By
pablolobo, on September 10th, 2011 |
If you had asked me where I would have found a home the last place on earth I would have ever had said would be Denmark. Since I was about 8 months old I’ve lived in tropical, to pacific, to subtropical and arid environments; yes I was born in the rainy of rainy Seattle but since then I’ve been surrounded by sun and heat. Denmark is not heat.
Far from it. It’s rainy, cold, windy, and wet. Very wet. On avergage Denmark has high’s in the 60′s with roughly 170 rainy days a year. That’s a fair deal of rain. And when it is not raining it is often overcast. Summers are wonderful and short, any chance of sun and the country exits their shelters and heads to the garded, city centers, beaches or park. In the winter when it is cold, wet and windy the Danes retreat to their homes enjoying fires in their cylindrical ovens (franklin stoves) drinking coffee and eating cake.
A far far far cry from the live oak covered rolling hills deep in the heart of Texas that I grew up in. I did move to Denmark partly due to a woman. That is no lie. We met in university, Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas. We were both swimmers and entered university in the same year. I was instantly in love with her and pursued friendship until she gave in to me and took me as her lover. We married and moved to Denmark.
Up to our marriage we were living together in a grungy apartment, one we could afford. We chose space over quality, both of us being over 6 feet tall we need space; and I have my hobbies which take up space. Accommodations have to be large for us otherwise I start to feel claustrophobic and go stir crazy. So we found a cheap place up in North Dallas where Richardson, Plano and Dallas merge. It was close to our work and far enough away from SMU, I had a need to start defining myself outside of the contexts of university life.
At the time she had promising career opportunities and I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. One might argue that I still am. My career started as an assistant manager for BlockBuster Video, fun at the time but really a dead end for me. I could have made a career of it, but I was impatient and lacked (still do) the operational mind that is needed to run a store. I like structure but I am not a routine person. I tend to think laterally and not linear. Eventually my impatience and panic at the thought of moving to Denmark led me to switch jobs, first a customer service manager at Office Max and then an assistant manager at KBToys, before getting on a plane and running down a new course.
She had gotten a job offer in Denmark, we weren’t certain where, either Copenhagen or Aalborg, and we were hoping for Copenhagen, more she was as she knew the transition of foreigners to Denmark was not simple. Alas the job was in Aalborg, a small town in the north of Jutland, the mainland of Denmark. Nothing like Dallas. Nothing like San Antonio. Not too much like Copenhagen.
Shortly before June of 1998 she moved to Aalborg to get settled with the housing and job. I joined her shortly after. We were married the same month, and in the summer of 1998 I began to find myself.
Or at least the journey to find myself. Or find myself again. Or maybe to grow up. I really did not want to come to Denmark, it was not on my top 100 places in the world to live. In fact I’m pretty certain that I backed out, an event that caused tears and sleepless nights for my soon to be bride. My family was against the move, mother, father and brother all telling me that this was a mistake. And I almost agreed with them. I spoke with my soon to be brother-in-law’s wife, American as well, about her experience in moving to Denmark. None of it was convincing me to move to Denmark.
I’d been there in the middle of winter for Christmas. Cold, windy, wet, sun goes down at 03:00 comes up at 09:00. Pitch black. Cold. I slept through my first visit; eventually sleeping through my first winter. This was not a good advertisement for a young man as myself to come and live in Denmark.
And yet here I find myself after 13 years. Married, children, employed a home owner, my own man. Denmark was the most unlikely of places to start my adulthood, to settle down to grow up.