I heart IKEA

I've always been very proud of my Danish Heritage. Both of my parents and all their parents and all of the parents before them that I know of are of Danish descent. I also claim all of Scandinavia as my homeland since Denmark at one time ruled all of it. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) I am a "Black Dane" - not your typical tall lanky blonde Danish babe. Our side of the family was from the South where they were routinely "invaded" by the dark skinned people from Spain and regions beyond. Hence the brown hair and dark brown eyes.
I know enough Danish to be able to tell when people are talking about me, but not enough to be insulting when I get really mad. The worst Danish phrase I know is skidder ekke (sp). Which means "shit ass". I learned that when I was nine years old when my 18 year old "kissing cousin" (son of my mother's cousin) was working on his broken motorcycle. He swore he said some innocent phrase and I misheard and repeated it incorrectly ....... sure Paul.
There are a few things that Danes do that they learned from other countries. And their neighbors, such as the Swedes, encourage this behavior. Like open prostitution on Stroget (popular street in Copenhagen's retail district). The "girls" sit naked in picture windows above the 1st floor retail establishments and "offer" their services. Ick. This has lead the general Danish population to be very open about their sexuality while my family and I are all sort of shy.
Companies who want to attract Danish customers to their websites have to use different advertising techniques to make the Danes feel at home. This is evidenced by contrasting the United States website for IKEA http://www.ikea.com/us/en/ and the Danish IKEA homepage http://www.ikea.com/dk/da/ The headline states that 31% of Danes prepare meals in their underwear. If you click on that headline, you'll hear (if you can hear in Danish) that people also blow up food in the kitchen, always cook in their underwear and 16% have sex in the kitchen. There's also a survey to see which category you fit in. Give it a try, Roxie, and let me know what the other two categories are - I can't understand it. There's also a link to the Gallup Internationale survey of the Danes sex lives in the kitchen. http://www.ikea.com/ms/da_DK/about_ikea/press_room/press_release/national/kitchensurvey_051108.html I'll have to get Grandma Anne to translate this page.

Thanks Whitney for finding inspiring this topic when you stumbled on this site. (What the hell were you looking for?)

*****late note*****

For those of you who missed it, IKEA has changed the Danish website. No more men in bras and garter belts. You can still get to the survey and if you can read Danish, you are still in luck.