There´s gold in the streets of Denmark

The story goes something like this: In the 1970s, when the first wave of immigrants starting arriving in Denmark from Turkey, Pakistan, and other developing countries, they were impressed by the prosperity of this country, from the wealth of the average individual, to the impressive welfare system. When, after sometime, they returned to their home countries to visit, they told their friends and relations that there was "gold in the streets of Denmark". Today, Dorthe and I are finding the same thing - although the gold is not so much lying in the streets, as sitting in the second hand markets, the newspapers, and especially, the garbage rooms, of this country.

Having got ourselves an apartment, the main task over the last two weeks has been collecting stuff to put in it - after all, neither of us have accumulated much stuff as we've lived in student dorms for most of our education. And so, we now need to find all those things that make up your standard western residence. We could of course go to Ikea and buy them all new in a massive one afternoon splurge. Or we could do it the fun (cheap) way....

Of course, we're going to do it the cheap way. And thus, the last couple of weekends have been spent on this task. Our first purchase was the biggest - Dorthe found a listing in "Den Blå Avis", the local "Buy, Sell and Exchange" newspaper - a women was getting rid of all her furniture. We went to have a look, and ended up with a very nice sofa (estimated value DKK 6000) and a solid mahogony coffee table for a total of DKK 1500 ($250). After spending so much time in BOlivia and Peru, it was a bit odd bargaining for something in the west - we didn't really know how to do it, and whether we were going to offend her or not. "How much is it? And how much is it for two? I'll take it if you throw in the alpaca gloves as well....." Oh well, we managed to do it without obviously offending her.

The weekend before last was spent in Sweden with Dorthe's parents at their summer house in Ålmhult. It was very nice up there as usual - the highlight was rowing the boat down the nearby lake for a couple of hours to a small town, and tying it up in the back-garden of the local shop, walking in underneath the washing on the clothesline, and getting an icecream, before rowing back home again. But also in Ålmhult is the pensemission, a secondhand market run every saturday morning by a church charity. Dorthe and I spent several hours with all the old grey haired swedish ladies picking through old 70s jackets and used kitchenware in search of what we were after. And we found it too - SEK 75 for about a dozen miscellaneous things - later in the supermarket we saw the samerolling pin that brought being sold for SEK 60 on its own!

But the real discovery came this weekend. Dorthe's parents, who are currently living with, live in one of a series of apartment buildings on the outskirts of Copenhagen - we reckon there are between 700 and 1000 people living here in total. And of course, 1000 people generate quite a lot of rubbish - the six garbage rooms here are all fairly large, and in particular, they have a space for people to put aside stuff that could be reused. on Friday night were putting out some rubbish and there was a nice cane wicker chair sitting there. I asked Dorthe what it was, and she explained how the system worked. We both suddenly realised the potential of this, and thus, on Saturday, we decided to go and have a decent look around and see what we could find. We found some stuff alright - a complete set of crockery - dinner plates, soup plates, and bread plates - for 10, a hallway lamp, pillows, cake tins, and the real find, a working vaccuum cleaner. Bouyed by our success, we went back - on Sunday we added a handbag for Dorthe, some coathangers, some handtowels, duvet covers, a merino wool sweater, a womens dress jacket that fitted Dorthe perfectly, and a nice wooden bookcase - we also left behind two more vaccum cleaners. Monday wasn't quite so successful though - only came back with one thing, although we did leave yet another vaccum cleaner behind. The thing we found though, was a combination Microwave oven and Grill that seems to be working perfectly fine - Dorthe's father reckons its worth about DKK 2000 ($330) new.

"Doing the rounds", as we call going around all the rubbish rooms, has been so successful that its become our nightly ritual. The question that we're both asking now, is where is this going to end? Why do people throw away stuff that seems to be in perfect working order? Is there something that they know that we don't? Will these appliances all spontaneously burst into flame one night? What else can we find? If I wish for a Toyota Land Cruiser, might I find one in the rubbish? And anyway, with four working vaccum cleaners and a microwave oven in three days, if the academic career doesn't work out, I can always go into business selling stuff that I find in the rubbish - after all, there really is gold to be found in the streets of Denmark.