Husband and I probably moving to Copenhagen and we have questions

Hello Andrea_L_O.

Welcome to Expat.com!

Hope your questions will be answered soon.

Thank you,
Aurélie

Hi Andrea,

I just moved to Copenhagen at the end of December to spend a few months abroad with my Danish boyfriend. I am American as well, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I cannot answer all of your questions but I hope I can be helpful with some. Nobody uses Cr**gsl**t here. From what I have heard from multiple sources almost all of the few posts that are under the Copenhagen section are scams. DO NOT try to buy anything from that site. Danish people often use dba.dk it is the exact same concept for people to offer new and used goods in the surrounding areas. As far as dollar stores, nothing here really costs the equivalent of a dollar, Copenhagen is a very expensive city to live in indeed. However, there is a chain of stores called Tiger that sells very cheap goods like small decorations, food, bathroom supplies, candles, etc. like you may find at DollarTree for cheaper than at a market or other store. As far as dishware or any furniture is concerned IKEA is your place to go. The quality is not the best but they have very affordable stylish things like you might find in the home section of a Target. In the Copenhagen area Føtex and Bilka are also good stores to try for odds and ends. Both are very similar to a Walmart or perhaps a grocery store in your area that has clothing, cleaning supplies, furniture or other goods. I hope some of that information can help you!

Best and Goodluck
Kristen Leigh

Thank you Kristen, this is very useful information!

Kristen, also, another practical question.  Are there monthly transit passes available (bus and metro) for the Copenhagen area, and if so, how much, and where does one purchase them?

Thanks again,

Andrea

Yes Andrea there are monthly passes. This is the ticket website for  public transportation http://intl.m.dk/#!/about+the+metro/tra … on/tickets There is something else for the bus called a rejsekort which is somewhat of a new thing I think and I'm not quite sure how it works but I think that is the new monthly pass. All tickets work for all types of transport, bus, metro and s-train. However, taking public transport is crazy expensive. I would definitely recommend everyone in your family to buy a bicycle. Everyone in Copenhagen bikes or walks pretty much everywhere they go unless it is very far. There are bike lanes on every street and bike laws and traffic signals for bikes. You can get a good and cheap used one on that dba site I mentioned before. Any more questions feel free to ask

Kristen Leigh

Thank you so much Kristin!

This then brings me to a question.  Is there somewhere that we could purchase second-hand bicycles?

And while I'm asking questions, is there the equivalent of St. Vincent DePaul stores, or Oxfam, or Salvation Army, or whatever cheap second-hand stores might exist where we can pick up necessary kitchen items and clothing for growing girls?  If so, are this type of store as ubiquitous as they are here in the midwestern US or does one have to really look to find them in Copenhagen?

Another question:  I recall that when I was in Copenhagen 22 years ago there was a public outdoor market where one could purchase fruit and vegetables.  Is there still such a thing?

Where, in your opinion, is the cheapest place in Copenhagen to buy fruit, veg, flour, rice, and other essentials?

There are bike stores all around Copenhagen pretty much on every corner that sell new and used bikes. Most stores sell them for more than I think an American would be used to paying for a used bike though. I bought my bike from someone off www.dba.dk The word for bicycle is cykel. Just search that and you can narrow down your choices by mens womans or childrens bikes in the options on the left hand side of the page. A lot of people selling bikes are exchange students who bought them when they came to study for the semester. They are in limited time to sell their bikes when they leave so they sell them for really cheap and you can bargain with them on the price.

I can't say I have seen a store similar to Salvation Army in Copenhagen, but I live right in the city center by Tivoli. Perhaps there is a store like that further away from the city center that would have second hand clothes and other items. The store Tiger I mentioned or IKEA has kitchen items for very cheap though. Most things are under 60 dkk (about 10 USD) at Tiger. If not there you could also check www.dba.dk for those things as well.

Up and down lots of streets in Copenhagen there are markets. The ones I have seen have been very small ethnic markets though and its normally just a very small portion of produce that is displayed outside in front of the store where the rest is being sold. Maybe when the weather gets nicer there will be more outside, lately it has been in the low 20's and very windy.

