Fresh air babies

Okay, yes, more on the Danish babies. Because here's the thing - I'm actively looking forward to being back in the US so I can confirm to myself that the level of babies in the outdoors here is really way more than I'm used to, I'm not just a crazy person stalking babies.

Fresh air. Danes LOVE it. No matter the weather or occasion opening the windows to let in some air is always a good plan. Your bedroom might but frigid as a result but hey! The air is fresh. The fresh air thing combined with the much lower level of germ-phobia concerning babies means that I'm NOT CRAZY - babies are EVERYWHERE. It's not only the fresh air though - Danes are simply much less germ-ophobic (on the whole, yes of course I'm making generalizations) than Americans. I love my litle baby niece very much and I love her parents... but she doesn't go outside NEARLY as much as these babies. She's totally fine. A couple days ago when I was studying for my exam at the nearby library I noticed a baby half-crawl / half-wriggling toward me. She was basically doing the worm - you know, pre-crawling. And squeaking and drooling. Her mom was just casually printing something on the public computer while the baby wriggled away on the floor in a public building. Americans would NOT BE DOWN with that.

In May 1997 there was actually an incident in New York where a Danish tourist was arrested for leaving her 14-month daughter outside in a buggy while she ate lunch inside. Danish Mother's Arrest Blamed on Culture-Clash. It's funny in a certain light because our understandings of parenting are so vastly different... but was also a crazy nightmare for this family - the baby was taken away by Child Protective Services.

To prove my point I did a little survey on my bike yesterday.... I calculated babies per kilometer along my commute to school. I mostly relied upon baby-buggy sightings.... because damn, Danish baby buggies are large and in charge. But there was one occasion when I spotted a free-floating, sans buggy baby in the arms of her father and two occasions when I saw babies in one of the Christiania bike sidecars. I won't try to describe, here's a photo:

I also spotted two self-propelled toddlers (they were walking...) that almost qualify as babies. There are plenty of these about... I didn't count them for my stats unless I got a visual on a baby. I figured it would be reasonable to bike around without a baby in the cart but it would be pretty inexplicable to push a baby buggy around without the baby so it was a safe bet that where there is buggy one can find baby.

The stats!

TRIP ONE:
From Falkoner Allé to Enghave Station via H.C. Ørsteds Vej
               Distance traveled: 3.1 kilometers
               Babies spotted: 37
                              2 Christiania bikes; one containing three children, one containing two children
                              1 buggy carrying twins
                              2 toddlers in snow suits ambling along with a grandparent
             
               BABIES PER KILOMETER: 11.93

TRIP TWO:
From Vesterbrogade to Langelandsvej vis H.C. Ørsteds Vej
               Distance traveled: 2.5 kilometers
               Babies spotted: 19
                              1 baby being carried around without a buggy
                              1 Christiania bike with three kids
                              3 unattended babies outside shops
               Temperature: approx: 7 degrees Celsius

               BABIES PER KILOMETER: 7.6

Side trip:
From Enghave station to Sydhavn station
               This is a largely industrial area.... in other words, not where you'd forcedly expect to see the babies out in force. But I saw no less than four babies in this 1.3 kilometer stretch. That's a little more than THREE BABIES PER KILOMETER, FOLKS.

So what to do with this information.... valid question. I dunno, it's just kinda interesting. Lots of babies.

               

Danish babies here and there, Babies in the public sphere, Danish babies everywhereee

I have been harping on this for months.... Denmark is FULL OF BABIES. It's really pretty overwhelming. I've contemplated doing a survey of my bus rides - the frequency / number of babies per bus ride. But I'm not dedicated enough to baby statistics to pull that off especially since I bike now unless I'm going out and saturday night at 2am is not the highest baby-traffic time. Even though I HAVE seen people pushing strollers around like it ain't no thang on friday at 11:30. I've also considered surveying the relative amount of men and women with babies on public transit... for SURE more daddies with babies in public here than anywhere in the US. If only I had little research assistants to do my bidding, the number of sociological surveys we could get done!

