Texans in Denmark

In my last post, I talked about the reasons that me and my family decided to leave Texas. Today I’m going to talk about why we decided Denmark as our new home. Why Denmark? I get this question often, especially from Danes. I hope to answer how we came up with Denmark as our family’s new home and how it has been in the past two and a half years. I do not intend for this to be a guide for others since the details of bureaucracy change quite often and I think everyone’s experience will be very different from ours. My colleague has actually written a Developers Guide to Moving to Denmark which is very informative on this front. My of his experiences echo mine. Instead, I want to describe “the vibe” of the last few years in Denmark, so others might have a general sense of what it might be like to make the same life-changing move.

Why Denmark?

To give you a better idea of why we chose Denmark, let’s dive into the specific factors that influenced our decision.

Beautiful cities and landscapes

I love the design of many European cities. The historic buildings, the walkable city centers, the metro and train systems, the bus systems that get to most places, etc. So Europe was already very high on our list. However, there are many places to live in Europe, so let’s continue.

English Usage

We did realize how hard it would be to live in a country that doesn’t have a high proficiency in English, so we naturally gravitated towards places that do use English a good amount. With this criteria, we identified Ireland, England, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway as notable choices.

Women also work

Denmark has a very good record for women being able to have careers. The gap between the percentage of women and men working is much lower than in most other countries. Women are very much expected to be a part of society, and men are expected to do their share of housework and childcare.

Work-life Balance

Denmark has a legal requirement for employees to have five weeks of paid vacation time per year. Many jobs offer a week or two more than that. Non-salary employees also get “vacation pay” which can be used to keep your pay consistent while you take time off for you and your family. Furthermore, the amount of hours for full-time work in Denmark is 37, which is slightly better than the typical 40. People shouldn’t be working their lives away in hopes that one day they will be able to retire and finally do the things that they want to do when their health is likely the worst.

But how does Denmark make this work? How is it possible for so many women to work when there are children to raise? In addition to generous leave policies, Denmark also provides very generous maternity and paternity leave with up to a year off in total. When the child is one year old, subsidized child care starts and is extremely cheap for the quality of care that you get. And from then on, both parents have time to work full-time jobs and continue their careers. It just makes sense. Most citizens here are happy to pay more tax to live in a society where this is how it works. This very much matches my values.

Public health care

Health care is a touchy subject for everyone, but I firmly believe that making it a public service is the right choice. I’m tired of seeing fundraising campaigns to cover basic medical expenses. Your level of care shouldn’t be decided on how good of a sob story your relatives can give on GoFundMe. I would rather have a giant fundraiser that everyone, by default, pays into and everyone can tap into if they need. Health care in our new country should be mostly a public service. This is the case for many countries so this criterion didn’t actually narrow our decision down very much, but this is a notable difference from The United States where health care is an abomination of private hospitals negotiating with private insurance companies to which you only get access to by being a productive worker at a (usually) private company.

Happy Citizens

It feels silly, but the fact that Denmark consistently ranks near the top of the happiest citizens tells me something about the society. Yes, this is likely a flawed study but there seems to be some truth to it. People are generally happy and the poverty rate is low. This matches my values.

Weather

You may find it surprising that I would list the weather as a positive for Denmark. In contrast to Texas, it’s nowhere near as extreme. There are few-to-no tornados, earthquakes or hurricanes. Occasionally there is a storm with strong winds with flooding but it is nowhere near the amount of destruction of tornados. Why do I care about tornados so much? My house was hit by one in 2019. I was alone with my 6-month-old daughter and it was the scariest few minutes of my life that shook up our lives for the next year. I talked more about this in my last post.

Biking culture

Denmark has a strong bicycle culture. What I like most about Danish cycling culture is that it’s not just the super extreme cyclers who have insanely expensive bikes and full-body suits. It’s mostly just normal people who use a bike to get to work because it’s the cheapest, fastest and usually the most pleasant way to get places.

And more

• Literally Vikings
• Our daughter will be bilingual, which is super cool
• World leaders in wind energy
• Wonderful design aesthetic
• Delicious pastries
• Low crime rate
• Very progressive social policies
• Probably a lot more things that I am just forgetting to list

All in all, these factors combined painted a picture of Denmark that aligned with our values and aspirations, making it the ideal place for our family to put down roots. So we took a leap of faith and decided to jump into the unknown.

