Working in Denmark

Top 10 reasons why working in Denmark is AWESOME:

10. Arrive early and leave early. The work day is flexible based upon an employees needs. For example, most individuals with families arrive between 7 and 8am and leave between 3 and 4pm. When I tend to leave work around 4:30pm... it's usually a ghost town. 

9. Light and bright offices. Compared to the cramped cubicles and shared office spaces that I've worked at in US, my office (yes, that's right - I have my own office... baller) has high vaulted ceilings, plenty of light and natural wood desks, chairs, and bookshelves. Now, I just need to do a bit more decorating (see picture below).

8. Chocolate for snacks. There is a small basket of assorted mini Ritter Sport chocolates available for 2 kroner each. I guess this is an upgrade to my habit of buying post-lunch Hershey's mini's from the Atrium Cafe at UNC. 

7. Fredagbrød. This is the weekly tradition on Friday from 10:00-10:45am where the entire Department of Clinical Epidemiology gets together to enjoy a coffee and some breakfast bread, butter, jam, and chocolate. Yes... it is as amazing as it sounds.

6. Eating lunch together. For those of you who have ever worked or attended school with me know how much I hate to eat in my office/cube. As it so happens, the Danes also share the same sentiment. Everyday, the entire department emerges from their offices just past 12:00pm and everyone sits at a series of 4 long tables and enjoys lunch together. However, I still miss our Bioinformatics lunches outside, Pam and Emily!! 

5. Biking to work is definitely the norm. Everyone comes into work looking a little windblown... and likely a bit sweaty, depending on the distance of their commute.

4. Showers at work. Thank goodness for them - as some of my co-workers have a longer commute to work than I do ;)

3. Weekly fruit basket (see picture below). As some of you may know, the Danish government has a program that supplies workplaces with one piece of fruit per employee per day. There are a variety of fruits including apples, oranges, kiwis, plumbs, bananas, and pears. I guess that means I have no excuse to partake in #8 above.

2. Eating lunch with real plates and cutlery. This is surprisingly one of the nicest features of the office lunch in Denmark. Everyone basically brings their lunch, but uses proper plates, glasses, and cutlery from the two kitchens to eat with. No need to microwave your tupperware... or eat out of a plastic sandwich bag. I would like to bring this custom back to the US (but I guess we'd need to have dishwashers in the office, as well).

1. The stand-up desk. This is by far one of the best parts of working in Denmark. Almost everyone has a convertible desk where you can sit or stand (see the picture below).

Is it weird that 50% of these have to do with food and eating?

That's about it for now - but I promise not to take such a long hiatus next time!

Hej hej! (Bye!)

Jenny

First things first...

What you've heard about Denmark is true... if what you've heard is that it is a small country (≈5.5 million people) filled with extremely happy, beautiful, blonde-haired people riding bicycles everywhere. Add to this the fact that Aarhus, the town I am living in (aka, one of the four happiest cities in the world), is also a university town, you can understand why the first item on my "Week 1 To-Do" list was to buy a bicycle. Maybe next week I will dye my hair blonde. 

My current residence is perfectly situated for bike riding, as I am located in between my work just north of Aarhus and the Aarhus center, amounting to a 15-minute commute to work and only a 4-minute cruise down the hill to the town's shops and restaurants. This past Friday on my first day of work, I asked some of the PhD students and statisticians where they suggest I look to buy a used bike. Anders, one of the statisticians, recommended that I do some research on the Police Department Bicycle Auctions. The gist of this scheme is that every month, the police amass a large amount of bicycles by various means (e.g., recovered from thieves, left at the train station, parked illegally on others' private property). According to Danish efficiencies, these bikes cannot be stored for long periods of time by the Police Department, so a public auction is held at least once (sometimes twice) per month in a big warehouse out in Egå (pronounced EE-YO. Yea, I know... this language is crazy). 

After doing my research on how to take the bus out to Egå, I emailed my colleagues to ask them for any advice. Immediately, my co-worker and Danish cultural attache, Rune, insisted that he accompany me, simply noting that "Jenny, you don't know any numbers in Danish." Oh yea, details, details. In any case, Rune picked me up early Saturday morning and we drove out to Egå to the auction. Fortunately, Rune had never attended an auction, so it was a bit of a cultural experience for him, as well. 

We arrived around 9:30am in order to take 30 minutes to look over the >130 bikes up for auction. Armed with coffee in hand, Rune and I perused through some rusted, busted, and generally abused bikes... noting the diamonds in the ruff. In the end, I had about 7 bikes on my list that I was ready to bid on. We registered with the auction organizers and received lucky number 143. 

 

  
I've never participated in an auction - so I needed a strategy. We decided to watch the first 10 or so bikes to get a sense of the general price range and to see how fast the bidding went. In the end, I settled on spending between 500-1000 Danish kroner (approx. $100-$200). Rune would translate the numbers for me, but I would hold the card to show the bid. After listening to 130 bikes auctioned off, I am proud to say that I know how to count in increments of 100. 

A few of my favorite bikes came and went because I was bit too nervous about getting into a bidding war with a seasoned Danish bike repair person. The place was filled with them! 

 
Finally, bike #107 was called and I felt a wave of determination rise inside of me. The bidding started high at 400 kroner... up and up it went until I was the last one standing at 1,000 kroner (conveniently my maximum price). See my reward below:

The best feature on this bike (besides the totally rad front basket), is the plastic matrix-looking guard on the back. What is that thing for, you ask? It's used to prevent your flowy dresses from getting caught in the spokes on your back wheel, of course?! Ahhh, Danish cycle-chic... I love it :)

Kys fra Danmark (Kisses from Denmark)!

Jenny