The Hospital: Life in Copenhagen #10

The last 18 months have brought me in closer touch with the Danish medical system than I really wanted, and it's not over yet. I keep haunting the national hospital, Rigshospitalet, which is the main research, teaching and specialist hospital in Denmark, situated in Copenhagen and my local place to go. (And yes, "haunting" was a reference to "Riget", the Danish mini-series by Lars von Trier. It was my first and only impression of the Danish main hospital for 10 years, of course I think of that series when I go there.)

 In most ways, medical care in Denmark and Norway is similar. Norwegian doctors have a little more time for each patient, but in Denmark I don't pay a fee for materials used during the consultation. Since the fee isn't high, I have to admit I miss my regular doctor and the fact that he had time to chat a little, ask some questions about what I was doing... but here I can get in quickly if it's urgent, I can just show up and I will get an appointment without waiting 3 hours. Both systems have benefits, I really can't say either is better.

In hospitals, they are a little more eager to toss you out. That says something, because it's not like you're allowed to linger in tax-payer luxury in Norwegian hospitals either. Some of that difference may be due to the smaller distances here. If I was in one of the larger specialist hospitals in Norway, getting back and forth would take from 2 - 8 hours by car, depending on what needed to be done. Most of Denmark is available in a 2-3 hour ride, and you'll have passed a lot of exellent hospitals on the way. There is no such thing as a remote place here, if you measure distances with Norwegian eyes. Actually, if you want to get out of the country, from most places in Denmark you can reach Germany in three hours (Sweden in 20 minutes from here). And since I live in the city, if I get a problem I can be back at the hospital in 15 minutes by bike, 5 if it's in an ambulance. And no ferries involved.

Since it's so close and convenient, yes, I ride the bike to get there. So do hundreds of others. At "Riget" the main problem isn't to park your car, but to park your bike.

The buildings themselves are exellent examples of early 70-ies functionalist ugly. Concrete and stone, in huge squares. But if you pause to look around, it's actually not that badly built, and it's certainly decorated. Inside in the corridor where I walked today, the wall is decorated with a friese in a very typical funkis manner: The same material as the walls on both side of the friese, but the long friese itself is made up of colour variations, black, grey and white rocks mixed/set in concrete, and then sculpted into abstract shapes. It is as if the building itself has suddenly grown into this odd wall, the way a rockside can go from uniform grey to striped and broken into different colours and crystals, in order to return to the grey granite at the other side of that.

I passed two other works of art in the 30 seconds it took to walk out of there - one of them a very interesting 60ies sculpture of a young woman cast in bronze bearing a portable television monitor. I wish I knew what it would show if it had been turned on. The light wasn't good enough for a picture though - I may bring a real camera the next time. At the door there was a double mural - one to each side - in a very bright 70-ies naivism, and then outside I found a piece of art I have admired every time I came by - and been annoyed by how it is always crowded by bikes and delivery vans. Still the jewel-bright colours shone strongly after the rain today. I have yet to find how old this is and who made or donated it, but it does its job - it brings a little brightness into the front of what might otherwise easily be just another urban wasteland.

I was just going to let these last pictures speak for themselves, but there's this empty space here, and it looks really weird. So I'll end this with a question. I tried to google art at Rigshospitalet, but didn't find any good overview of the many sculptures, murals and paintings that dot that busy, eclectic space. Do any of my weblog readers have more luck? Do you know the secret words to use in google to find such an elusive documents? Anybody?

Still Going Wrong

The main benefit of living in Copenhagen over Volda is the easy access to theatre, ballet, opera and whatnot. I know that sounds as if I am constantly off to some performance, while the truth is that most nights are spent falling asleep before I manage to finish the episode of CSI.

I do however get to see some of what is on, and last night I went with the husband, a sister and a friend of the family to a truly funny dance/performance/theatre "thing" which challenged the idea of "wrong". Still going wrong is performed by an ensemble of five dancing for just short of an hour in a very intimate stage. It explores "wrong" and turns odd, erroneous and ugly into a performance of surprising impact and humour. The dancers wear pink socks that lets them slide around the stage, they sweat through the casual wear they dance in, they bump into each other, look shy and akward, and run into the walls - just like your average distracted and introvert scholar.

I was unprepared for the experience, I just knew it would be pretty alternative compared to the classical ballet at the scene next door. Dansehallerne is  a center for dance built in the old soda factory of the brewing giant Carlsberg, and caters to a wide varity of dance styles with dancers and choreographers both Danish and international.

