Happy New Year!  I hope the holidays have left you refreshed and ready to tackle the new year.2016  in the wider world was something of a tough year but to all those people breathing a sigh of relief that the year is over, we can’t kid ourselves as the decisions made in the US election and Brexit referendum will define the year we are now in even more than they did 2016. I think that for the first time in a long time the events of the world really stressed me, it felt like it was one thing after another last year and very few good. This year I need to try to take a step back and concentrate on what is close to me and what I can have an impact on.

So I’m back after a two week break from this blog however it feels a lot longer. The end of last year was hard for me in many ways and I have neglected this blog somewhat.

I have been lucky enough to be busy with Dejlige Days Welcome and some other PR consultancy work in the last quarter of the year. We also moved from our apartment into a temporary place and then we’ll move again in March to our proper new home. Whilst old hands at moving it is still time consuming and disruptive. I also made the decision to stop taking morphine for my pain and there were certainly a few Trainspotting moments (showing my age here) as I reduced the dose. So 2017 sees me clean of opioids, much more refreshed and ready to take on 2017.

I don’t believe in resolutions but I do believe in goals. It is a coincidence that my health is improving as the date changes but I am now in a position to make further health changes. I am making a green smoothie from this book to have each morning in an attempt to get lots of vitamins and also to stop my habit of a coffee and an apple tart from Andersens in the morning (if you are not trying to be healthy they are amazing and you need them in your life!). I also want to lose a little bit of weight, this is again for health reasons but also vanity. After my accident I put on a fair bit of weight and due to my medications this has been had to shift. I don’t look how I like to and so that will change too. I have been letting little health things slide in the face of a bigger health issue so these will also need to be tackled.

I have been feeling that my creative side needs more of an outlet. I am a big believer in the idea that if you want something no one else is offering then do it yourself. You may know that I am now the organiser for Craftenhagen (check our Facebook page for more info) and we have some fun, informal monthly events planned. However I am extending Craftenhagen to offer more formal taught craft and creative classes in 2017. These will be offered in English. The first one is scheduled for April. If this sounds like something you might be interested in I have a mailing list you can add your name to here.

Finally Dejlige Days Welcome. My relocation service has been growing slowly over 2016 but this year I hope to see it flourish even more. I am dedicating the first quarter of this year to this, promoting my book and my blog. I will have more news about the changes to my packages and also extensions to the current service in the next few weeks. Also be sure to like my Facebook page as I shall be sharing a lot more about news and events in the city there. I am also on Twitter and Instagram (and very active on both) in case you’d like to follow me there too.

So all that leaves me to say is here’s to 2017, treat us kinder than 2016!

When we decided it was time to move to a house, it was a decision I was happy to make and I am looking forward to the changes it will give us. But I do have a soft spot for the kind of Copenhagen apartments we have lived in. I don’t think any have been less than 90 years old and that gives a certain kind of charm. So what is it about them that is special?

High ceilings – I love the high ceilings we have had in all of our apartments. It means that the special pictures, and my stag horns,  can really be seen and enjoyed. It allows the light to really come into the rooms. Although the features on the ceilings such as the rose around the lights are not original they give it a certain vintage charm. Plus you can really go wild with a Christmas tree with high ceilings!

Big windows – it is universally accepted that I am something of a nosy bonk so I like being able to look out and see the world go by. I also love the feeling on a dark winter’s evening of being able to see the warm glow of our neighbours’ windows (as no one seems to bother with curtains) but at the same time I don’t feel that there are eyes watching me as I add to that warm glow in the street.

Wooden floors – Danes love that connection with nature and wooden floors are an example of this. I don’t find having carpetless floors makes the home feel cold, if fact it seems more welcoming and bright because of them.

Tiny bathrooms – this one may seem odd but over the years I have come to like having a small and cosy bathroom. It is the warmest room in our apartment and not a shock to the system in the morning. I am looking forward to, possibly, having a bath in our new home but will miss our miniature bathroom.

The ratio of living to sleeping space – this was something I only realised that I appreciated when we started looking at houses. You spend the most time in your living and dining room and the kitchen and in apartments these spaces take up the larger percentage of the floor space.

Community – now I will admit this is something lacking in our current apartment building and it is something I see as an important element in successful apartment living. In our first apartment building we had a lovely community of kind-hearted and welcoming people, and in our second one the same was true but to a slightly lesser extent. They still had a Christmas tree in the hall downstairs and everyone gathered for the lighting of it complete with gløgg. 