Preparing for the move

We decided to NOT do a “scouting” vacation, so the first time we were to visit Denmark, we were moving there. This seems like a strange decision to most people that we talk to, but I firmly think we did the right thing for us. We reasoned that we weren’t going to learn anything from a vacation that would stop us from at least trying to live there for a year. Vacationing is such a different experience than actually living somewhere, and it really is hard to imagine what it is like living somewhere unless you just do it. So we did. The timing of our move was also a crucial factor.

You may ask why we moved when we did. This was the second half of 2021. COVID was still a big deal. Our daughter was two years old at the time, and we considered that it would get harder and harder for her to learn Danish like a native Danish kid the longer we waited. This was the biggest reason we pulled the trigger as fast as we could.

Three months before the move

Before our big move, we had a lot of things to settle. We rented an Airbnb for three months so that we could have time to sell almost everything that we owned. Our house. Our cars. And quite literally almost everything else. We took a total of 8 large suitcases, 3 carry-on bags and a stroller (which was destroyed in transit). We packed some clothing, practical items and a few keepsakes. That is all we had to start our new life.

The Job Search

During these three months, I also interviewed for jobs in Denmark. This could be a post all of its own, but when I decided to start applying to jobs in earnest was July of 2021. One thing I didn’t know about Denmark at the time is that the entire month of July is typically when a lot of Danes take off for their summer vacations. This is because most schools have three weeks in July designated for vacations. I wasn’t getting a lot of responses simply because the country was quite literally closed for business. But I stuck to it and eventually got traction on a few jobs which eventually ended up in a pretty good offer that I signed. I quite literally had one of my interviews with someone from their summerhouse. After the offer was agreed to, I started the process for my permit. This required that I travel to Houston to officially submit my paperwork and to have my fingerprint scanned and picture taken. Luckily the closest Danish embassy was relatively close.

At this time I was still working at my dream job at Apple. I only left the job so we could expedite the move to Denmark. I did try searching for openings in Denmark within Apple but there really aren’t a lot of Apple jobs in Denmark that match my skills. I was interviewing for jobs in The Netherlands as well since it was a very close 2nd place on our short list of places to move to. I did find several opportunities in Amsterdam and I was close to accepting one of them whenever a few people in Denmark decided to check their email while on vacation, thankfully. If things were slightly different, I could be learning Dutch instead of Danish right now.

Onward!

With a job offer secured, the work permit process underway, and plane tickets booked, it felt like our plans were finally coming together. As we prepared to leave everything familiar behind, we knew that this was just the beginning of our adventure.

The day finally arrived, and we embarked on our journey to Denmark.

Arrival in Denmark

Day 1

Oddly, the first day was the hardest for me. I can’t sleep very well on airplanes so it felt like the longest day on earth. We had two layovers and by the time we got on the third plane, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was COMPLETELY over the experience. We were the kind of parents that severely limited our daughter’s television-watching time. This has been great so far… Except when you need to entertain a toddler who isn’t interested in TV shows for 14 fucking hours… then it’s not so great. She also was far less interested in the experience of being in an airplane than we expected.

After our plane had finally landed at Copenhagen Airport, we had to get to our Airbnb (we had one rented for a month while we got our rental house settled) to check in and get our keys. Remember that we had several large and heavy suitcases to contend with and this is when we learned that the “1st floor” is up one and a half flights of stairs because in most of Europe the “first floor” is one level above the “ground floor”. We picked the most fun way to discover this. We also were scheduled to get the keys for the rental house soon after we arrived. This schedule was a mistake. Everything took much longer than expected so I was in a rush to get all of our luggage up to the Airbnb in time to get to our appointment. I moved everything we owned up a few flights of stairs before quickly running/walking to the nearby rental house. We ended up making it only a few minutes late. Everything went well with the walkthrough and we headed back to the AirBnB where we slept the first night in our new home country.

I have some pictures of this day but we look absolutely exhausted so I will not be sharing those!

The First Month

On the second day, we bought some bikes, determined to learn how to ride them. Yes, it was pouring rain, so we got the proper Danish welcoming but we didn’t let a little rain get in the way of getting things done.

We mostly treated the first few weeks, or so, like a vacation. We walked around and explored our new city like tourists. Then we would come home and build Ikea furniture in our rental house. We ended up only sleeping at the Airbnb for a few days. Once we had a mattress in our rental house there was no way we weren’t going to sleep there. We should have realized this but we added a lot of buffer into our plans because the nightmare scenario for us was being stuck without a place to sleep.

