The Year of Living Danishly Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t speak Danish, and we have nowhere to live. The whole take-a-punt, ‘new year, new you’ euphoria has now been replaced by a sense of: ‘Oh shit, this is real’. The two-day hangover from extended farewell celebrations and our boozy leaving lunch probably isn’t helping either.
    We emerge from arrivals into a frozen, pitch-black nothingness and go in search of our hire car. This isn’t as easy as it might be since all the number plates have been fuzzed-out by frost, like in a police reconstruction. Once the correct combination of letters and numbers has been located, we drive, on the wrong side of the road, to Legoland. After several wrong turns due to unfamiliar road signs, partially whited-out by snow, we reach the place we’re to call home for the next few nights.
    â€˜Welcome to the Legoland Hotel!’ the tall, broad, blond-haired receptionist beams as we check in. His English is perfect and I’m relieved. Christian had assured me that most Danes were proficient linguists, but I’d been warned not to expect too much in rural areas, i.e. where we are. But so far, so good.
    â€˜We’ve put you in The Princess Suite,’ the receptionist goes on.
    â€˜â€œThe Princess Suite”?’ Lego Man echoes.
    â€˜Is that at all like the presidential suite?’ I ask, hopefully.
    â€˜No, it’s themed .’ The receptionist swivels around his monitor to show us a pastel-coloured room complete with a pink bed and a headboard made from plastic moulded castle turrets. ‘See?’
    â€˜Wow. Yes, I see…’
    The receptionist goes on: ‘The suite is built with 11,960 Lego bricks—’
    â€˜â€”Right, yes. The thing is—’
    â€˜â€”and it’s got bunk beds ,’ he adds, proudly.
    â€˜That’s great. It’s just, the thing is, we haven’t got any kids…’
    The receptionist looks confused, as though this doesn’t quite compute: ‘The walls are decorated with butterflies?’
    I fully expect him to offer us a goblet of unicorn tears next and so try to dissuade him gently: ‘Really, it sounds lovely, but we just don’t need anything quite so … fancy. Isn’t there anything else available?’
    He frowns and taps away at his keyboard for a few moments before looking up and resuming a wide smile: ‘I can offer you The Pirate Suite?’
    We spend the first night in our new homeland sleeping beneath a giant Jolly Roger. There is a dressing-up box and all manner of parrot and pieces-of-eight paraphernalia. In the morning, Lego Man emerges from the bathroom wearing an eye patch. But things seem better by daylight. They always do. We draw the curtains to reveal a bright, white new world and blink several times to take it all in. Fortified by an impressive breakfast buffet, which includes our first encounter with the country’s famed pickled herring, we feel ready to begin ticking off the various items of ‘life admin’ necessary for starting over in a new country. And then we step outside.
    The snow has shifted up a gear, from gentle, Richard Curtis film-style flakes into snow-globe-being-shaken-vigorously-by-angry-toddler territory. The sky empties fast, dumping its load with urgency from all directions now. So we go back inside, put on every item of clothing we have, then emerge an hour later, looking like Michelin Men but better prepared to start the day.
    In the hire car, I try to remember that the gear stick isn’t on my left and that I need to drive on the right, while Lego Man reads from the to-do list that his new HR manager has thoughtfully emailed over. This comprehensive document extends to an alarming ten pages and is, we are informed, only ‘phase one’.
    â€˜First off,’ Lego Man announces, ‘we need identity cards – otherwise we don’t technically exist here.’
    It turns out that the ID card scheme that Brits railed