5 Strange Facts About Denmark part 2

Hej everyone!!

Some time ago I wrote a post called "5 strange facts about Denmark part 1" ( <- Read it there) and lots of you loved it! Even Denmark.dk shared this post on their facebook page!:) I knew right away, the continuation of that post will be needed :)

Again - Some of these facts may be normal to you, however those are the things that surprised me personally, if there are others that surprised YOU, don't forget to share them with me here :)

1. The danish accent + written and spoken form of the language

The one thing that stayed in my mind was one situation where my danish friend asked me if I knew the danish man : Andersen and I replied .. NO. Why? Because in polish we say his name directely as it is written, together with 'D' and 'R', so when she asked me about him I had no idea, who is she talking about!

The same is with other words that I am trying to learn in this video down below (another written form and spoken one, as you can hear:) )

 

2. There is more pigs than people!

You can of course interpret this however you want to, I am just saying.. :) There is around 5 mln people and over 13 mln pigs!:)

3. The tax is in avarage 49%

Of course there are some exceptions, as for the students - 8 % , but whenever you reach the earnings over some kind of limit you pay much more… and most of us do reach that and it feels so bad to pay half of your money to the state.. :( (And yes, I know what we are getting for that - education, health insurance etc, but the thought you need to pay so much is just depressing! :) )

4. Equality of men and women

I know, everything is great - women can go to work,  drink as much alcohol as men and nobody's judging, perfect - I agree, but there are some things that are just making me upset, as for example men walking first through the door, not letting the woman first… GRHHH I hate that! I still feel that a woman is a lady!!! :)))) and it is not acceptable in Poland when a man goes first, he is then treated as he was raised in a "bad" manner.

Another surprising thing is that you can see a lot of women working in a job that in Poland for example is considered only for men :) As in building construction or painting the houses:)

Also the one thing, I was told in the first year of my education in Denmark though my teacher - The head of the family in Denmark is the woman - not the man as in any other countries :) For example most men doing shopping or taking care of children when mother is coming back to work after the pregnancy :)

Can you also guess the toiltes are common is some buildings? Both for men and woman - even at my school :) In Poland - not acceptable hahhah :)  I am used to this one, but I still find that as quite interesting fact :)

5. Renting the apartments

First of all - almost everyone does that. In Poland its mostly students who rent, and directly after finishing their studies, they are getting a loan and trying to buy something. Denmark, among other northern countries are leading in the statistics of renting apartments in Europe.

Second of all, when you rent the apartment you come in to the totally empty one. You just see white walls and just a kitchen ( sometimes you even need to get your own fridge.. ) and what is the most funny is that you need to pay a deposit for that empty space, that is equal to 3 times the price of your monthly rent :) So speaking more straight - most of the times the deposit for these empty apartments is minimum 10. 000 KR (min. 1.000 Euro) of course depending on the price of the rent, in my case it was always 15. 000 for two rooms. Imagine bigger apartments and bigger rents :)

( I will write something more about renting apartments in Denmark,since it was highly requested:) Ask questions if you have any)

That are just some of the things that really surprised me and are creating Denmark as it is:) I am not judging here - those are just funny/surprising/strange/interesting facts to me:) Share yours if you found any!:)

All the best for the New Year!!

Aleksandra

IKEA Vlog

Hi everyone

Today very different blog post than usual. Actually I would call it - vlog post.
One month ago, I got an email from one girl, asking if I could write what I am doing during my free day in Aalborg, some kind of a diary. I thought : why not. Taking into consideration fact that it is already summer and I really needed to go to IKEA (shopping therapy) I got my camera with me to show you, how it all looks like in Denmark. Today it was just a shopping video, but if you want to see more of these kind of posts, let me know! I will try to film eg. 'my way to school' or 'dormitory tour'

I am leaving you then, with this long (4minutes!) video, hope you enjoy!!:)

Click "HD" to watch in a better quality!

Acommodation Part 2

Good Evening and Good Morning!