We ended up walking a lot. It’s quite insane how much more walking you end up doing whenever most places that you want to go are a walkable distance away or there’s transit available that’s a walkable distance from your destination. I mentioned cycling culture as a positive for the country, but I did not know how to ride a bicycle at this point. So we ended up learning how to use the bus and metro system. We opted to NOT purchase a car. This ended up being an amazing decision for us because Copenhagen is perfectly navigable without needing a car.

Bureaucracy is a little difficult when you don’t speak the language. In Denmark there is a specific order of when you can do certain things… and some steps took a surprisingly large amount of time, like onboarding to a Danish bank. It was a ridiculous amount of time before I was able to receive my first paycheck (3 months). We luckily planned on much worse things and had plenty of savings to use in the meantime.

As the initial excitement of arrival settled, we began to navigate the realities of daily life in Denmark. The first year was a whirlwind of learning and adjusting.

The first year

The first year went by so quickly. I was super excited about every little cultural difference. It sounds very strange but grocery shopping took a while to adjust to. Not only was everything in a language we didn’t understand (we expected that) but it’s strange how much you rely on familiar types of packaging and brands when shopping. It’s funny because now I can’t even sympathize too much with my past self because I no longer have any issues with grocery shopping. I don’t even remember the specifics behind what was so difficult… But I do remember having a pasta dish using extremely spicy marinara sauce on accident; the dish ended up being inedible.

I started my new job. We figured out how to sign my daughter up for kindergarten. My wife got a part-time job near home. We rebuilt our wardrobe since we weren’t able to take a lot of clothes over with us. I took a stab at learning Danish but I did this with a fully online class and none of the lessons “stuck” for me, and life ended up getting in the way so I would consider this attempt as a failure.

The weather did take some adjustment. We intellectually knew that the winters would be dark but there’s nothing that really prepares for so many dark days. There was a time soon after New Year’s when I just wanted it to stop being so dammed dark all the time. But other seasons eventually came. This is when I realized that Denmark may have the perfect spring, summer and autumn weather for me so maybe I can tolerate the dark winters.

Overall, the first year was a period of rapid adaptation and cultural immersion. While we faced challenges, we also embraced new experiences and began to feel a sense of belonging in our adopted home. Throughout the year, we encountered several surprising differences compared to life in Texas.

Surprising differences that I have noticed during the first year:

• Very rare small talk with strangers. To me, it seems like the people who do strike up small talk are not from Denmark.
• Americans are loud. I thought of myself as a quiet person but I often felt like I was scream-talking compared to those around me. I have (hopefully) adjusted my speaking volume lower.
• Transit etiquette: everyone is extremely quiet.
• Copenhagen can be incredibly quiet in general. People talk at low volumes, cars don’t go incredibly fast and there are no air conditioning units everywhere that pump out large amounts of background noise. It’s often quiet. And pleasant.
• No tipping. I don’t miss tipping culture.
• Fireworks: Danes are absolutely insane about fireworks. They fire them off at random times and places in the city in the weeks leading up to New Year’s. It’s absolutely crazy and the smoke and noise can make an otherwise quiet night look like a war zone. It all builds up in a crescendo on New Year’s evening to what can only be described as the noise of World War III. Dogs don’t have a good time in Danish cities during this time.
• Feeling of safety; my wife often has to work late nights and has never felt unsafe walking home alone. This is a dramatic difference from where we come from.
• Children with cigarettes and walking beer. I will never get used to this. The lack of open carry laws and the drinking age for beer is age 16.
• Danes don’t seem to like using weed killer to kill grass that sprouts up between paving stones. Instead, you will see old people with a hand-held frame thrower burning off the unwanted plant matter.
• No car; I haven’t missed having a car. It’s so freeing to not have one in a city with many alternative modes of transportation.
• Weird traditions: During a holiday called Fastelavn there’s a tradition of getting a barrel with a black cat in it and beating the barrel until the cat gets out. They no longer use a cat but the barrel remains, usually filled with candy instead. There’s also a Midsummer holiday called Sankt Hans Aften where Danes gather to burn witches. Again, they no longer use real witches but the symbolism is kind of nuts when you first hear about it.
• We would come across pikes of cinnamon on the ground close to poles. We asked around to see what the hell was happening here and discovered a fun tradition: If you aren’t married by the time you are 25 years old your “friends” will tie you to a pole and throw cinnamon at you to make you sweeter so you’ll have better luck finding a mate. It’s, of course, voluntary and all in good fun.

