Friday 24 October 2008

Strategy to make Danish friends

I was thinking a lot to write about it or not. My aim is not to hurt anyone, but just to let you know my experiences a little bit. It has been changing. This idea: to make Danish friends came from last week when I talked to Ioana, my friend and flatmate, about it. We've been in Denmark since September and we still cannot say we have got "true" Danish friends. Stereotypes: Danish people are reserved. Yes, it's true, we experience this, but we don't want to believe in this stereotype.
We had dance and drama class in Aabenraa last week (25 min from Haderslev) and we had a nice day. We liked the sport programes in school, we learnt how to use ice-brakers in class etc. On the way home,we saw one of my Danish classmates at the bus station, so we automatically thought, yes, here is another chance to make friends. :) So we went dircetly to him and kept talking to him. He was nice but a bit shy. We asked his opinion about Danish people in general and friendships. He said, it's hard to make friends here, because it takes a lot of time and people are not open. He has friends because he has been studying at the college for 2 years now, but he still finds it hard to make friends. I was thinking that even for him it's hard, what shall I say? I just here to have experience and whenever I talk to people, they are nice, very nice, but you have to do the effort to make friends. They won't ask about your country, culture, some of them do. It's really hard to write about this topic, because I try to avoid stereotypes and overgeneralizations.
On that night when I talked to my friend Ioana, (she is from Romania), we agreed: okay, this is the situation but we don't give it up. We still believe that we can make friends, and we're doing good.

Possibilities, chances to make friends:
  1. In school: you have to "push", ask about Danish culture, and most importantly try to say some words, expressions in Danish. It works. :) When you enter the classroom, everybody sits in their own group, they don't talk to you. Lot of students don't talk at all. So it's a bit hard. However, I had some good experiences in class. :)
  2. Friday caffee: it's a college bar on Friday to meet with your friends. Every time we try to talk to people, however they sit in their own group, or they are drunk and when you talk to them, the other day they don't remember you. It's sad. So we stopped going there because it's all about drinking alcohol, and we don't get drunk, we don't like drinking alcohol.
  3. But we were thinking if we stop going there we will never have friends. So we try to go there early, maybe we can find some nice people. That's happened last Friday when we were there. They sat in their own group but at this time we were invited to sit with them. So we did. Nothing seroius talk happened, but at least we tried it. :)
  4. I think, we need more time, and nothing wrong about it.
I will update you how making friends goes for us. :)

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