丹麥印象 Danish Impression
有一陣子在清理舊文件，讀了一下一本二十年前的日記。日記這種文件我是不留的，記得不知道多久以前還撕掉小學時候的日記丟掉。這本二十年的日記之所以沒有丟可能是因為記載了當時的一些旅行隨筆，其中有台灣的火車環島和丹麥的旅行。還有那時候在美國念大學時，來回台灣和美國之前飛行時無聊的筆記。
I cleaned up some old documents a while back, amongst all there was a diary from 20 years ago. I don’t keep diaries — still remember tearing up one from elementary school to bin. This 20-year-old diary was still around likely due to some travel notes and doodling over a train trip around Taiwan and trip to Denmark. It also contains some mumbling during the flights to/from Taiwan and the States when I was an uni student in the States.
第一次去丹麥是二零零一年的十一月，去拜訪曾經同在一所高中當一年交換學生的丹麥朋友耶妮。我們當交換學生是經過一個私人機構，所以是得付不少錢的，多少錢我卻是記不清楚了，因為是我爹娘的摳摳。耶妮當初當交換學生用的自己的摳摳，她跟我說丹麥的公民每個人到成年政府都會給一筆錢，隨他們怎麼用，她就用了那筆錢到了路易士安納州做了一年的交換學生。我敲敲菇狗大神，覺得耶妮所指的應該是丹麥政府付給繳稅父母的兒童及少年津貼1。
First time to Denmark was in Nov 2001, to visit a Danish friend Jannie who was an exchange student like me in the same high school for a year. We became exchange students through a private organisation, hence we had to pay decent money for it. I can’t remember how much we paid, as that was paid by my parents. Jannie was using her own money to become an exchange student. She told me that each Danish citizen is entitled to a lump sum payment from the government when they become adults, and it’s up to the individuals how to spend the money, so she spent hers to become an exchange student in Louisiana for a year. I checked with Google almighty, and thought that what Jannie was referring to is likely the ‘child and youth allowance’1 paid from the Danish government to tax-paying parents.
因為拜訪的季節已經是深秋初冬，我記得坐上耶妮其貌不揚的老爺車後發現汽車座墊有加熱的功能，登時愛上了她的汽車座墊。除此此外，印象深刻的就是丹麥的熱狗、頭被偷了三次的小美人魚雕像（彼時是被盜了三次，到現在可能又被偷了幾次）、穿著時尚的人們以及他們大街小巷的腳踏車。
As the timing of the visit was already in between autumn and winter, I immediately fell in love with the car seat of Jannie’s old fashion car when I discovered the car seats heat up! Besides that, what marked my memory for Denmark are hotdogs, little mermaid statue as her head was stolen three times (by then; till now her head might have been stolen for more times), fashionably dressed people with their bicycles everywhere.
令人弔詭的是，其實我最念念不忘的是丹麥的熱狗攤。因為在台灣長大的背景，我自然偏好小吃。我還記得一隻熱狗的價錢是二十克朗，對於一個錢包很扁的大學學生算是貴鬆鬆了（我去丹麥旅行是用我爸媽讓我自己存下來的獎學金去的）。我真心不記得為什麼我對丹麥的熱狗評價這麼高。記得熱狗上可以添加切碎的酸黃瓜和培根……有培根嗎？也許是培根捲熱狗？
Surprisingly the founded memory I had for Denmark was the hotdogs — given my childhood in Taiwan, I am obviously partial to street foods. I still remember the price of a hotdog being 20 Kr and I thought that was pricey being a money-constrained uni student (I travelled to Denmark with the scholarship saved up, thanks to my parents). I can’t really recall why I rated Danish hotdogs so highly. I remembered you can add on cut-up pickle as topping, and there’s bacon too… was there bacon? Maybe it was the bacon-wrapped sausages?
1 https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1107&langId=en&intPageId=4485
2 https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/eat-drink/legendary-tale-hotdogs-denmark
