Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Danish
No, not the sweet cake you eat with your coffee, but the folks who live in Denmark. The BBC just had an article that was saying how happy the Danes appear to be. I guess most surveys in Europe put the Danes near the top of the list as far as contented people. It was kind of a funny article since the writer kept hinting that the Danes really weren't that happy and that the real reason was only because they have such low expectations. I don't know - the descriptions of Danish culture seem pretty nice to me. The story even had one picture showing the inside of a spotless public transportation vehicle that was captioned, "Public transport is ominously clean," as if clean buses is a bad thing. I guess that makes our dirty Michigan buses that are full of unwashed and ill-dressed malcontents a good thing?
From what they said, I don't know why there's a suspicion of Danish happiness. They work their 37 hour week and go home using convenient, even if ominously clean, transport. There's subsidized child care and the streets seem to be safe and clean - though not reported as ominously clean. As ominous as it may appear to the writer, I don't think I'd mind swapping my 45 hour week; dirty, broken down, practically non-available buses; and streets and schools echoing with gunfire and the smell of arsoned buildings for the low expectationed reality of the Danes.
