My first culture shock

Life in Denmark. Two years ago, a Ugandan woman packed her bags for study in one of Denmark’s towns. While there, she met adventure amidst the demand of her academic life. She shares her diary of life in Denmark.

As clichéd as it might sound, I have always wanted to travel. Once, I remember looking at the bright stars in the sky and wishing to myself secretly at every passing plane, that one day I will be going beyond my country. When I got the chance to travel to do my Masters degree abroad, I jumped at it. It was a dream come true. But despite all the stories that I had heard about Europe, nothing had prepared me for the experiences I have so far had here.

I do not mean to romanticise or demonise being abroad as most Ugandan’s would call it, but rather to share my experience. Coming from Uganda, we have a different way of doing everything, our culture is different, and so is our way of life and this makes us who we are. I realised that this aspect means that some experiences would more or less be a culture shock.

Coming to Denmark in the small city of Aarhus (second to Copenhagen the capital) in the summer of August 2010, I was amazed by how much green I saw and how the parks are manicured. My dorm mates were friendly and they showed me around. Although I was over- whelmed by the size and variety of food stuff, I was unsure at first about what to eat. Eventually, I observed what my dormmates cooked. They often found recipes online of different food like Indian, Italian and so on. I eventually discovered that buying chicken was so cheap, and since I am a huge fan of spicy food, I experimented with my first Indian curry.

Talk was rife of one of the biggest parties of the year. An end of summer sort of party and I was beyond excited to attend and have a good time like we normally do in Uganda. Danish people love drinking. They invent any and every excuse to drink regardless of the day of the week (the Danes probably drink more beer than any Scandinavian country I have been to) and its part of their socialisation. On many occasions, I was told by my Danish friends you can only experience Danish culture by drinking. As someone whose Christian beliefs then were non-tolerant of alcohol, I was in for a treat so to speak.

Knowing how as Ugandans we love to dress for parties, I basically outdid myself. I wore one of my best outfits, together with high heeled shoes only to show up and find people ordinarily and casually dressed in jeans and gumboots. As if that was not enough, the music was a student style sort of thing where you cue up and play what you like and give another person their turn. The end result was weird mix of music that ranged from traditional Danish folk music to Marvin Gay’s Sexual Healing. Worse still, nobody seemed to be dancing; everybody was holding to their drinks and talking.

I was so disappointed to say the least; this was not the sort of party I had eagerly anticipated! My high heels kept sinking in the ground as it had rained the day before, and being more interested in dancing rather than chatting, I found it hard to make small talk for the life of me. So slowly, I disappeared and found my way to my room. The next day, my dorm mates asked if I liked the party. All I could manage was a “yes it was just different” it had probably not occurred to me before that I was in a different place. After this experience, it dawned on me that I’m far away from home.