Hair Guy Love Europe, Part 4
Part 4: Socialist Paradise
I looked really hard at everyone I saw on the bustling streets of Copenhagen. These people live in a socialist country. I thought. Denmark is the big government catastrophe that drives Glenn Beck to tears every night. Just how miserable are these people?
I scrutinized the faces of the passing Danes very closely and found two things: 1) If the people of Denmark are miserable, they’re doing a great job of hiding it, and 2) People of seemingly every nationality turn away and walk faster when they see me staring intently at them.
Income tax rates in Denmark start at about 35% and go as high as around 65% for the top earners. Sales tax is 25%. If you want to buy a car, there’s a 200% tax on top of the car’s price. Danes are perfectly happy to discuss this sort of thing – they don’t appear to be embarrassed by the fact that they give the majority of their money to the government, nor are they enticed by the idea of a large country across the Atlantic where one can pay less than half that in taxes and buy a truck the size of space for pocket change.
The reason everyone seems so satisfied is that all that money goes to really good use. Naturally, Denmark has more healthcare than they know what to do with. The government also fully funds every student’s education from kindergarten up through as much college as he or she chooses to pursue, and apparently they even pay college students a living stipend so they don’t have to take a job while they study. If you’re having trouble making your rent payments, the government will cover the difference.
I stayed with my ex-roommate Josh, who was studying in Copenhagen. His host family consisted of a divorced host father, who had epilepsy, and his autistic son. The disaster potential for that combination is pretty high, so the Danish government pays for a live-in social worker to stay with the family 24/7.
The government apparently also funds significant research into genetically engineering the creation of tall, superhot blonde haired blue eyed women who walk around and boost general morale, and maybe the birth rate too. I’ll be honest – while Denmark is nice, it didn’t really strike me as the sort of place I’d want to live, but if they bumped up the Aryan babe population by another few percent, I’d be applying for a visa before you could say, “terrible reason to move somewhere.” Hell, if the women in North Korea looked like that, I’d move there. I’d even go to El Paso.
Josh has been studying in Denmark for nine months, and I was staying with him for his last few days in the country before his program ended and he went home. Thus, I experienced a lot of Josh’s farewell parties and other general revelry. One of the most bizarre moments, though, came when Josh and I went to visit his friend Obi*, a Danish student finishing his degree at Copenhagen Business School who had been paired up with Josh as part of Josh’s study abroad program.
*Obi is a shortening of his real name, which as I recall is super long and has a ‘Bjorn’ somewhere in it. He adopted the shorter nickname when he was studying in the United States a few years ago, apparently not seeing the Star Wars connection. I can’t promise that I didn’t tell him he was my only hope.
Josh and I dropped by the Copenhagen Business School to say goodbye to Obi during a meeting for the student business club, of which he was vice president. When we entered the room, he and about 25 other students were in the process of electing a new board of directors. Everyone was dressed impeccably – guys in collared shirts and ties, girls in heels and skirts. Campaign speeches were made in both English and Danish.
And the whole time, everyone was drinking straight whiskey out of clear plastic cups. Keep in mind, this is an official extracurricular function on a college campus, and everybody was just having a few drinks to keep their minds limber as they worked. I felt like I’d walked onto the set of Mad Men.
University of Oregon Extracurricular Activities That Could Be Improved By Open Consumption
1) The Oregon Daily Emerald
2) Oregon Marching Band Council
3) Drunk Driver Shuttle
Josh also took me through a part of Copenhagen called Freetown Christania, an autonomous commune of squatters who took up residence on an abandoned military base near the middle of town in 1971, declared it a sovereign country, and have stayed there ever since with very little resistance from the Danish government, which apparently takes a pretty mellow position on seditious activities.
Christania is a quaint little town chock full of largely unwashed and perpetually stoned hippies who subsist off of the sale of handmade trinkets and marijuana. Naturally, it made me pretty homesick for Eugene – I halfway expected somebody to come and ask me if I wanted to buy the funniest jokebook the world has ever known (and even when I’m on vacation, the answer is still no).
After a few days, the time came for me to leave Denmark and head back to England. The past seven weeks I’ve spent in England have been a nonstop onslaught of unfamiliar and bizarre stuff – cars with steering wheels where there ought not to be steering wheels, the letter U in places it didn’t belong, and potato chip flavors that may well have been invented by a mad scientist.* However, coming back to England from countries so bizarre that they make cars prohibitively expensive and don’t even speak English really gave me a newfound appreciation for the place.
*”Gentlemen, BEHOLD! Lobster tail flavored chips!”
Hair Guy Love Europe. But Hair Guy Love United Kingdom more.
Truman Capps brought this rodeo to a close just in time to go to Scotland this weekend.
