a toothy problem

it's windy and blustery outside and grey and the weather seems generally cranky. and it's rubbing off on me. and it's not improved by an email exchange with the municipality dentist people. you see, children's dentistry is provided for free until they are 18 in denmark. they should be called in yearly for a checkup and until the 6th grade, sabin was. and it occurred to me (and her) recently that she hadn't been invited for a checkup in nearly two years! 

so, i went to the municipality's website to look up contact details. they have a "self service" button that you're supposed to press and make your own appointment (the government in denmark wants everything to happen electronically, but alas, hasn't really set up the systems to support it). right above that is a big long message about how the self-service is currently out of service. so i managed to find an email address to write to, since no one ever answers the phone numbers that are buried about three layers in. i think they have a secret 5 minute window where they answer the phone that you have to try to guess. and probably as soon as someone guesses it, they change it, so good luck getting through.

originally, i wrote on february 4, asking for an appointment for the child. funnily enough, i didn't get any response. no email back, not even an automatic "we received your mail," and definitely no appointment. and this, even tho' i wrote in danish, so it wasn't that they were intimidated by an email in english. so yesterday, i wrote again, this time specifically requesting a response (and a little put out that that was even necessary). 

a couple of years ago, i did a big research project where i talked to a lot of foreigners living in denmark and from them, i repeatedly heard a story of how the municipalities are a bit lax with the children's dental offer towards children with foreign parents. i heard again and again how kids with crooked teeth were assured they didn't need braces and how checkups were offered less often than to purely danish kids. and i rather smugly thought that i had never experienced that. but now i'm starting to wonder. with an aging population, the welfare state in denmark has to begin to make choices regarding their resources. so to let a few children with a foreign parent slip through the cracks on the dentistry offer would probably save a few kroner here and there. in my second mail, i brought this up and said i hoped that wasn't the case.

this morning, i had an answer. although i had signed my name, the answer was rudely not addressed to anyone, no "dear julie," no "hi julie," it just launched into a question regarding the child's social security number, which, unfortunately, i had typed incorrectly in my original mail. i answered back with her correct number and received an answer with a time in one month, at 9 a.m., during the school/work day. in other words, not a convenient or possible time.  she also provided a link to the non-functioning self-service, as if it were working (or perhaps she was unaware that it wasn't working), pedantically telling me how i could look up the records and make appointments there myself. if only it were working. i took a screenshot of the message about how it's not working and said that i would have been happy to make the appointment that way, were it possible. and while she was generally responsive and answering my mails right away, she ignored that part of my mail.

she also tried to tell me that they had sent multiple appointments to us and that maybe we hadn't checked our e-boks (the electronic system where all communication from the state now happens). i do check my e-boks regularly, because i have it set up to send me a mail when there is something there. but i checked it again and funnily enough, there were no mails from the municipality regarding dentist appointments. oddly enough, husband doesn't have any either. and the only conclusion i can draw from that is that she lied about that or sent them to some other parents.

being a conflict-shy dane, she also completely ignored my question about sabin being pushed allowed to fall through the cracks because she has a foreign parent. like she didn't even see that bit. and in all of her answers, despite my modeling back to her the correct way to write a mail, with a salutation of "dear so-and-so or the more normal danish version of "hi so-and-so," she continued to rudely refuse to follow the conventions of basic email etiquette and politeness.

funnily enough, in the middle of this, the postman came to the door with the mail and in it, there was a postcard from the local school dentist, with a time for sabin on february 18. and it arrived today, on february 24. so we missed it because we didn't know about it. and a postcard is quite different than an electronic letter. i tried to call the number of the local school dentist that's on the postcard, but i apparently missed today's 5 minute window, because it just rang and rang and cycled back through the system. so we are still appointmentless and it's been two years and counting.

well done, vejle kommune. well done.  (you might recall that this isn't the first time vejle kommune has had an epic fail.) 

* * *

the day continues in weirdness mode. the telemarketers are getting more and more cheeky. on principle, i don't answer my phone if it is a blocked number, but i suppose that happens quite a lot for telemarkers, so they have started to call from numbers that show. because of my waiting state, i answer the phone, even if i don't recognize the number. this one was a young man who wanted to ask me some follow-up questions about a contest i'd supposedly participated in online. not having participated in any online contests (buzz feed quizzes don't count), i laughed and said that was weird. he got really mad and said i had and that i had provided my full name and address and phone number, tho' funnily enough, he wouldn't tell me what my full name was, or even my first name, nor my address. i just kept laughing and then he got petulant and said he'd give the trip to spain to someone else. you go right ahead and do that, buddy.