Proximity to life – living in an apartment in Copenhagen means you will most likely live in a busier area and that means life – in the shape of shops, coffee shops and playgrounds. Living in Frederiksberg I loved our local shopping streets and the business owners there. Whilst in the city it was like being part of a village. I haven’t found the same connection in Østerbro.

Drying rooms – a quirk of living in an old apartment is having a drying room in the attic or basement and for some reason these places fill me with pleasure.

Things I don’t love…

I do try and be positive about life but as time has gone on in our present apartment I have found there are frustrations associated with apartment living and I think they are mainly related noise and where we live at the moment.

Noise – I have never lived in an apartment building where I have heard my neighbours as much. I am not sure if it is mainly a practical thing – the acoustics of the old building makes noise carry down walls, the selfish nature of neighbours or simply that I am at home more. As we have less of a community feel in this building I feel less able to say anything about it. But I do moan about hearing Game of Thrones through the floor, the stomping on my upstairs neighbours and general door slamming.

Street outside – we live on a fairly busy road in Østerbro. This is the first time we have lived somewhere with constant traffic noise. As we are on the route to the docks at Nordhavn we have lorries passing by in the early hours of the morning that make the bed shake. We also seem to be on a route for lively inebriated people on a Saturday night who shout, sing and play loud music from boom boxes on cargo bikes. The cars on the road also mean that we have a constant fine black dust settling and it seems that it is a never-ending task to dust (one I am not that diligent about!)

Community – one thing moving to this apartment in Østerbro has made me appreciate is the level of community we have had in other places, even Berlin. I barely see my neighbours and whilst I have forced some to become more than just people who pass with a nod and a brief hej, I am not feeling that there is any level of community. I know that neighbours can change once you move in but if I were to ever move to an apartment again I would want to find out more about the make up of the building. We have too many rental units in our place with people changing on a regular basis and with young people who have no interest in being part of the building. In a way this makes the move to a house on a street a lot easier.

So weighing up both sides of apartment living – it feels that now is the time to move onto something more quiet and private. We have done the apartment living thing and enjoyed it but unless I can capture and relive that time on Bulowsvej in 2008-11, it is time to start a new era of life.

Moving to a new country means adapting to new ways and embracing differences but at the same time it doesn’t mean that you have to lose your own ways and identity.In the eight years I have lived in Copenhagen I have adopted a number of Danish ways – embracing hygge, living in a white and less cluttered home, having two single duvets instead of one, airing said duvets out the window on a Sunday but at the same time I have kept hold of many of my own British ways.

Sometimes it is easy to explain away how you do something as ‘well I’m British (subtext a bit weird)’ but as time goes on and the more you integrate with Danes you will find you are told that its not done a certain way or that you need to conform. But when I believe that something is Ok or should be done a certain way I will do that as long as the motivation is coming from a good place. And it usually turns out alright.

Gift giving is area I have certainly fallen foul of. In the UK is very normal for parents to club together to give teachers an end of year or Christmas present. Not so here and I was on the receiving end of quite a lecture about the suggestion of giving the staff at my son’s international preschool a couple of cases of champagne for Christmas. I did it anyway and almost all the parents were happy to contribute and the staff delighted to receive.

Same as my physio, I gave him a box of delectable cookies for Christmas as a seasonal gift but also as a thank you for his role in my recovery but I was warned by a Danish friend that it would embarrass him and I shouldn’t do it. It didn’t cause any embarrassment, surprise perhaps, but not embarrassment and in fact he said they were the best cookies he had ever eaten (sadly not baked by me!) I heard that part of the reason for this surprise is that Danes generally aren’t good at saying thank you for things – in a country where everything generally works well there is no need to give extra thanks for a job well done.

But I come from a standpoint that if you take time to complain about things not being done well, you should take equal time to say when things are good and make sure people feel appreciated – whether that is a teacher, a medical practitioner or the bloke who cleans the stairs in your apartment building – wherever we are from you like to feel you have done something well and are appreciated. Yesterday I called my insurance company with a query about a claim. The result of the claim had made my day and I shared this with the lady I spoke to, she was taken aback but said she would pass the message onto the person who had worked on it.

As with the examples above, they all come from a good place – we want to thank people for a good job done and should continue to do this even if it isn’t the norm.