Relocating to Denmark
I think I’ve mentioned it here and there already, but never explicitly, and it feels like a thing I’d want to explicitly mention: We’re relocating to Denmark. While we’re not completely finished with the process, we’ve got a good chunk of it done already and I’m currently writing this from my desk in Denmark.
I’ll likely write more about this move and how I’m settling into this new life in the future, but the whole process of physically moving has been very eventful and exciting already, which justifies writing about it. It’s probably something I would be upset not to find a record of in this blog a few month or years down the line. So, let’s being.
Before moving to Denmark, we’ve lived in Cologne. We terminated our lease for the Cologne apartment in the end of April and thus had to leave it in the end of July. The lease of our apartment in Denmark started in the beginning of September, so we’ve had a month of potential homelessness to cover. Fortunately, we were able to move in with my mother in law. It was a good chance to see some family and wind down a little after packing up our lives in Cologne. It also meant living out of boxes for a month, which was exhausting. I cannot tell you how glad I am to know (with some certainty, at least) in which cupboard our glasses or my keyboards are.
My mother in law lives about an hour from our old apartment, so that also gave us the chance to perform a sort of rehearsal for the actual move: We planned to move everything in the biggest van I was legally allowed to drive (which was 3.5 Tonnes). We were not sure if a) everything would fit and b) we’d overload the van, weight-wise. If any of the two would occur, this would allow us to go around for a second time and then adapt accordingly for the move to Denmark (which, with a drive time of about 10 hours we could not just simply make in two trips).
Fortunately, everything worked out and we got everything over in one go. We also got rid of a lot of stuff in the month before the actual move, so we arrived with even less in Denmark 1. Thinking about it, fitting all belongings of a four-person-household into a small van is pretty nice from a minimalism standpoint.
Now, with all of this out of the way, let’s talk about the actual move. This must have been about the most exciting thing I’ve did in my life (apart from witnessing birth).
Dropping of the wife and kids
Since we have a cat and a dog, and the dog is too big to travel in the cabin with us, we did not want to fly all together. However, we also have two kids and only three seats in the van, so driving all together was also not possible. This left us with the constellation of me and the pets going in the van, while my wife and the kids flew over.
Our rental period started on the 1st of September, which was a Sunday, so we were to take over the apartment on the following Monday at 9 a.m. Given the restrictions from above, that left as with few possibilities, but we chose the following: The wife and kids flew over on Sunday afternoon and handled the apartment takeover on Monday. I would then drive over with the van as soon as possible afterwards.
So, on Sunday afternoon we all drove up to Düsseldorf (because the Cologne connections were mediocre) and the wife and kids hopped on to a plane to Copenhagen. Because my wife was not feeling well right before they got into security, I waited until they had successfully started, then drove back to our temporary home to pack up some last things.
They landed safe and sound in the evening and made it to their hotel which they’d live in until I was there with the van.
Getting the Van
On Monday morning, I hopped into my car and drove to Cologne. I turned up at our car shop, which offered to sell our car for us. I unregistered it online while sitting there, left the paperwork with them and tried not to cry over a such a stupid thing as a car. There were a lot of memories attached to it and it felt like giving up a bit of freedom. But, it had to go2.
I then jumped into a tram to pick up the van which I then drove back to my mother in law, again packed up some last things and waited for a friend and my brother in law to show up to help me pack it (again, a huge thank you for that!). Loading the Van took about two hours, which was faster than I anticipated.
I then tried to eat some dinner, pack up some last things and prepare everything for the next morning. Now all that was not in the Van was the animals, me, some clothes and the cat’s litter box. I failed miserably at going to sleep early, had a very bad night and woke up to my alarm at 5 a.m. the next morning.
Driving
The first thought I had when I woke up was “Oh damn, I don’t want to do this”. I then got up, made coffee, took the dog for a walk and packed my backpack. I cleaned the litter box and put it in the van together with my blanket. Then grabbed the cat and the dog and started driving at about 6:20 a.m., only about 20 minute later than I planned.
