I'm safe, back in the real world, away from the G.B. (the Great Blank, elaborated on Paula's blog). Can't upload a photo because of hardware challenges. We MADE IT! past the thermal imaging monitors at Cairo airport - the authorities are quarantining anyone who comes into the country with a temperature, because as always they define nasty lergies as sabotage brought into the glorious mother country by foreigners, probably Israelis in disguise at that. The lockdown of the American University dormitory - 250 people inside, faculty as well as year-abroad students - has been lifted. Anyway, we made it. And once through that lunacy, back into our glorious, ALIVE city of idiocy, beauty, wisdom, grit, dust, dirt, ignorance, LAUGHTER. Private beauty (gardens, a nightingale, early morning pools), public squalor (dust, risking your life crossing the road [tho our policeman still recognizes us and stops the traffic for us]). ([([])])
Good Lord, why does living in a sad and empty place where people are only 1/4 alive make you feel so awful? I am going to work out some ways of proofing us against this.
But I also have to stop pining for Egypt and start treating Denmark as a real home to live in. Rather than waiting for the torture to stop. I can have them as two parallel worlds perhaps, so that one doesn't cancel the other out. Dualism is not the answer.
Oh I can hear the azzan. In Egypt, at least, the foreigners are polarized into those who can't stand the azzan and those who it makes feel comfortable. Actually, one of the nicest things about being back is the ambient noise. There's masses of it, everywhere. On Thursday night, when Egypt beat Italy in whatever the football thing was, you should have heard the driving and tooting in the street. I recorded it, will post. But there's always a lot of it. I like that, it makes me feel safe.
Happy Lucy ..
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It sounds heavenly. The Great Blank is a very good name, I think.
ReplyDeleteEnvying you in Valby!
Ok, lets do it. Lets create a parallel world for ourselves in Denmark- fill with with different kinds of music, culture and cuisine. It sounds wonderful over there, (reminds me a bit of Malaysia for some reason). Glad to see you happy again. Lets try to keep it that way when you get back.
ReplyDeletePaula, this is what I have been campaigning for since I started openly ranting about the state of play in DK.
ReplyDeleteCreating a parallel world is the right way to look at it.
There are a proportion of people who have moved here who are comfortable integrating and assimilating and don't appear to be at all phased by the stuff we are phased by. And when I speak of creating the kind of opposite to that lifestyle, I am often afraid that I upset and offend. I am, after all, suggesting that those of us happy here do less in the way of 'becoming Danish', I am not advocating the waving of flags or the going along with every custom here. But it is so important, when we are living in an environment feeling like a 'round peg in a square hole' (name for my upcoming open blog about DK!- or something like that...) to first aknowledge and say out loud what IS so tough about it.
If we don't aknowledge what isn't working for us here and we just end up surrendering and going along with it, that makes for a deeper unhappiness, that no amount of 'hygge' can solve.
I think the hardest thing is the way the Danes always want to hear what they are 'best' at, and this makes for quite challenging relationships. "Hell yah, you are best at fricking handball, but you need to look a little closer into you alcoholism..." this never goes down well. So we can't say it to 'them', we can't say it to people who are integrated or who want to just enjoy it without question or resistance (or who actually love the ass off DK) but we can and must say it to others who feel the way we do.
My suggestion is to make that parallel world, to meet up and have a reason to meet up without having to form one of those dreadfully formal 'foreninger', to declare meet up zones a non Danish speaking zone, to strengthen who we are so we can be here without feeling utterly debased, and to get out of that half life.
It's no good being told that we have to find the silver lining in a cloud that only holds rain for us....and yes, it's time to stop dwellng on what is so f!!!!d up about this place and it's culture, and to just quietly get along with what we want and need to do to be happy.
And if any Danes or Danalites find this offensive, I am sorry for them, but it is the truth of our situation: we need our own culture...we don't want yours, and yes, we have every right to be here, despite the fact we don't put the dannebrog on our children's birthday cakes.
That's a good point, Babs. I mean, I was sort of fretting the other day that my constant negativity might be tough for the more happy of us in Denmark like Patti or Kelli, for instance. And honestly, I envy them, but I just don't feel the same way, and hope that it isn't an impassable thing, the differences in perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI think I want to be a bit more insular than you, Babs. I want to ignore the weirdisms around me (in DK). When I see them and criticize them, it gets me down. The criticizing gets me down. I think I want to avert my gaze. !
ReplyDeleteBut I want to get on with doing the right things, the things I want us to be doing here. Let's make our own subculture (which is what we're doing actually)! On with it!
ReplyDelete