First of all I am sorry it is just now when I am writing this second part of finding apartment story. Hope you had nice and relaxing weekend though! ;>

I would like to thank you all for sharing the website - my friends, the agents and other readers. I am getting lots of questions which are my inspiration to the next blog post. Keep it on and do not hesitate to write me EMAILS or just COMMENT under!

So continuing with the story about accommodation in Denmark..

As I mentioned in my previous blog post I decided to look for an apartment after summer. 

When I came back from my 4 months internship in Malta to Denmark, I did not have any place to stay. Luckily my friend Anna and her parents offered me to stay with them. (Thank you so much once again!!)

Even though I was living 20 km away from Aalborg - in Kongerslev - I was looking for an apartment every day. It was really hard period of time since I wanted to find something as soon as possible, but as you can imagine - women have special demands.. How did I know where to look? Well, actually I didn't, but my friend told me about one website which offers different houses/ apartments for rent and it work as a forum of searchers and land lords. I bought an account there which costed me around 350 DKK but it was really worth it. If you are going to look for an apartment this is THE WEBSITE. Now I know that UCN ambassadors of acommodation can help you with the account there. 

When I noticed one flat in this portal I thought to myself - this is the one! I called on the number given, and turned out it was agency that is cooperating with Bolig Portal. We scheduled a meeting. I got keys to the apartment in order to look around. I remember when I came there - the apartment did not look like my perfect one! It was all messy, lots of shoes and newspapers on the floor, letters from the banks and old pictures. I thought to myself - OK. Someone was kidnapped here. I came to the other room and I heard it! I heard beautiful noise of cars and people behind the window. I run to the 4th floor window and saw all the small buildings in the center of Aalborg, beautiful Limfjord Bridge and all fashionable people walking down the street.

Lindholm Bryggen at night

I came back to the lady in the agency and I was ready to sign the contract but she told me that I have to wait till they clean everything. I was in such a big rush that I did not agree for that, we had agreement that I will clean everything and I will live in the apartment one week for free. OK - no problem with that:) This is over 1,5 year already when I am living here! :)

When your looking for a flat here you should remember 3 things that I was really surprised about :

1. Emptiness
2. Deposit
3. One room per one person

First thing is the emptiness. I was really surprised that this is so normal here, that every apartment is unfurnished (Besides the kitchen). You come in and what you see, is the white walls and unfurnished flat. Unless you see shoes and newspaper of an ex person who lived there.

Maybe it is quite normal for all of you but when you rent the flat in Poland you have it all inclusive :) That is why it was wow effect for me because I felt like in hospital - white walls an nothing inside. In Poland you pay small deposit - but for the things that can be broken.

In Denmark they obviously think that I can break walls or the floor. The thing that really surprised me, was the amount of money put into the deposit - you pay the rent * 3 months. So when my apartment costs 4600 DKK per month I paid the rent for november + (4600*3)= 13800, so all together it was over 18000 DKK.  And imagine then to buy all the furniture.. (I remember I was sleeping on the mattress one month!) But you can also find lots of things on the street! And it is western country - so they look brand new!

Because of the big deposit it is good to live in dormitory  (deposit is much smaller) or to live with someone else, BUT :

It is a rule in Denmark that when you rent an apartment and when it has 2 rooms - you should just live in 2 people. Number of room equals number of people living in the apartment. Otherwise if you try to "cheat" and live in 3-room apartment in 6 people and you are all registered under this address on a post office or in danish kommune , they might kick you out and give you a fee! And trust me - they know everything ;)

As an example of a girl who is studying hard and working to get a good life in Aalborg, I can set Mirella Manyi who achieved everything what you are going to see in this video with her own input.

Here is also video made by multimedia design students from our school about studying and living in Aalborg, you should definetely check it out!

               

Have a nice day watching the videos and wait fot the blog post about UCN Sports Cup!

Aleksandra

Ps. If you are thinking of Hospitality and tourism management programme here is the UCN blog especially for you. You can clik HERE and know some more about the programme and people studying it - in danish and in english, enjoy !