The drive was rather uneventful, for the most part. I set cruise control to 100 km/h and tried to stay behind a truck in the hope of the slipstream saving me some fuel.
At 9:10 a.m. my wife called me to tell me the handover had been done and the apartment (which she hadn’t seen in person before) was actually decent 3.
At 10:30 a.m. I took my first break. Because I had the cat and the dog with me and it was quite hot, I could not leave them in the car, so going to a shop was not possible. My provision was a large pack of Oreos and two cans of coke, because apparently I’m a 12 year old trapped in a grown-ups body.
I entered the Bremen/Hamburg area around noon and there were now a lot of customs cars observing the traffic. I was quite sure I wasn’t overloaded (we didn’t have much stuff and the tires looked fine), but did not have a scale to be sure, so my anxiety-ridden brain made sure to paint out all the scenarios where I was pulled out, weighted and had to unpack half the van. Nothing of that sort happened.
On my second break around 1 p.m. I notice Google Maps showed “Tolls” on my route, but I was avoiding ferries and was sure Denmark has only toll-free roads. Turns out there are two bridges that are actually tolled. They accept cash (Krones and Euros) and credit cards for payments. Funnily enough, my credit card had expired on the first of September which I did not notice while being in the midst of a move and I had no idea if they accepted EC cards. Luckily, I found and ATM at the rest stop and got 130 Euros (which I though would be way to much - but I’d rather be safe then sorry - but turned out to be just enough).
At about 2 p.m. I entered Denmark and was pulled out by customs right away. Anxiety brain was right back at it. The officer asked my what I was doing in Denmark and I told him I was moving here. He said “okay, exit is to the left” and that was it. I was very sure my journey in the van would end there.
I arrived at the apartment at 6:30 p.m. and stared to unpack the van (mostly by myself, while my wife was watching the kids and helping with the heavier furniture). We were done by 10 p.m., which was also way faster than I anticipated.
Returning the van
Because the van was registered in Germany, it was not possible to return it in Denmark. This meant I had to drive back to the closest German city, which is Flensburg. This also mean crossing the whole of Denmark again, which makes it the second time within 24 hours I crossed the entire country.
Me and my older daughter quickly picked up some furniture from IKEA while we still had the van and I made my way back to Flensburg at 4 p.m. My first stop wasn’t the rental company, though, but an electronics store: They had a Dyson vacuum way cheaper than in Denmark, and while I was there I picked it up. It was 7:15 p.m. by the time I left the electronics store. The plan was to go back by train and there was exactly one leaving at 8:50 p.m. So I filled the gas on the van, returned it and made my way to the train station by foot.
I arrived about half an hour before the train left with the intention to find something to eat. I did not know though, that the station in Flensburg has absolutely no stores, whatsoever. There are two vending machines, both of which only accept coins that I did not have. So my Dyson and me boarded the train to Fredericia hungry.
Luckily, Denmark had me covered with a 7/11 at the station that allowed me to grab some food (a disgusting wrap and a bar of feastables) and something to drink before boarding my train to Copenhagen
I arrived in Copenhagen at 1:20 a.m. which meant the commuter train to our apartment was not going anymore. I had to wait for a night bus, with this stupid Dyson in hand, always certain the next person passing by would just mug me for it. I finally arrived home at about 2:50 a.m., after two of the longest days ever.
This is the story if how we physically got here. We’re still in the process of obtaining a residency permit and our CPR-Numbers, so the whole thing is far from done, but we’ve made a lot of progress already.
When people asked me about the move in the past I often said “it’s going to be an adventure” and it definitely was one getting here. It taught me a lot about what I’m capable of doing.
Footnotes
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I want to formally thank my wife for taking care of the most of this while also caring for a 6 year old and an infant, while I was mostly working. ↩
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Denmark has a pretty aggressive tax policy towards non-electric vehicles. If we wanted to keep it, we’d have to pay about 150% of its current value in tax, which was just not economical. ↩
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She told me again today that I did a good job picking it, which is probably the highest praise I’ve ever gotten in this regard. ↩