* * *

fat cat photobombs famous paintings with hilarious results.

missed opportunities in vejle kommune

here's what they ended up with as the last "kulturhus" they built.

oh, the joys of bureaucracy. and small minds. and small thinking. it's enough to make a girl want to just throw up her hands, tear her hair out and just ask, "why, why, why?" (and that last bit isn't just because i've been listening endlessly to paul simon's graceland in the car.)

we chose our falling down farmhouse at least in part because it was located in the outback of vejle municipality (more like a county in american terms), but it was still part of vejle, which made it seem less like the back of beyond and more part of the real world. vejle (population 51000) seemed like a happening place, progressive and successful and not all THAT far into jutland (the bit of denmark that's actually attached to the continent). but the more i encounter this municipality, the more i realize we really had the wrong impression of them. or perhaps vejle is changing, becoming increasingly small-minded and afraid to dare anything - i think that crisis will do that to some places and if those in charge aren't strong and full of ideas, well, things disintegrate a bit and devolve into increasingly impenetrable bureaucracy that seems to be lazily circling the drain. it's arguably true of the current national danish government as well, so vejle isn't alone in their lack of big thinking.

but let me back up a little teeny bit: as you know, denmark is proud of their welfare state, but financing it is becoming, shall we say, a little bit problematic. it's all well and good to be generous to those who are out of work, but when unemployment rises, there's suddenly quite a LOT of those people and it's a big burden on the system. so there's a whole lot of talk every day in the news about how to stimulate growth and create jobs and prop up that welfare state.  there are special "acute jobs" advertised (the government promised 12,500 of them last autumn). they are for people who have been out of work for more than 2 years and the company who provides the "acute job" will get paid a bonus if they still have the employee after a year. it's kind of like affirmative action for the long-term unemployed.

another thing the government talks about is creating jobs in the public sector by initiating infrastructure projects and building things like "culture houses" out in little towns on the far flung edges of the municipalities. so the process as the bids were let for our coming culture house was quite surprising to me in light of this.

the project was officially let on EU terms (oddly, not with the intention of applying for EU funds for it, which i would have thought would be the reason). since denmark is (to a limited extent anyway), part of the EU, it meant just following the EU bureaucracy surrounding the bid process around public projects. i also (mistakenly again) thought it would mean that the project description would be provided in other languages than danish, to truly open it up to the whole EU, so that there might be an influx of fresh ideas from abroad. wrong again. it was an EU bid, but only in danish (so good luck to anyone not happening to speak/read that minor language) and only advertised locally.

but worst of all, in view of the way that the government goes on and on about how the economy needs a kick start and people need to start businesses and create jobs, was that the requirements on the experience front were so extensive and long, that no companies but the largest, oldest, most established could possibly bid in on the project. completely excluded were the young architects who might come with fresh, amazing ideas, just out of architect school. completely excluded were new companies (and new ideas, i fear). it was, in short, a direct suppression of the entrepreneurial spirit by the very government that's purporting to want to support it.

when i dared to bring it up and point out that we were actually excluding young entrepreneurial talents, i was assured by our dear friend the tender manager (you may remember her from this post), that the big firms would engage them, so we would still benefit from their talents. no supporting evidence was provided to back up this statement. and i'll believe it when i see it.

so, out here in the sticks, we are going to have a new "culture house" and it's going to be built by some old, established firm who has built 10 others and it won't be unique, or special or give some young architect a leg up in his first job. and i think that's a shame. but apparently there's not so much action behind all of that government talk about supporting entrepreneurs and creating jobs.

* * *

meanwhile, elsewhere in the same municipality, the little museums have all been consolidated under one big bureaucratic umbrella. this has left some of the little ones, like my favorite one in randbøldal, to be run largely by volunteers, who do an absolutely splendid job. an active group of weavers and paper-makers ensure a wonderful, relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, as well as events - like a historical market and a second-hand market. it is a real haven.

but recently the big central museum decided they needed a bit more control over the place, so they began sending out a young woman (who has the curious (and slightly alarming) title of formidlingsleder - literally "leader of dissemination") to meet with the volunteers. sounds like a title that would have fit right in in nazi germany, don't you think?

the volunteers have, for ten years, had a big array of projects which they have done, finding money for them themselves by applying for various grants and to various charitable foundations. for example, they've just released a book featuring ten years of their tea towel designs and they have created an absolutely lovely little museum shop that is filled with handmade goods, artfully displayed.

the replica of egtved pige's dress (one of those well-preserved danish mummies) used to come to randbøldal for the winter, when the little building at her gravesite is closed. i say used to, because as you recall, her dress was stolen late last summer. so these fearless and conscientious and ambitious volunteers in the weaving group decided to get in touch with the textile artist who had created the replica (the real one is safe in the national museum in copenhagen) and work with her to weave a new one to display at the grave and in randøldal in the winter. they did extensive research and were even working with someone who had special, traditional sheep for the fibers, so they could spin wool that would be as close as possible to the original.

i'm using the past tense, because the leader of dissemination put a stop to it (and they weren't even being asked for funding) - in a very confusing and not direct way (it's typically danish to be afraid of conflict and pretty much a national disease among danish women) that left the weaving group feeling very bad indeed. she later sent a mail wherein she explained that it had been decided that an expert with a degree in reconstruction of ancient textiles would be engaged to make a new dress (because those are a dime a dozen in denmark and surely won't cost anything). remember, the real dress is safe and sound in the national museum, so they are being denied the opportunity to make a well-researched replica (which is precisely what the one that was stolen was). and the woman who made the original replica was a dancer who did dance performances as egtved pigen, so not an ancient textile expert. what a silly decision, don't you think?

* * *

so where is it all going wrong? i think that both are instances of very limited thinking. there's no room for imagination and ideas and creativity and solutions and definitely no room for initiative. and i think our world is going to become a sadder and poorer place for it. we need open minds and open hearts and open thinking. but how on earth can we have those things today?