I just spent the last few days with my Public Health class traveling around western Denmark for our short study tour. We had three academic visits in order to learn more about healthcare in Denmark, but we also did some cultural and fun stuff as well. I’ll just start from the beginning!
Day 1
Our class met in Copenhagen at 7am on Thursday to catch the bus for our 3 hour drive to Vejle.
Interesting fact: Denmark is the world’s largest exporter of wind turbines, which makes sense because the average wind force across the year is 7.6 meters per second. We saw wind turbines everywhere on the drive.
We met with Region Syddanmark for our first academic visit. The health system in Denmark is split up into basically three tiers, the national government, the 5 regions, and around 90 municipalities. We had a 2 hour presentation from a man who works at the region, and we learned that the regions are in charge of pretty much everything in their area. Mainly, they run all of the hospitals. Just recently, they initiated the idea of quality > quantity, so they decreased the amount of hospitals while making sure each hospital could provide a high amount of specialists care. Apparently it caused quite the uproar because some people had to drive an extra 10km to get to the hospital. I guess their perspective is a little different coming from such a small country!
Then we headed off to our second academic visit in Rødding to meet with a General Practitioner (GP). We arrived about a half hour early, so we got to go exploring the little town.
This is completely normal. Everyone leaves there babies outside the store. No big deal, and yes, I am being completely serious.
Then we found a bakery!
I got a snegl wienerbrød, and snegl is snail in Danish. It was as delicious as it looks!
We were all curious about the pastry shaped like a frog, so Chelsea decided to try it. She said it was good, but she felt sick afterwards. Apparently this frog is some sort of famous kids cartoon here.
Raspberry flavored marzipan.. hmm.
Then it was finally time to head over to our visit with the GP.
We visited a group practice with 4 GPs. In Denmark, everyone is assigned a GP, and they are the first people to call when you get sick. The GP acts as a gatekeeper to the more specialized part of the healthcare system, unless of course there is an emergency situation. They definitely provide more types of treatment than family doctors in the US, but it really depends on the GPs knowledge with how much treatment they can provide for a certain illness. Some of the main issues they deal with are acute/chronic illness, psychiatric problems, social problems, vaccines, stress-related issues, and prophylactic care for pregnant women and children. Many GPs also offer acupuncture, which is covered by the government. I found that very interesting because it is not something that would ever be covered so widely in the US. Our presenter said that probably 20% of GPs do acupuncture. We also got a tour of the place, which looks just like a doctor’s office in the US, except literally everything is done on the computer.
After our visit, we checked into our hostel in Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark. Here is a picture of our room. It was actually really clean, and we got a delish breakfast in the morning.
That night, we all went out to dinner at Hotel Dagmar.
We arrived at 6:45 like we were supposed to, but we ended up having to stand outside forever. The town was really cute though, so I just took some pictures while we were waiting. I wish we could have explored the town during the day!
After waiting outside for around 15 minutes, we got led downstairs to the bar area. We thought it was weird, but it turns out the restaurant thought we were coming the next night! The restaurant was awesome though, and since we were in such a small town, no one else could have fed all 37 of us!
Our 3 study tour leaders ended up being our waiters because they were so short staffed! They did give us free drinks to pass the time while we waited for our food.
We ended up having a bunch of courses spread out over a long period of time. First, we got a basket of bread, then came out this super yummy pumpkin soup. We all thought it was our dinner, so we ate a ton of bread and soup! Then like an hour later we got our actual meal. I think it was prime rib, and there was some sort of baked clementine and veggies on the side. Kind of weird, but tasty. Then another long time passed, and we were getting pretty tired. We thought the dinner was done, but then they brought out crème brulee with pistachio ice cream on top. It was so good!
We didn’t leave the restaurant until after 10:30pm. Our dinner lasted almost 4 hours!!! Insane. The restaurant was awesome about the whole mix up, though. When we got back to our hostel, I was exhausted and fell asleep asap.
Day 2
The second day started with an early breakfast, and we were on the road to our third, and final academic visit by 8am. We went to Sex og Sundhed in Odense, which means Sex and Health. They are a health promotion center that was started initially to prevent HIV/AIDS, but then it expanded to prevent STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and youth abuse of alcohol and drugs. Besides prevention, they also aim to improve the living conditions of people living with HIV/AIDS or other STDs.
