Chapter 17. Shopping, having fun & saving money

This is an excerpt from the Worktrotter's Guide to Denmark.

When you move to a foreign country you will have to adjust your habits. What’s there to buy and where? What shops and products suit you best? Where can you have fun? And so forth. One of the most important questions, though, will be how to reduce your cost of living. It is always helpful to learn from the experiences of others, and that’s why this chapter contains a number of hints and tips put together by Char McKay, an expat from the USA, and her friends. Some tips are particular to the Greater Copenhagen area, although these are interesting not only for people living there, but also for visitors.

The first tip: use foreign credit cards as little as possible in Denmark! You will incur substantial charges. The Dankort, the Danish bank card, is accepted almost everywhere and you can embark on an expensive shopping tour without taking an army of bodyguards with you to protect your funds.

17.1 Shopping

You may notice that products in Denmark are often advertised in promotional leaflets, which come flowing through your letterbox each week. Here’s why they are still so popular. Advertising on radio and television was banned in Denmark until 1983. Even football matches were not broadcasted if they featured pitch-side advertising. Since then, some companies wanted to do away with their advertising leaflets but they had to revise their plans in the face of falling sales: the Danes love their promotional literature.

You will find that the brochures contain a range of attractive offers. Work through the weekly discount offers with the aid of a dictionary and you’ll be practising the language at the same time. If you are not planning to stay long in Denmark and therefore don’t intend to learn Danish, it is still worthwhile learning enough of the language to enable you to read a little, because the discount offers in the leaflets are generally very good – and you can save a lot of money.
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Contents of Chapter 17. Shopping, having fun & saving money
17.1 Shopping
17.2 Events & activities

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