Ridiculous Things My (Danish) Husband Doesn’t Understand in America
Expiring warranties and fat-free yogurts
You couldn’t find two countries more different than America and Denmark.
The huge vs. the tiny. The loud vs. the quiet. The money-obsessed vs. the equality-driven. The huge egos vs. no egos at all. The fourteenth Happiest Country on Earth vs. the second.
So it’s no surprise that my husband found many surprises when we left his home in Copenhagen and relocated to New York and then California.
Two polar-opposites ourselves, we took a chance on this big and weird country I called home for the last two decades. Over three years, I did my best to explain (and make excuses for) it.
But some things still come as a surprise.
We see scams as a part of life
My husband is so cute when he picks up a call from an unknown number and politely answers: “Hello.”
He then proceeds to listen and ask again:
“What warranty? I don’t have any warranty.”
He makes a genuine attempt to understand.
My heart melts. I whisper, “Just hang up.”
Instead, he politely ends the call with:
“I’m sorry, I think you’re calling the wrong person.”
My husband is a very busy man but he picks up his phone almost every time. He still doesn’t get the idea of an unsolicited call. Scam is just a part of life in America, I explain to him. We don’t think twice about it.
See, in Denmark every phone call matters. A person’s time is respected. In return, people are less distracted, more productive, and less stressed.
My husband, after 40-something years of living with that mindset, just can’t wrap his head around the fact that in a place as powerful as America there is room for such a waste of resources and time.
We think that fat-free products will make us less fat
My husband still gets frustrated at the dairy aisle in American supermarkets. First time he came home with a fat-free yogurt bought by mistake, he asked me:
“Do Americans think that it’s full-fat yogurts that are making them fat?”
Back home in Denmark, one of the biggest bacon exporters in the world, fat is still quite popular and generously consumed (famous Danish pastries literally drip with butter). To offset their fat-loving lifestyle, Danes bike a ton, walk a good amount and eat mostly home-cooked meals.
After being the only guy to walk through every drive-thru we have visited in the U.S., my husband wondered whether Americans thought it was okay to never leave their cars as long as they ate a low-fat yogurt for breakfast.
“More fat. Less drive-thru,” he campaigned.
We don’t care about the rules
Danish people are big sticklers for rules and obey them religiously. I guess there’s certain comfort in knowing what to do when, and never have to think twice about it. Crossing on a red light, for example, is considered very rude and Danes will obediently wait for the light to change, even on an empty road. Denmark is pretty much the opposite of chaos.
When my poor husband came to the U.S., a country of very many rules, he struggled to understand that most of them no one cared about.
No riding electric scooters on sidewalks — no one cares. Coming to a full stop at a Stop sign — no one cares. Wearing a mask — no one cares. “It’s a free country” after all.
Still, my husband tries his best to always do what’s expected of him, though he’s learning quickly that it won’t get you far in America. While you’re busy navigating and honoring all the rules, someone else will take a shortcut and beat you to it.
We drive (a bit) drunk and over the speed limit
My husband used to be the slowest guy on any highway in and around Los Angeles when we first moved here from New York. When I finally asked him why he was driving so slowly, he said he was keeping to the speed limit.
I had to break it to him that a speed limit was one of the many rules we didn’t care about in America. Instead, we use the go-with-the-flow system of keeping up the speed consistent with other drivers.
My husband simply could not wrap his head around this one.
“So if everyone decides to drive 90 miles per hour, I should too?” he asked me.
Yep.
“What’s the point of the speed limit then?”
I didn’t know.
Then there was drinking and driving. We recently passed a bar on the side of a busy road outside a desert town in California.
“So you drink and then you drive home?” my husband wondered.
“They definitely aren’t catching a bus back,” I replied.
“So drunk driving is okay?” he continued.
“Unless you kill someone,” I concluded.
Honestly, how do you explain to a foreigner that before Uber it was the norm to drive home (a bit) drunk in Los Angeles. Many people I knew did it. You’re more likely to get a ticket for jaywalking in LA than for driving after two glasses of wine.
Low or zero-alcohol policy applied in Europe just wouldn’t make sense in car-obsessed and public transport-averse America. So some drunk driving is tolerated. How else would you get home from a bar on the side of the highway?
We love (useless, repetitive) paperwork
The other day my husband took one of his daughters to a doctor. He filled out not one but seven forms of various lengths, including a detailed list of everything she ate the day before. The best part was that the forms went straight into a box, without anyone looking at them. Even after filing out nearly 300 pages of Green Card paperwork and signing a 75-page lease, he still gets surprised.
It’s not just the vast numbers of papers that need to be filled every time my husband leaves the house, it’s the repetitiveness of them. Everything that can be said in one page is stretched out over volumes, and then repeated again in the next form.
“They really like to hit you over the head with it,” he observed.
Back in Denmark, an average contract length is one page and almost nothing is done on paper anymore, including mail which is pretty much obsolete. Medical records are centralized and accessible via a web portal. Every effort is made to run things smoothly for both individuals and businesses.
More efficiency leads to more productivity, which leads to a better functioning country, which leads to happier people.
Trying to explain America is a tall order. Trying to explain it to a Scandinavian sometimes seems impossible. Still, I’d like to think my husband is having fun here.
As he put it,
“America is anything but boring.”
I was in Denmark this past September. I miss it. It was such a pleasant place to be. People were calm and polite and respectful of others. You could hear a conversation in a restaurant without loud music or super loud people. the food was fresh and of high quality (something I’ve found in every European country. I just don’t understand why we can’t do things better in this country. It’s frustrating coming back after a trip.
Every time I read one of these pieces, I wish I'd been born in Denmark. It's so obvious why it is such a happy place. The fat-free craze evolved from a bad researcher influencing a government official. The outcome is the Standard American Diet (SAD), where fat is removed and replaced by sugar. Humans are made to eat a lot of fat. Sugar is a deadly drug. I say this as someone who lived for 60 years carrying excess pounds. At 75 I am now healthier than I was at 25. I like my yogurt whole milk, full fat, with no added sugar. On the subject of scams, I never answer my phone if it's not a person I know. Calls that show only a number are not just an annoyance, but sometimes attempts to defraud. Older people who remember how it once was, much like what your husband is used to, still answer calls and get conned. On driving, I've told my wife that our traffic laws are just suggestions. I annoy a lot of people by coming to a full stop at STOP signs, and driving at or below the speed limit.