Foreigners in Denmark’s Blog

When we were preparing to move to Denmark, I was in control.  I knew exactly where and when things were happening, the only thing I hadn’t organised was speaking directly with our future landlords.  That task was left to my danish husband.  This meant that in the main I was very comfortable in that I knew everything that was happening – just how I like it!

Roll on 12 months later, and we are now in the same position, in that we have to move home again (minus the moving country of course!).  The difference being, I definitely don’t feel in control.  As the non natural danish speaker, I’ve been forced to relegate the responsibility of contacting landlords about potential properties to the Mr (I don’t want to put any off by speaking English or my very bad Danish to them)…problem is, his idea of timing on ‘need to do’ things is very different to mine.  Whereas, I’m very much a doer, he’s a thinker, and freely admits that…the result…a very stressed out wife!

At this point, we’ve only seen two houses, both of which have really turned out to be too small for our needs.  So from this we’ve (or should I say I’ve) learnt that a) we probably need at least 100kvm, b) if we decide to move out further to pay less rent, we will then make up the different in travel costs to and from work/school and 3) that means (well at least this is my opinion) we need to extend our original budget slightly as whilst the initial rent will be more than we planned, at least we won’t have the petrol/bus/train costs.  Mr doesn’t buy this though, he’s of the opinion that there’s no panic and we have two months (yes that’s true), and there are bound to be houses that come up in convenient locations, within our budget (possibly, but as rare as hens teeth).  I guess at some point one of us is going to be proved wrong. 

So, no doubt you will be getting a number of updates over the next two months, where I’ll be updating on the number of: bitten tongues, tempers raised and quite possibly, tears.  Hey ho!

Additional info:

For those who just happen to be house/flat searching at the moment, I’ve included some good to know places to search.

www.boligportal.dk - this is a website where you can search and view properties and then contact the landlords direct either by email or by phone.  Be warned that to be able to contact the landlords with the most recently posted properties, you will have to pay 350kr which lasts 2 months.

www.dba.dk – Den Blå Avis is the online version of a advertising paper, and covers the whole of Denmark, again you can search based on location and other requirements.

Local free papers – As I’m in Aarhus, I’ve been checking out Aarhus Onsdag which gets delivered every Wednesday.  There are sometimes online versions too.

Notice boards – these are sometimes forgotten as good sources for places to rent.  So check out the notice boards in your local supermarkets, library and the like…you never know!

There are probably loads of other places to look too, so if anyone has any suggests, feel free to add them in the comments.  Thanks.