The Pfeiffers in Denmark

It took Jack only a few weeks to find a job in Copenhagen, as a sales engineer for a company that was selling video studio equipment - essentially, the same type of work he had been doing in San Francisco. Most of the sales presentations were in English, but Jack also attended classes in DSL, Danish as a Second Language, which the Danish government was conducting for immigrants. Denmark is a good place to live. It has a population of only about 5.1 Million - about the same as metropolitan Los Angeles - and has one of the highest standards of living of all European countries. Denmark, like many European countries, has socialized medicine, and, as husband of a Danish citizen and resident alien, Jack had immediate access to the medical benefits. The security of free medical care and the social safety net provided by the Danish government come for a price, however. The Danish income tax rate is the highest in Europe, and there is a federal sales tax of 25% (for comparison: in Germany it is 16%, but only 7% for food, books and newspapers). This tax is already included in the price, it is not added on as with our sales taxes. The Danish population is growing very slowly because the birth rate is low and emigration, mainly to the USA, is balanced by immigration from Turkey and other Eastern European countries.

Anne and Jack wanted to start a family and they were looking for a house to buy. They found a nice little house in the country they could afford, with a big backyard. However, it was located in Kirke Hyllinge, a farm village, about 40 miles from Copenhagen where both, Jack and Anne worked, so both had to commute with their two cars. We visited them there in 2000, when we went to Europe for Erich's 50th anniversary of his highschool graduation. Kirke Hyllinge is surrounded by large fields, and it gives the appearance of a real old world farm village, with a village inn and a village pond. It has a population of about 1,200 - but it also has two car dealerships. That sounds incongruous, but the Danes use a different model (the buzzword is "paradigm") to provide housing for their growing population. In the US we build new housing developments that consist of housing tracts, a few churches and, may be, a shopping center. In Denmark they use existing farm villages (something we never really had in the US) and add housing areas. Originally most of the villagers might have been farmers, today they commute to work in one of the adjacent towns. But some large farms remain - there is a good-sized dairy farm on the other side of Kirke Hyllnige. And the fields grow barley, sugar beets and rape seed - the source of canola oil. About a dozen of those rejuvenated villages, scattered widely and separated by fields, together form a "Kommune" or municipality with shared city government, schools and social services. Somehow Kirke Hyllinge ended up with the car dealerships of the Kommune....

Jack's and Anne's daughter Emily was born on July 20, 1999. The parents enjoyed the benefits of Denmark's family-friendly laws: Anne had six months of subsidized "mommy leave" and even Jack got two weeks off from work to help his wife. When Anne went back to work Emily spent her days with a "day care mommy" who cared for four babies, one her own. Later she went to a daycare center, both being subsidized by the Danish government. In due time Emily grew up - the photo shows her at age four with her dolls. The doll with the (permanent) bad hair day is named Julia, because Emily received her for Jul (Christmas). She is a gregarious blond girl - and a spitting image of her mother. With her playmates at the daycare center she speaks Danish. Her parents at home speak English, and Emily first learned to understand English and now also speaks it.

Anne's work as a "Category Manager" for personal care products required long hours and weekend work. She felt that she would like to have more time for the family, so she made an admirable decision: she requested assignment to a less demanding job. Of course it paid less, and she lost her company car - but she thought it was well worth it. However, after four years in the country the long commute every day eventually became too stressfull for both of them. So they decided to move closer to Copenhagen, namely to Roskilde, the county seat, which lies about halfway between Kirke Hyllinge and Copenhagen. Roskilde has a population of about 50,000, and was established around 1020 AD. Until 1443 it actually was the capital of Denmark. When we were visiting in 2000 we went there on a Saturday and visited the farmers and flea market. Roskilde's "Domkirke" (cathedral) - visible in the back - dates back to 1170 and contains the mausoleum of the Danish royal family. To the younger generation the town is better known as the location of the "Roskilde Festival", which every summer brings together rock, pop and hip-hop bands from many countries. In 2003 the festival was attended by about 75,000 people.

Jack and Anne put their house in Kirke Hyllinge on the market in January of 2003, but it took a while until they found a buyer. They finally received an offer in July, but the buyer wanted to move in immediately. So, temporarily, they put most of their furniture in storage and moved into a vacation cabin, which was owned by Anne's mother, while they were looking for a house in Roskilde. They made an offer on a house they liked, but the deal dragged on and, at the end, fell through. Finally they found a house, but it was not going to be available until January. Luckily, it was a very warm winter in Denmark so life in the vacation cabin was bearable. They got possession of their house January 1 and, after some hectic repainting, they moved in on January 10.

Their new house sits on a corner lot in a quiet residential area at the edge of Roskilde, but it is only a 15 minute walk to the center of town. From the upper floor of their house they can see the spires of the Domkirke, less than a mile away (Jack e-mailed a photo that he took). The house has a finished basement at the level of the garage, so that it actually has three floors and is larger than their old house.

The move to the new house happened just in time, because on March 18 Emily got a little sister, which was named Amanda. This time Anne has arranged with her company to take off from work for a full year, while Jack had again two weeks off to help. Jack not only enjoys his new daughter, but also the much shorter commute to his job in Copenhagen.











Emily is very fond of her little sister, which is not much bigger than her dolls (but currently has less hair than Emily's doll Julia).




The new house, luckily, also has a big backyard. It also has a playhouse, donated by one of Anne's relatives, which Jack is fixing up. Emily invited her old friends from the day care center in Kirke Hyllinge to come and play. As the photo shows, spring has come to Denmark, while it is still cool, because the children all wear heavy jackets. And, yes, that is an American "Radio Flyer" pull cart in the foreground - friends of Jack sent it from the states. Emily was lucky: a new day care center opened in Roskilde and she was one of the first children to sign up.