Aldi is the cheapest place to buy groceries. We have them in Ohio as well, I don't know if you have them in Wisconsin. The quality of the food and produce is so-so though. Other than that in my experiences so far it is cheapest to buy food at a store called Netto, Døgn Netto, or Fakta. They are tiny grocery stores compared to most probably what you are used to shopping at (Giant Eagle, Kroger, Publix, Heinens, Piggly Wiggly, I don't know which you have in your area). The food price is slightly higher than what I am used to paying at an American grocery store chain but it is still within reason. Føtex and Qvickly can be found also in the city. They are much nicer stores to shop at in my opinion and have a much much bigger selection of food as well as home products, and clothing at Føtex. The prices are higher though. In Copenhagen there are small stores to buy food at almost every corner so I'm sure there are others that I do not know of. I will ask around about a store similar to Salvation Army.

Best
Kristen Leigh

Thank you so much!

No problem

Hi Kristen,

I have another question, if you don't mind.  I've been looking at housing and it seems that by far the best rent is through a cooperative.  However, they say things like rent (Husleje) 5,000 DK, and deposit (indskund)of 895,000.

Do you know what that's about?  I once lived in a housing cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin, about 14.5 years ago, and there one paid only rent with a security deposit equal to the first month's rent.  What is the indskund?  Does one have to pay it up front?

Many thanks!

Andrea

Hi Andrea,

My boyfriend said an indskund is only if you would like to buy a section of the cooperative. So you pay that and you are a partial owner. Your "rent" is strictly to pay for maintenance and upkeep. If you are looking to only rent and not buy, it is not really allowed in cooperative housing. Generally you are allowed to rent in cooperative housing if it is only for a short time like a sublet for a few months. If you would only like to rent you need to search for rentals not in cooperative housing.

Oh, this is very helpful to know!  Thank you.  It seems like this is sort of along the lines of a US condominium.  Thanks again!

It is very similar I think. I'm not quite sure you will find cheap rent anywhere in Copenhagen in a place that is large enough for a family. Maybe try to look further away from the city center.

KL

People in Denmark dont know where Madison, Wisconsin is etc - sometimes on TV they pretend they do by refering to cities and even areas of cities in the US to pretend they are so accustomed to the American way of life, but they are not.

Copenhagen has changed in the past 22 years, but of course not like Dubai or something. The life is still similiar but a little more international when it comes to food - pizza, kebabs, sushi etc are available now and an increasing number of vegetarian dishes.

There is a shop called " Tiger" which sell most items for 10 or 20 kroners which is 1 œ to 3 dollars including clocks, paper, pens, and various of things, but not really food items exept perhaps for a Mars icecream bar.

I recommend you go to supermarkets such as Netto, Aldi, Fakta or Lidl which are all discount markets - Lidl and Aldi are German supermarkets and are the cheapest you get in Denmark.

Your biggest expense is likely to be rent and transportation , certainly not food if you cook at home.

Since your husband has a Ph.d I recommend he applies for a position at the University of Copenhagen, or the university in Odense...they do sometimes require foreign teachers - perhaps for courses such as American Studies, Middle East Studies, European Studies etc.

In the late 1980s, Denmark was very local - now Copenhagen is more Europeanised as many would like to view themselves as being more international / global but at the same time Danish.
Copenhagen has also seen an increase in foreigners - Arabic people, Bosnians and selected African countries in the 1990s, since 2004 Lithuanians and Polish, and also in the same time period people from China, Spain, India and elsewhere , often foreign students and IT professionals.
This, along with many imported items and international coffee houses and burger joints all adds to a more Cosmopolitan Copenhagen.

Andrea_L_O wrote:

Hi everyone,

My husband and I are Americans, but it appears that we will be able to move to Denmark under the Greencard scheme.  It has been 22 years since I've been in Copenhagen, but that is where we will likely settle.  Unfortunately I can recall only about 5 phrases in Danish, but that's something I can remedy once I'm there.

I am hoping that people can answer the questions I have.

First of all, right now we are in Madison, Wisconsin.  We often post things we need to get rid of on the free section of craigslist, and on the Madison freecycle site.  There are only 2 posts in the Copenhagen craigslist free section.  There are only about a thousand members of the Copenhagen freecycle site, while there are about 8 times as many in the Madison Wisconsin freecycle site, even though Madison has a fraction of the population that Copenhagen has.  Is there some other place in Copenhagen where you can offer useful things you no longer need and request something that you need?

Second of all, is there something the equivalent to a US DollarTree (everything a buck) store in Denmark, where we can get cheap food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies?  When I was there before everything was very expensive, and I keep reading on the internet how expensive things are.  If a person is a frugalista like me, is there a way to keep this up in Denmark?

Third of all, we have two kids, who will be ages 5 and 9 when we go. What time does school start and what time does it finish?

