particularly maternal young woman and being one of the last of my friends to have a baby. I muddled through in some parts of my pregnancy and in others I was led by the medical team around me and the rest of advice from books, the internet and friends and family. I enjoyed my pregnancy and despite a difficult birth, my experience in the hospital here was also excellent. I found the first year a little tough but then who doesn’t?
Things have moved on a lot from those days all those years ago, both in the consumer landscape of Denmark to the services that are offered to pregnant women and young families. In some ways this makes things a lot easier but in others there is more information to find and to know where to look.
In preparation for this guide I thought about all the things I learned when I was pregnant and a new mum but I also had a great focus group of expat mums and mums to be who really helped me out, both endorsing the information I was including but also sharing with me the things they had found tough or information they had wished they’d had. So a big thank you to those women.
If you are expecting a child here in Denmark or have just had a baby then this guide will be an enormous help to you, I wish I’d had something similar myself all those years ago. If you would like to get hold of the guide you can visit my secure shop here.
If you go to Tivoli on a Monday at the moment you will probably find it packed with young teenagers feasting of sugar and calories and having lots of fun.
Last year I was curious as to why there were so many kids about until we were told it was Blue Monday (Blå Mandag) something I hadn’t come across before. So heading to the trusty Google I found out.
We are now in the thick of confirmation season here in Denmark, where teenagers are confirmed in church as a rite of passage to adulthood. This happens at the weekend and the Monday after is known as Blue Monday, where the newly confirmed teenagers enjoy a day of fun with their friends after the solemn family occasion the day before. They go shopping, to the cinema or to Tivoli or Bakken. Some schools give this as day off but not all.
The idea of Blue Monday goes back a long way. In Denmark, the confirmation was originally intended solely as a religious festival. But already by the 1700s, young people from the Copenhagen bourgeoisie met in the King’s Garden at Rosenborg Castle to show their gifts at the time of the few who could afford things like a cigarette case, a parasol or other grown up things. Blue Monday was in fact an important day because it was the first day you even owned some of the things that belonged to adulthood. In today’s society that could be a new iPhone.
Reading around the subject on Danish website it is a bit scary (as a mum) to read about advice about drinking, sex and fighting on the day considering the age of the kids but as far as I could see in Tivoli it was all pretty tame. In fact one boy gave my son some fairground money he had won on the whack a mole so my son had a little more towards yet another soft toy. Also kids are warned not to take too much money or expensive gadgets in case they get robbed.
Whilst it is a lovely experience for the young people, I think I’ll stick to visiting Tivoli on other days of the week, if nothing else the queues will be shorter!
If you are interested in reading a little more about the confirmation part of the tradition , this is a good link.
Its been a little bit quiet here this last week or so. I’ve had a few commissions to write some articles (I’ll share once they are published) and also clients with Dejlige Days Welcome plus updating my ebooks.
However I have been busy making some videos for YouTube. I decided to stop over thinking how to make videos and just do some. The idea of the channel is to show people different aspects of life in Copenhagen but also to help out with questions I hear people ask about different practical aspects of life here.
This is the link to the channel and at the moment I have a YouTube address generated by YouTube but with a hundred subscribers I can get my own Dejlige Days one, so I’d be really delighted and grateful if you could support me by subscribing.
I hope you enjoy them and I’d love to hear if you have anything you’d like me to cover in the videos.
Enjoy the sun!