Despite these cultural adjustments, the second year brought a sense of belonging and a deeper understanding of Danish life.

The second year

As we settled into our second year, we began to feel more at home in Denmark. Many aspects of our lives fell into place, giving us a sense of stability and belonging.

Permanent home

Our lease was running out for our rental house so we decided to look for a more permanent place to stay. We ended up finding an apartment that we loved and we went through the process to purchase it. We’ve learned that there are a lot of caveats when purchasing real estate in Denmark as a non-permanent resident: financing is harder to get and you will likely be offered a worse rate unless you put a larger down payment (up to 40%), the Danish government can just say “no” if you haven’t lived in Denmark for more than 5 years, and you can’t rent out or sublet the place until you’ve lived here for five years. Despite these potential hurdles, the process went surprisingly smoothly for us, thanks in part to the streamlined Danish system and the assistance of a knowledgeable lawyer. We have found that the home-buying process is far more streamlined and easier than the process in the United States. I don’t think I physically signed a single thing during the entire process and there were no random $500 charges that popped up during the process.

Learning Danish

I’m going to Danish class in person now and it has been working a lot better for me compared to online classes. I’m at a weird skill level now where I can understand a good number of basic conversations but it’s still challenging for me to form sentences on the fly and all of it is still exhausting. I think this is the point where I can start saturating my mind with Danish shows, newspapers, magazines, books and music so my brain starts thinking in Danish more naturally. But it’s going well. My daughter is 5 years old now and is speaking Danish fluently. Our plan of bringing her over early enough to grasp the language like a native speaker has worked exceedingly well.

Unions

I haven’t mentioned unions yet. Denmark has unions for most industries and several general-purpose unions. They appear to operate a bit differently than what we see in the US but the principal is the same. Unions negotiate with employers for better working conditions and pay. They will also review employment contracts for you and if there is ever a disagreement between you and your employer you can get legal assistance from them. This system appears to work well in Denmark. There’s no government-enforced minimum wage, but there are often industry-specific minimums that have been agreed upon.

Work

I also switched jobs. After living in Denmark for a year I’ve gotten a better grasp of the market and made a move to get closer to the amount I should be getting paid. Part of this was due to data released by my union. As an ex-Apple software engineer from the United States, I took a deep pay cut coming to Denmark but it works out well because of our mix of significant savings and our severely downscaled lifestyle. Furthermore, the Danish work culture places a high value on work-life balance and employee well-being, which more than compensates for the lower salary.

Cycling

The second year is when I started reliably riding my bike in earnest. As my legs got stronger I transitioned from a heavy e-bike to a normal city bike. It was stolen once (I recovered it thanks to a hidden AirTag). I got tired of carrying around the battery. I cycle 2-3 times a week to work and Danish class. It is still tiring but that is because I can’t seem to force myself to go slower than my “max speed” when cycling. I always seem to want to go at a pace that pushes my limits. I also continued to cycle throughout all of winter, which was a big accomplishment for me; only opting to take the metro if there was ice on the roads or there were particularly windy days. You can see what my commute looked like at the time by checking on the video I made while commuting to work. I’ve been intending to make a new video because my office location has changed.

Cultural Differences

I listed a bunch of cultural differences in the last section. Well, there’s not much to note here because I don’t come across them often anymore… or at least not many of these things seem as strange anymore.

What now?

Our family is set on staying here for the long haul. There are some big dates to keep an eye on: passport renewals, visa extensions for me and my family, and applying for permanent residency.

Other than waiting, I have two requirements that I need to actively work on for permanent residency: pass a higher level of Danish and pass an active citizen exam. Then I wait for my 4 years of employment to pass and I can apply. For citizenship, there’s a much more difficult exam and I have to wait 9 years before I can apply. These requirements can and often do change.

As we look ahead, I have a lot of hope that Copenhagen will continue to be an amazing place to live. While the path to permanent residency and eventual citizenship may be long and winding, we are confident in our decision to make Denmark our home. We eagerly await the milestones ahead, embracing the opportunities for growth and the chance to become even more integrated into this vibrant and welcoming society. While we may always be Texans at heart, we are excited to continue to forge a new life in Denmark filled with new experiences, new friendships, and a newfound appreciation for the simple joys of Danish living.