Fourth of all, what sort of work is there for people who do not speak Danish?  I speak English and a middling amount of Spanish, while my husband speaks English and a middling amount of French.  I'm an attorney here in the US, and my husband has a PhD in historical geography, but we are willing to take any job whatsoever until we learn Danish-- even cleaning bathrooms, sorting recyclables, or anything like that.  We want to be employed as soon as possible, even at a subsistence wage, and then can focus on learning Danish.  Please let me know your ideas!~

Hi Andrea

It must be exciting to get back to a city you haven't been to for so many years!

I can see you've already got some good tips. I just wanted to add up a little, re jobs here.

First of all, it's not that easy to find a job here now even for Danes. The unemployment rate in Denmark is 7.7% now! However, I believe a lot depends on your attitude. If you're open and you understand that here you'll probably have to start from scratch (which you seem to understand), it will come to you sooner or later. Meanwhile have a look here. It is Q&A sessions on Facebook and LinkedIn where you can get all of your questions answered directly by Dagmar Fink, the author of the two great books (which I would also recommend you to read). One of them is Business Dances with Danes where she uncovers the Danish workplace culture, tells you about DK as a worplace to work in terms of economy and market development in different business areas, helps you understand Danish attitudes, which in its turn will save you lots of wrong expectations and disappointments and will help you better interact with Danes at work.

I don't know if you and your husband are going to move to Denmark by that time but there are also going to be lots of job fairs or career fairs all over Denmark in March. Have a look here for ex., they have job fairs in 4 cities. This is the Catalogue for Copenhagen I've alredy found some companies I'd like to talk to here on Jutland where I live. Don't let the Danish language in the catalogue scare you away. Just scroll down to the list of the companies. Lots of them have published there information in Eng.

Hope this can be of help to you.

Lots of luck!

Lena

Thanks, Lena!

I have one other question, which might seem silly or inane, but...  have you ever seen either corn or flour tortillas for sale anywhere in Copenhagen, or corn masa, or hominy or grits?  I can, of course, live without these foods, but the thought of life without tortillas or grits does make me just a wee bit sad

Hi Andrea

I live on Jutland, and here I haven't seen them. But that could also be because I wasn't looking for them I guess, you can always make some yourself

Lena

Hi Andrea,

I'm not sure what  corn masa, or hominy or grits are but you can definitely get flour and corn tortillas from Føtex The one thing I can't seem to track down is chipotle paste!

Thanks,
Nicola

Thanks Lena and Nicola.  What a relief it is to know that there are flour and corn tortillas there!
Best,

Andrea

Yea supermarkets sell tortillas and tacos - they have been around for a couple of years, but Mexican food is not common here - back in the 1980s I supose almost everything eatable was local food - but then from the early 1990 opened pizza houses and late that decade kebab houses too. In the last 2 years, sushi has been introduced into Denmark and become mainstream.
Chinese food has been available from the chinese owned cafes for a long time although it is not as popular as Italian or Arabic snacks like pizza and sharwarma.

I supose it is possible to find a Mexican restaurant or Indian or Turkish, but they are not common- almost all restaurants are still selling Danish food, but the Neo-Danish cuisine is very different from what you might have seen in the 80s - it looks much more French these days with little portions and clamps, oysters etc.

Andrea_L_O wrote:

Thanks Lena and Nicola.  What a relief it is to know that there are flour and corn tortillas there!
Best,

Andrea

I was curious if someone could answer a question regarding bugs and mosquitoes. We are renting a house for a week near Herning, and are curious if bugs will be a problem in late June. We noticed that there aren't any screens in the windows and are somewhat worried about this. Thanks!

I could not tell you about in Denmark, since I have only visited there in the winter and do not live there at present, but I will say that when I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, and later on in London, England, back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, none of the windows of the places in which I lived had any screens, and there was not a mosquito or other bug problem during the summer.  I don't think I ever had even one mosquito bite when I was living in the UK.

Since Herning is just a teensey bit north of Edinburgh's latitude, and almost 400 hundred of miles north of London's latitude, I would think that they wouldn't be a problem in Herning, especially since it is less than 40 miles from the North Sea coast and will be getting those breezes. 

But take this only for what it's worth, since I've never actually been to Herning.

Just asked my fiancé. He's said not to worry. There may be a couple if it is particularly hot but nothing to worry about. Besides, I don't think Herning in late June will reach tropical climes

Wonderful! Thanks so much for your replies, Andrea and Dicania! You have been very helpful!

Hej are You looking for a cleaning lady ?  Im interested to clean once a week to your place