National Day face-off, Sweden vs. Denmark

I am in the middle of another 3-day weekend thanks to the back-to-back scheduling of Denmark's and Sweden's National Days. Normally we would not celebrate the Danish holiday (June 5), but given that Dr. Darling works in Copenhagen, it made sense for me to take Friday off, too. Besides that, Sweden's National Day falling on a Saturday this year meant we all got rooked out of a paid holiday on this side of the Oresund.

Dr. D usually takes the exclusively Swedish holidays off as well, though there aren't nearly as many of those as there are exclusively Danish ones. The Danes really have it all over Swedes (and pretty much everyone else in Europe, save maybe the French) when it comes to work-life. In addition to more paid holidays, they have a shorter work week (37 hours) and earn significantly higher salaries than Swedes in similar jobs (as much as 25% depending on the field/industry).

So we celebrated Danmark's National Day yesterday by sleeping in late, running some errands, meeting some friends for coffee and then dining on Danish Red Sausages.

We celebrated Sweden's National Day today by sleeping in not quite as late, running some errands, meeting friends for champagne and dining on sushi before watching Denmark beat Sweden in a World Cup qualifying match.

Dr. Darling was NOT happy about this, but then she's been a Swede a lot longer than I have. She also has to go back to work on Monday in Copenhagen.

tags: swedish holidays  denmark  

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