Unrepared was not a problem, though. Instead of coming out feeling elated after seeing a superb performance of exquisite style, Still going wrong had me coming out laughing and ready to explore the environment. After watching the dancers battle shyness, errors and akwardness, getting up on the playful installations waiting in the yard and jumping and moving in silly poses felt right and permitted. It was a performance more about the delight in flawed humanity than about the genius of perfection, and as such it spoke to us about what we could do ourselves.

Riding the bikes back home in a pack like serious bad-boy bikers (three women and one man, all between 50 and 64, crazy folks indeed) was the perfect way to end the evening, seeing Copenhagen in the sunset, soft warm light fading into fat drops of rain.

Summer!: Life in Copenhagen #9

(This was written 2nd of June and got stuck in the process.)

It's been almost two years. I have learned to ride my bike like a dane, which includes using the bell when the tourists wander into the bicycle lanes, to not worry if I haven't shopped for three days before a long week-end, and to call to talk to people in public offices, such as for instance the dreaded "skat", the tax department.

My language is changing, I am deliberately letting it slip into a more archaic form (to Norwegians archaic = Danish), and I am trying to decide which words may make it the easier for my students to understand me come fall. Some never will think I speak comprehensively, I know that, but I keep trying. I am practicing, in my head, to use "i" and "jer" rather than "dere" (which covers both in Norwegian), and "at" rather than "å". I have already given up words like "må" and "svært" due to its different emphasis in Norwegian and Danish, but I am keeping "enkelt". That one, my darling TAs assure me, is very easy to understand. It's "nemt", as they say. Hopefully, step by step, I will be able to lecture in a language a bit closer to Danish.

Until then, I take comfort in the fact that several of my students are willing to tell me, face to face, that they love the lectures. My Danish friends say Danes are introverts, reserved and uncomfortable with giving praise. I don't see that. My colleagues are warm, joyful, funny, and my students are interesting, challenging, polite, graceful and, surprisingly and extremely welcome, quite willing to thank me directly for the semester. I get that over and over again: "Thank you, for this term. It was a great class." Sometimes, even "it was the best class, the best class ever." I cherish that. It makes every exhausting lecture worth it, it even excuses what I do to my mother tongue.

But life is good outside of work too. The heat the last week has turned Copenhagen back to the city I fell in love with when I moved here. I wear sandals all the time, and have packed away most of the winter clothing. (OK, before I posted this, the weather turned COLD). I change into a T-shirt and work-out capris at home and just throw a thin top over for decency as I ride the bike to the Pilates work-outs. The ladies at Pilates cph deserve a mention. Perhaps even their own blogpost, soon. I started with Pilates years ago, but at home, from DVDs and books. It still helped, and as long as I managed to work out, my back gave me less problems. Then I found a teacher, for a day or two a week, in Ørsta. I loved it, but my schedule and hers made it less than efficient. Here, there are classes 6 days a week, all year, and I can schedule time online. This means, for instance, that even if I am travelling to Norway or Finland more than every second week since the beginning of April until the end of June, with a conference here in Denmark, I manage to get in two sometimes three work-outs a week. I have a long way to go to control a perfect "teaser", but I can get up into it, and hold it long enough to roll back down somewhat controlled, if I don't have to stay up there, showing off.

You might think I'd be more physically active in a place like Volda, where there isn't much else to do but hiking and living healthy. The truth is: I have had less pain since we moved to Copenhagen than I have had any other winter since 1985. And now it's warm, too, my muscles feel like butter, and I enjoy moving about, something I have rarely liked. Are there no problems? Oh yes, last week I was at a conference in Roskilde. Despite the effort, I never managed to get on the right train to get there on time. Partly it was me, not being sufficiently prepared - but how can I prepare for sudden 20-30 minute delays of the trains, and the chaos that is Nørreport station? The sudden heat caused the shoes that I had worn to work without incident just a week earlier to rub my feet raw, and the conference was on a topic I didn't know, leaving me to feel alienated and odd, like a giant dancing bear among all those tiny, serious women studying culture. After three days of heat, trains, Danish lunches and uncomfortable lecture-rooms I was physically wrecked.

Before that I had, for some reason, had 50 000,- dkk of "benefits" added to my income by the tax department. I was totally unable to track down where that had come in, as the electronic tax form didn't tell me. Hence, see the first paragraph. Mastering conversations on the phone with tax officials is vital. Also, the pollution worries me. I ride my bike to work and home through a cloud of exhaust, every day. I take some comfort in the fact that most of the time, I also ride up against a strong wind coming off the sea. I try not to think of what it carries with it from Germany, Poland and the other countries to the east and north.

