In the old days – and it will say just twenty years ago – was still what we called pen pals. You wrote letters to each other. Like in the hand, but it could now also be written on a typewriter.
Were you really promoting in the shoes, you had IBM with the ball and slettebånd. It was wild!
Here, one could buy different balls with different fonts, so you know to switch the ball could alternate between italics, bold and normal. Well yes, it is a little more than 20 years ago, you might think, but actually not. Admittedly, it had many got internet on the job, but to have a computer at home, therefore, was only experienced by only a few in 1999.
20 years ago, most people would at present be busy with writing christmas cards. I knew several, who wrote up against the 800 christmas cards each year. At home with me was that such a kind of holder for the christmas card, which in the course of december grew up rich. Today staring to wonder at a christmas card and think: Who had the money and time for that sort of thing?
But there is something cozy and wonderful to receive such a. Sometimes I think Denmark is the only country where ordinary post is as good as gone, but it would be wrong to claim that it is solely due to PostNord. Computer and internet is in the degree moved in any household.
My grandfather had a penneveninde in the UNITED states. I even had as a child pen pals in the midwest and a few in Germany, the UNITED states and England. Today, it is not so exotic. You can just write a mail or text message. Or communicate via social media. The young snapchatter and play Playstation, where they ‘meet’ with friends from distant places.
All this notwithstanding, there is nothing that beats the physical meeting. It was quite obvious to me last weekend, when my big boy at 15 had a handful of his Swedish friends on a visit. They have grown up together in Sweden, Slotbar and we have known them since they started in kindergarten.
After we moved to Denmark for a little over a year ago, I have thought several times that the friendship was perhaps running out in the sand, but it was completely wrong.
I received the five towering boys with deep voices, and together we sat over dinner and laughed. Talked about back then and especially now, where Sweden and Denmark seems more different than ever. Especially for the teenagers. In Sweden, it is inconceivable that a 15-year-old drink. On the other hand, more snuff in circulation.
In Sweden, it is anything but the norm, is allowing itself confirms, and mærketøj is not something that is very common in a Swedish 9. class. And where I was sitting and thought that it sounded lovely healthy in Sweden, said one of the boys all the time: Everything is much better in Denmark! Hmm…
they were Swedish boys tired of the identity politics and radical feminism. Not that I blame them. It is a natural reaction to something that takes up an excessive amount of.
And then I had the pleasure and challenge to serve bacon for the group, which is muslim.
I’d like to stress that it was he himself who asked for it. He said: I have always been in love with the smell of bacon, and when I was going to Denmark, seemed to my father, it was ok to taste it.
We had two days with the jacks, as both went for walks, gamede and played music together while they were here. It was touching and testified that enough makes the technology easier to keep in contact, but the physical togetherness nothing can beat. And friendships across borders and languages are no less important.
I even still have contact to friends in the UNITED states, Italy, England and Germany. Not often, but it is also not important. When I was seven, moved my best friend and neighbor to Sweden and later to the Faroe islands. In five years we kept in touch via letters and postcards, and then we planted again by 13-year-old, it was as if we had never been apart from each other. This is how it still is today.
Friendships withstand distance; real friendships.
Annette Heick
Annette Heick was born in 1971. She is a journalist, tv host, singer, and entrepreneur, and is married to the chef Jesper Vollmer. She is the mother of two sons.
