France is very different from Denmark. It took me 26 years before I visited France for the first time. At that time, in the beginning of 1999 I tried to enter the Légion Étrangère, but was rejected because of too poor an eyesight. Until then regular vacations had gone to the island of Mallorca (in the Mediterranean – a Spanish island), and I had been to Nüremberg with my school.
School background
I am one of the few individuals gifted with three mother tongues. In Denmark that is a rare commodity, although Swiss people often speak up to five languages. I have Danish, French and English as my three mother tongues. I do speak German, and I do understand both Norwegian and Swedish – the two languages that along with Danish form 90% of Scandinavia. We do have Fins, but Finnish is not a language that shares much in common with any of the other Scandinavian languages.
I came to the Lycée Francais de Copenhague in 1976, and had three years of kindergarten until I proceeded until the 8th grade in the French educational system. I knew I wanted a Danish education and since everything was taught in French I made the decision to try the Danish school system for the 9th grade. I won’t say much about that other than it being a good thing to “convert” all the information into Danish.
Original plans and what actually happens are two different kettles of water, as I am sure we all know. More on that in future articles in this blog. This is an introductory article and – as such – should hopefully inspire you to add this blog to your probably many other RSS-feeds. 🙂
A family
Happily, I met the woman who became my wife in November 2001, and we have three lovely kids – Natacha, Patrick and Christopher. We have often discussed the wonders that we would never have met if I had been 5 years in the Légion Étrangère, and that is just one of many signs that life has shortcuts, turnarounds, walkabouts, roundabouts and curves everywhere. Everything CAN be exciting if we choose to take every day as it comes.
We have travelled to France twice – in 2006 and 2007 – and this blog is my testimonial to the country I love as much as my own. I try to pass on that beautiful sentiment, and the whole family enjoys the country as well. Also, very importantly, we have a lovely couple as personal friends down in Luynes. We do so very much appreciate the way the Internet brings all of us closer together. Although there can be hundreds of miles between people we can all mail, chat, MSN etc. within seconds with one another. Wonderful technology.
Bienvenu au blog. 🙂