It is a very lovely and warm afternoon here in my quiet harbor side provincial town of Vordingborg, located 100 kilometers south of trendy and sleek Copenhagen. Today is the 27th of June and the temperatures have hit 28 degrees Celsius, thus it is a perfect beach day. Being a weekday, the town beach is not crowded, making my time here even more enjoyable. The sounds of Danish rap music permeate through the salty sea breeze from a group of new high school graduates gathered not too far from where I sit. They are indulging in Carlsberg and Tuborg-infused banter while some tweens are playing soccer in an open clearing. Further off are toddlers gleefully splashing away with their parents in the cool late-June waters.
My husband and I moved to Vordingborg about a year ago, with open expectations as to what this move and our new 'townie' life would bring us. We have so far been pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoy living out in the Danish countryside. Our first good impression was how much closer we are to nature. Near our home is a woody area through which we often take strolls, especially enjoying the crunching of leaves beneath us in the Autumn. Rolling meadows and pristine farm lands season our mundane tasks like a drive to the grocery store, during which spectacular views are a norm and chromatic sunsets a favorite of ours.
The general hospitality from the people in our town is a close second to what we love about living in Vordingborg. Starting with our neighbors, to the family doctor and even to store clerks in the local shops, the kindness we experience is a bright highlight of provincial living. Copenhagen, like most metropolitans around the world, has a hurried pace which reflects even on a smaller scale. Frequently, in our time living there, we noted a general hint of impatience from services received, this in spite of the reserved nature of Danish Culture. When cueing at a discounter store, it was often the case that customers irritably demanded that a new till be opened. This is a clear sign of the go-get-'em Copenhagen culture, where people find no need to wait for the one clerk who perhaps in their mind was working a little too sluggishly. A slow cashier might just mean slowing people down from the other important things they have going during their day.
Save for the tourist who will stop in awe and wonder of Copenhagen's charming design, everybody in the city seems to be in a rush from one urgent engagement to the next during their commute. In Vordingborg there is less hurry. Such is the striking contrast of life out in our small town where we note there is a more relaxed pace of walking, cycling and, to the dismay of my husband, driving. With less daily pressure out here in the province, we have come to embrace and cherish with contentment our life here. I must point out that Vordingborg being a college town does attract a fair share of international students. As such, it may not be directly comparable to other similar-sized towns which do not have a university that teaches some programs in English. Local Businesses in Vordingborg easily switch to English for the foreign non-Danish speakers, most of whom are young students.
My fluency in the Danish language as a foreigner in our small town, particularly as a dark-skinned minority, has been a huge help in making me feel at home here. There is a sense of welcome I experience from locals when I address them in their mother-tongue. Denmark being a more or less tribal society is protective of its language as a cultural marker. This no doubt influence residents positively when an African woman, despite the difficulty of spoken Danish, would in accent-laden speech have a conversation with them.
In an increasingly globalized world and specifically in a Europe experiencing hard-lined immigration policies, it may be easy for the presence of foreigners to be perceived as being there to erode the national way of life known for centuries. In reverse, immigrants like myself may feel as if we have a target on us which forebodes that we are not wanted here. This can be the root of many a misunderstanding where proverbial bridges are burnt and walls put up in an 'us versus them' mindset. I am well aware of these complexities living in Denmark, and try to the best of my ability to find ways to live above these notions. I make a challenging effort to see and relate to others as fellow human beings beyond our visible differences.
It would be unbalanced if I fail to mention some downsides of provincial living that we have experienced. To start with, most opportunities, employment and otherwise are located in the Greater Copenhagen area so those living in the towns away from there have to endure long commutes. We are no exception; it takes us an hour each way to travel to the capital region, which can sometimes be longer depending on how heavy traffic is.
Other not-so-good features of small town living we encounter evolve around the universal disadvantages of being in tight-knit communities. Having grown up in a small Kenyan town myself, I am well aware of how fast the rumor mill can run, and now with the advent of social networking sites, gossip sometimes thrives in the local Facebook groups of neighborhoods. In our town, we note the existence of some personalities tending to drive discussion on this internet forum along the lines of controversy, possibly to create excitement for our sleepy seaside town.
We learned about this the hard way when we ourselves were victims of this vice, being described as 'people speaking broken Danish' who seemed suspicious. On that fateful day, I was buying books from Facebook Marketplace but misunderstood the meeting location. We stopped in the driveway of a well-known recreational business, believing that is the meeting point as told by the seller. In a twist of bad luck, a staff member of this business stepped out to inquire what we were doing there the very instant we reached the seller on the phone.
Unbeknownst to us, she had been keeping a hawks-eye on us since we pulled in, and her emergence at that moment was to test if we were indeed up to no good. Caught between answering her and hearing for meeting point directions from the seller, I mumbled a response in Danish while asking my husband to quickly drive to the new location. We left in a rush thinking nothing more of the encounter as eventually I received the books in my hand, therefore all had worked out, or so I thought.
Forty minutes later, when back at home, I was casually checking Facebook when I froze in horror upon stumbling on a picture of our car posted in our town's group page. In an unfortunate case of mistaken perception, the staff member we had encountered earlier that day had put up this picture in a bid to warn others about the questionable people (us). She believed that we posed a danger to the community's safety, hence was spreading the word on Facebook. I scrolled down the comment section to find them lit ablaze with panic and most insisting she report the incident to local police.
One particular comment caught my ire, as this person had gone the extra mile to look up our number plates, discovering that we drive an electric and recently bought car. In their own words that bewildered me, people who spoke broken Danish could never afford such a car, therefore we must be driving in a stolen vehicle. My anger rose at this comment as back then, I was still a beginner in the Danish language, hence felt unfairly judged as a poor speaker of Danish. Secondly, the comment was a clear example of negative stereotyping, and it tore at my heart that we were looked at as criminals rather than fellow town residents. After my husband speedily returned to the said business to clarify the situation, he had a good laugh at this particular comment as he found it a display of ignorance rather than malice.
We have since reconciled ourselves to the fact that living in a small community has both its ups and downs. In Denmark, dying out municipalities such as Vordingborg are known as “Rotten Banana” towns in a rising trend of a reducing population and empty storefronts. For us to have moved here is a testament to how, despite the overall downward trend, some city dwellers like ourselves are still venturing out to the smaller towns for a change of lifestyle.
A few days into this summer, we were pleasantly reminded of the huge pluses of living in the province. We spotted a spectacular sight of a rainbow over an old church building, with poppies and wild flowers peppering the sides of the country roads. In moments like this of remarkable beauty, we are glad to have bid farewell to the fast-paced city life and embraced a small town life.
Comments
Post a Comment
Share your thoughts here