As I write here in a cafe near my house I can see no less than three babies. One baby cries as her mom rocks and soothes her, another happily squirms after having finished up a big bottle of lunch, and a third naps while parents eat lunch. About 15 minutes ago two little boys who were very recently babies left with their parents... they were wearing matching danish-child outfits of rain boots, huge colorful raincoats, and striped t-shirts that are probably more hip than anything I owned before college.

A joke I heard recently:

American: "Why are there so many gay nannies in Denmark?"

Dane: "... those are the children's fathers..."


(You could also insert Sweden or Scandinavia or Norway for Denmark there.... as with most Scandinavia jokes I've ever seen - unless it's one group at the expense of the other)

Think I'm kidding??? here are some real live photos of babies in carriages in Copenhagen. EVERYWHERE, I tell you. The first three I just found online but the others I took along the lakes, in Nørrebro, and in Assistens Kirkegaard respectively.

People sometimes leave their babies outside in the buggies while they eat / have a coffee date... oh trust and social cohesion. This photo nicely shows how black-on-black-on-black fashion also extends to the baby accessory realm.

Inventive baby bikes...

This looks like a Lagkagehuset, a popular bakery chain... and one extremely attentive Danish baby.

Also note in the right lower corner the baby bike seat.... One of my favorite scenes in Copenhagen is someone biking along with their baby totally asleep, strapped into one of these seats, flopping around behind them. They're totally safe, don't worry. Danes are nothing if not attentive to child bike safety.

That's just cute.

Danish baby wizards

My life has been somewhat of a time warp the last week. Since I've been sick I can count the number of times I've left the apartment (three) and streets I've walked on (two). So I've had time to crawl through my roommate's dvd collection and listen to the entire 20 hour Jim Dale-narrated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.... and well into the Half-Blood Prince. This thorough look through HP has afforded a fresh perspective on Danish society, because why not!

Here's what I've got: "balance bikes" are for Danish society what toy broomsticks are to Harry Potter society. Both literal and metaphorical training wheels for life.

Toy broomsticks, which allow a young witch or wizard to fly very slowly only about two feet off the ground, were first mentioned in a letter written by Lily Potter to Sirius Black thanking him for the toy broomstick that he sent to Harry for his first birthday. In book four Ron and Harry pass two little witches playing on two broomsticks while walking about the campgrounds at the Quidditch World Cup.... a passing ministry approaches the scene, muttering to themselves, "In broad daylight! Parents having a lie-in I suppose...". The little Danish balance-bikes are so utterly normal here and so utterly interesting to me. Essentially rather than training wheels or pedals the kids push themselves along. So they're less likely to fall and more likely to practice their balance than on, say, a tricycle. 

I relish watching little kids scurry along after their parents on their "balance bikes" because it is so utterly clear that they are practicing their version of how it is normal to live life.... with a bike. Just like the little wizard babies! We all have a normal, whether or not we admit.

THEN I get to thinking (no I'm not dropping the metaphor yet) - I'm a Muggle born to Danish society. And there's nothing wrong with that! I will never be a pure-blood, but that shouldn't exclude me or mark me as lesser.... and if we want to bring back in the baby broomstick. I did not ride around on baby balance bikes as a wee kiddo.... but I'm fine biking. Some of my Danish friends might beg to differ, but I'm learning! Just like Hermione and Harry didn't grow up playing with toy broomsticks (apart from the one Sirius gave him until he was one) - but there's nothing less magical about them. So of course then I have to start thinking about integration, immigration, assimilation.... what model is Harry Potter really bringing forth? Seems pretty assimilationist actually - it's not like Hermione gets to bring in her life from the Muggle world more than the occasional mention of floss and dentistry since her parents are dentists. They only appear rarely in the series. But then again one of the most marvelous things about the Harry Potter series is the emphasis it places on giving everyone a fair chance, love, equality, kindness, not caring where someone is from but what they're all about and where's they're headed.

Conclusion: Harry Potter is always relevant.