Riding Up Front (RUF)

“ I love Denmark!”

I was having the worst time of my life working in Paris. What had been a dream was turning rapidly into a nightmare, both professionally and personally. I needed family and my free Danish baby*, so I went running for respite to my sister, her husband and best of all, my baby niece in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Amidst the ruins of a disastrous career move and a battered heart, I arranged to meet up with an old graduate school friend, R, who was also living in Copenhagen. My driver Andrei was a Romanian immigrant who did metal work by trade.

To clarify, Romania is part of the EU and Andrei had every right to live and work in Denmark, although some might dispute that in this zeitgeist of xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment. Romanians have a bad reputation in Denmark as well as in many Western European nations. Many think of them as thieves or cheats, and there’s a thinly veiled hostility in many regions towards Eastern Europeans—the newer members of the EU. His first day working there, he had been accosted by an aggressive man yelling at him to go home (among other obscenities.) That’s when Andrei he told the man, “Come closer, sir, please. I will hit you.”

Despite all of that, Andrei loved Denmark.

“I love Denmark. This is a great country,” he proclaimed. “It is very good for me. Not like Romania.”

“How so?”

“The government in Romania–all thieves,” he declared. “They steal from the people. And the people steal from each other. Not like here. Denmark is good!”

Andrei wanted to start a metalwork business in Denmark. He wanted to contribute to the Danish economy and create high-quality pieces that he could then offer to the Danish people at a more competitive rate. His goal was to live a prosperous life, pay his taxes, and have children.

In short, Andrei was the most patriotic Danish-non-Dane I had ever met.

*I am to be the legal guardian of my niece, Emily, should anything (God forbid) happen to my sister or my brother-in-law. Ever since, I refer to Emily as my “free baby.”