I looked really hard at everyone I saw on the bustling streets of Copenhagen. These people live in a socialist country. I thought. Denmark is the big government catastrophe that drives Glenn Beck to tears every night. Just how miserable are these people?
Well, she doesn't look so happy.
I scrutinized the faces of the passing Danes very closely and found two things: 1) If the people of Denmark are miserable, they’re doing a great job of hiding it, and 2) People of seemingly every nationality turn away and walk faster when they see me staring intently at them.
Income tax rates in Denmark start at about 35% and go as high as around 65% for the top earners. Sales tax is 25%. If you want to buy a car, there’s a 200% tax on top of the car’s price. Danes are perfectly happy to discuss this sort of thing – they don’t appear to be embarrassed by the fact that they give the majority of their money to the government, nor are they enticed by the idea of a large country across the Atlantic where one can pay less than half that in taxes and buy a truck the size of space for pocket change.
The reason everyone seems so satisfied is that all that money goes to really good use. Naturally, Denmark has more healthcare than they know what to do with. The government also fully funds every student’s education from kindergarten up through as much college as he or she chooses to pursue, and apparently they even pay college students a living stipend so they don’t have to take a job while they study. If you’re having trouble making your rent payments, the government will cover the difference.
I stayed with my ex-roommate Josh, who was studying in Copenhagen. His host family consisted of a divorced host father, who had epilepsy, and his autistic son. The disaster potential for that combination is pretty high, so the Danish government pays for a live-in social worker to stay with the family 24/7.
This is what Josh's host family looks like. From outside their apartment. While they're inside it.
The government apparently also funds significant research into genetically engineering the creation of tall, superhot blonde haired blue eyed women who walk around and boost general morale, and maybe the birth rate too. I’ll be honest – while Denmark is nice, it didn’t really strike me as the sort of place I’d want to live, but if they bumped up the Aryan babe population by another few percent, I’d be applying for a visa before you could say, “terrible reason to move somewhere.” Hell, if the women in North Korea looked like that, I’d move there. I’d even go to El Paso.
Josh has been studying in Denmark for nine months, and I was staying with him for his last few days in the country before his program ended and he went home. Thus, I experienced a lot of Josh’s farewell parties and other general revelry. One of the most bizarre moments, though, came when Josh and I went to visit his friend Obi*, a Danish student finishing his degree at Copenhagen Business School who had been paired up with Josh as part of Josh’s study abroad program.
*Obi is a shortening of his real name, which as I recall is super long and has a ‘Bjorn’ somewhere in it. He adopted the shorter nickname when he was studying in the United States a few years ago, apparently not seeing the Star Wars connection. I can’t promise that I didn’t tell him he was my only hope.
Josh and I dropped by the Copenhagen Business School to say goodbye to Obi during a meeting for the student business club, of which he was vice president. When we entered the room, he and about 25 other students were in the process of electing a new board of directors. Everyone was dressed impeccably – guys in collared shirts and ties, girls in heels and skirts. Campaign speeches were made in both English and Danish.
And the whole time, everyone was drinking straight whiskey out of clear plastic cups. Keep in mind, this is an official extracurricular function on a college campus, and everybody was just having a few drinks to keep their minds limber as they worked. I felt like I’d walked onto the set of Mad Men.
University of Oregon Extracurricular Activities That Could Be Improved By Open Consumption
1) The Oregon Daily Emerald
2) Oregon Marching Band Council
3) Drunk Driver Shuttle
Josh also took me through a part of Copenhagen called Freetown Christania, an autonomous commune of squatters who took up residence on an abandoned military base near the middle of town in 1971, declared it a sovereign country, and have stayed there ever since with very little resistance from the Danish government, which apparently takes a pretty mellow position on seditious activities.
Due to the open sale of marijuana, they're pretty strict about photography any closer to the city center than this.
Christania is a quaint little town chock full of largely unwashed and perpetually stoned hippies who subsist off of the sale of handmade trinkets and marijuana. Naturally, it made me pretty homesick for Eugene – I halfway expected somebody to come and ask me if I wanted to buy the funniest jokebook the world has ever known (and even when I’m on vacation, the answer is still no).
Socialist hippie dwellings.
After a few days, the time came for me to leave Denmark and head back to England. The past seven weeks I’ve spent in England have been a nonstop onslaught of unfamiliar and bizarre stuff – cars with steering wheels where there ought not to be steering wheels, the letter U in places it didn’t belong, and potato chip flavors that may well have been invented by a mad scientist.* However, coming back to England from countries so bizarre that they make cars prohibitively expensive and don’t even speak English really gave me a newfound appreciation for the place.
*”Gentlemen, BEHOLD! Lobster tail flavored chips!”
Hair Guy Love Europe. But Hair Guy Love United Kingdom more.
Truman Capps brought this rodeo to a close just in time to go to Scotland this weekend.