The Grass Is Always Greener by Kristen Hoeg

“I’ll take a three-zone bus pass”, I say in a foreign language. The man behind the counter looks at me and says, “Sure, that will be one hundered and five kroner”…In English. It’s hard to hide my irritation; I have lived here for 7 years now but people still speak English to me. This is one of my many annoyances of living abroad.

I take my daughter to a lake in northern Wisconsin. She takes off her swim suit the moment she sees the water and runs in. I feel the looks of the other moms. Most of them are wearing conservative one piece suits. Usually I would take my top off by now but this won’t happen today. This is one of my many annoyances of coming home.

I grew up with a childhood typical of the Wisconsin Northwoods. My home town is a small place few people have ever heard of. My high school years were typical with cheerleading and big hair. I went on to college to become a teacher. I imagined I would eventually get married and be a home maker in a town like the one I grew up in. Ten years after my high school graduation I have two kids but they don’t speak any English. I live in a city of two million people. No one here has ever heard of Wisconsin. How did this happen? The way it always happens, I guess. In college I met a man (boy?) from Denmark and I moved back with him. Now, I have lived most of my adult life on the “wrong” side of the Atlantic.

Copenhagen, Denmark, is now what I call home. At first, I couldn’t believe my luck. From the moment I flew in, I liked my new country. It was a warm summer day in the city with enough people to fill the bike lanes everywhere I looked. Everyone spoke English and seemed to welcome me. There were castles and scenery everywhere. The best part was that I was suddenly exotic and interesting. Being foreign felt very good.

Months passed and winter came. In Denmark, it doesn’t bring snow like it does in Wisconsin. It brings rain and 20 hours of darkness a day. My new friends and family now saw me as a permanent fixture in their lives and no longer made that special effort to accomodate me. People spoke more Danish around me now; I would often sit and listen to incomprehensible conversation. That first winter was hard.

I took Danish classes almost every day. At first, I didn’t think the language was even possible to learn. Sometimes it seems Danes speak with the throats more than their mouths. Months and then years passed and I was still there, in more and more advanced language classes. From the Danish government I got a monthly welfare check that would make most working Americans jealous. This is the downside of the Scandinavian social system. With all the free money coming in, there is no incentive to go out and work. I finally did so anyway, and finally, at a workplace where only Danish was allowed, I learned to speak like a native. Well, not a native. People tell me I can pass for a Swede or a Norwegian which is (mostly) a compliment.

What else have I learned here? To be straight-forward in a way most Americans consider rude. Here, I will ask people for the receipt of a present I don’t like. If there’s a line in the supermarket I’ll yell at the cashier to open up another register. I can navigate Copenhagen rush hour on a bicycle with a kid riding behind me and have felt road rage – in the bike lane- because someone cut me off.

But what did I forget? For one, I don’t know how to answer the question “How are you?” anymore. I feel like it deserves an explanation, like I need to tell the person how my toes are a little itchy but otherwise I’m okay. I roll my eyes when people pull out a check in a grocery store; honestly, I wouldn’t know how to write one out myself. In a store I once asked about a “BH”. The clerk looked at me with a blank stare. Yes, BH, aka a breast holder. Shouldn’t this person working in JC Penneys know this? For the life of me, I couldn’t think of the word brazier.

But now we’re moving back. My husband is done with medical school and will start his residency in the US next summer. Thankfully, America doesn’t produce enough doctors to meet its own demands, so the finding a job shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Fortunately, he takes multiple choice tests well. My husband looks forward to starting his training in America. He will work twice as much during residency as he would have in Denmark. On the other hand, residencies are three times longer there. I think we both agree that the prospects of being a doctor are brighter in America. While hourly incomes are comparable, taxes in Denmark are around 69%! All in all, we will end up having the same amount of material wealth in either place; the difference is I would have to work in Denmark and I can stay at home in America.

I can’t wait to get back to my roots and show my children life in America: Back to a place where everyone is nice to you; back to a small town where you don’t lock your front door; back to slow paced life.

Some things will take some getting used to. I hate watching a man my dad’s age make minimum wage at Wal-mart. I hate watching television commercials and I hate the way the news tells people to be scared.

When I’m in Wisconsin, I feel Danish and in Denmark I feel American. I’m neither and I’m both.