As we were walking there as a group, Chelsea and I saw this condom shop and started laughing. Turns out, that is exactly where our academic visit was! The shop is one of three in Denmark, and they sell condoms really cheap to help promote safe sex. They also try to make it an open environment, so the place is set up like a candy store.
They drive this condom car to their educational events at schools or other places. One of the main things they do is educate young people about sex, relationships, drugs, and alcohol. There main goal is to create a dialogue and get the students to share their opinions.
One of the things I found interesting is that Denmark is very open in regards to sex and sexual education, and this is mainly because their culture is not influenced by the church. Sex og Sundhed is a NGO, but they still receive public funding. The guy who worked there said an organization like this would never work in Italy or Greece, places that are not as open to educating young people about sex.
After the academic visit, we had a choice to go to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum or Brandt’s Klaedefabrik (some sort of art museum). I went to the HC Andersen museum.
HC Andersen was born in Odense, and he is famous for writing many children’s fairytales. One of my favorites is The Princess and the Pea.
HIS DENTURES! GROSS.
Apparently, HC Andersen also liked to sketch a lot, so they had a ton of his sketches in the museum. I mean, I’m no artist, but I really don’t think they were that great haha.
In the museum was the house where HC Andersen was supposedly born.
Then we went to our next cultural event, Koldinghus. It is a large castle built in the middle of the 13th century, and in the centuries that followed, it was one of Denmark’s most important royal castles. In 1808 there was a fire that left the castle in ruins, but today it has been restored and houses a museum.
They had a Beatles exhibit going on, and they spent about 2 years setting it up. It is apparently the best Beatles exhibit in Denmark, so you know it must be good. It was actually pretty funny because most of their memorabilia was from a Beatles cover band, and the rest was Beatles stuff that random Danes had collected back in the 1960s, like a Beatles sweatshirt. I really can’t begin to explain how weird this museum was. It was just a bunch of super weird stuff thrown together in one place.
There was a bunch of old furniture, and of course I cannot forget they have the 2nd largest silver collection in all of Denmark.
It was so goofy. And very. very. weird.
Don’t ask because I have no answers to the above pictures. I was so confused.
Anyway, after that weird experience, we drove off to our next destination, Bowl ‘n' Fun in Vejle. Chelsea and I bowled three games with one of our professors, Jakob.
Despite not winning any of the three games and not having bowled since high school, I won overall score for the three games combined! I stayed steady near 95 for each game, and the other two were kind of all over the place. I was excited!
We stayed at the bowling alley for dinner where they had a big buffet set up. It wasn’t that bad, but I’m not really a fan of Danish food so I didn’t eat much of it. The weird meats kind of freaked me out.
After dinner, we went to our next hostel, which was in the middle of nowhere. I was exhausted anyway, so I fell asleep in about two minutes again.
Day 3
We had breakfast at the hostel, and I was so excited because they had pancakes! However, they really don’t “do” pancakes here in Denmark, so they were extremely tough and chewy. I stuck to what the Danes are good at… fresh bread with Nutella. Yum!
After breakfast, we had a wrap-up session about our academic visits, then went to Jelling, Denmark to visit Denmark’s birth certificate, the Jelling Stones. We had an awesome presenter tell us the history of the Jelling Stones, but I’m not much of a fan of history, so I am not going to spell it all out. Basically, one of the stones was made by Gorm the Old, the first king of Denmark, for his wife. His son, Harald Blue-Tooth (the man that Bluetooth technology is named after), had the second Jelling Stone made in memory of his parents, to honor his conquest of Norway and Denmark, and to Christian the Danes.
Then we had another lovely lunch buffet, which put me to sleep for our three hour bus ride back home. Overall, the study tour was a great experience, but I was happy to be back in my room in Copenhagen once it was all over. It’s really starting to feel like home now. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to leave come May!
In other news, Gabi and I booked a trip to Berlin for May 14-18. We got round-trip plane tickets for $80, and we are going to stay in a hostel and explore the city for five days! I can’t wait! Tomorrow we are going to plan out our week long trip for April. I think we are going to go to Amsterdam, Paris, then Barcelona, but I will give the details once I know them!
Hej Hej!
Emily
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