And I miss the mountains. That plan I had: To sell Rotsethornet to Denmark, so we could have a bit more light? I still think it's a brilliant idea, but from the other side. Imagine how impressive it would have looked in Amager fælled? And imagine the opportunities it would have offered: just the resistance from the climb, the sensation of getting somewhere, getting up - yes, I miss it. But I'll go to the summer house this summer, live by the fjord, climb the mountains, curse the rain. I'll hurt, be cold and exhausted, and long for this little apartment right here, in the city.

Copenhagen #8: Extreme traffic

Not everything is perfect in bicycle-land, and there have been a lot of complaints through 2011 and into 2012 about cyclists breaking traffic regulations. The police has had several campaigns in order to catch illegal cycling, and since 2012 the fines are doubled, something the police celebrated with giving out more fines.

I am still trying to learn the distinctions. In Norway a bicyclist either drives as if we're in a car, or on the sidewalk. Both are permitted, and driving on the sidewalk is recommended in heavily trafficked areas. You can imagine how well that works... But this means that I tend to take short-cuts when it gets me our of dangerous situations. There is, for instance, this one sidewalk on the way to work. There's no way I can cross the street right there, and it's perhaps 30 meters to the traffic light, where I can cross safely. So I roll slowly over a small bridge on the sidewalk, or get off the bike and walk if there are people there. In the heavy morning traffic I choose the safest, least trafficked route - which leads me to this little traffic transgression. And while I roll there, riddled by guilt, I see again and again examples of the Danish driver's interpretation of traffic-lights.

Traffic lights are supposedly very clear. It's green for go, yellow for wait, and red for stop. Yellow is for the transition between full speed and stop, for when you can't break without endangering traffic. Right? Yep, that's what I thought.

Now, if you are a bicyclist in Copenhagen, please realise that while you'll be fined by the police if you cross on yellow to red, Copenhagen yellow-light interpretations will kill you. Here's the Copenhagen car-drivers guide to stoplights.

While driving
Green: Go as hard and fast as you can.
Yellow: Keep going.
It's been yellow for a little while: Speed up, you can still make it across on the yellow light.
Red: It's only been red for 2 seconds, so it's still yellow.
Red for more than two seconds: Stop, preferably in the middle of the bike-path or the foot crossing.

While standing still
Red: It will be yellow any second, so I'd better keep prepared.
Red and yellow: Time to inch forwards.
Red and yellow if you are behind another car: Prepare to honk your horn.
Green: If you are behind a car pausing for some reason, honk.
Green: Full speed!

Now, if you combine this with the bicyclists reluctance to stop - if you stop you'll have to push off and get back on the bike, so you don't want that - what you get in Copenhagen are situations that makes me wonder why I haven't seen any serious accidents yet. On this one place on the path to work, the lights are synchronised. This means that if you keep a steady tempo, you'll reach the next light just as it turns green. However, if you're a little quicker than the mainstream biker, you reach the next light as it's still yellow and red! So, we have the Danish car-drivers' reluctance to stop until it's been red for a while, combined with the quickest bikers reluctance to stop or even pause on their way to work, sending cyclists at full speed in front of cars jumping lights.

I tell you,  I get all the adrenaline thrills I need regularly from riding my bike to work. Add the police's habit of driving like they are all in a second-rate cop-movie that relies on the car chases to make money, this city keeps the inhabitants' pulse up.

In defense of Copenhagen drivers: They take the most gentle and considerate right turns of all drivers I have seen. Normally turning  right is the easiest thing to do in right-side traffic. But when there's a lane of bikers just to the right of you, turning right becomes a hazard, and you need to make certain all bikers have passed before turning. I have to give it to the local drivers: They wait patiently. This is totally at odds with the regular stop-light behaviour, but a life-saviour. Of course, Danish television regularly sends a really scary reminder for both bikers and drivers about the danger of turning right without carefully checking the blind zone. I had nightmares about that infomercial the first months I lived here, and have now developed a healthy survivor habit of making certain the cars waiting to turn right see me before I cross.

In general, I have developed a habit of being a lot more alert as a biker than I used to. It's not just the cars, it's the other bikers and making sure I don't pass another biker just as somebody were about to pass me, guessing how the pedestrians will move, and seeing from the ripple of movement through the people waiting at a bus-stop whether the bus is approaching. Bicyclists are supposed to yield for people getting on or getting off the bus, so I need to know if I am about to be overtaken by one. Years ago, a friend compared driving on a six-lane highway with playing a computer game. Now I am playing that game, only it's a lot more complex. I have to understand and deal with so many more factors in traffic, different speeds, different rules for different participants, and the sudden moments when the behaviour changes - it's Extreme Traffic; Copenhagen Rules. The game is on.