I recently moved to Norway after living in Denmark for four years. Now, when I return to Denmark, I’m often asked what differences there are between the two cultures. There are a lot - too many to explain here - but one thing that someone traveling from Denmark to Norway notices immediately is the level of service.

The first time I walked into a restaurant in Norway, I was greeted with a smile and had a menu in front of me the moment I sat down. The waitress confidently talked me through the dishes and took my drinks order. She was back with the drinks in a couple of minutes, ready to take my food order. I turned to my (Norwegian) girlfriend and said, “The service is amazing.” She raised her eyebrow and replied, “It’s just normal service; you’ve been in Denmark too long.”

Put simply: service is much better in Norway. And I’m not just referring to restaurants. I’ve found similar differences when dealing with my bank, the Norwegian tax system and my phone provider. So why is this?

I wonder if it’s something to do with Jante Law. According to the book Culture Smart Denmark by Mark Salmon, Jante Law is a set of social principles that stem from a 1933 novel. Written by a Norwegian/Danish writer, Jante Law had great impact in Scandinavia in general and echoes of it are still found in Denmark today, although it’s no longer so strong in Norway or Sweden. Essentially, Jante Law says that no one is better than anyone else. Could it be that this is interpreted to mean no person should ‘wait’ on another?

Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of media buzz about Copenhagen’s status as a “creative capital.” In other words, a hot-and-happening European city that attracts creative, cosmopolitan professionals from around the world in much the same way that London, Paris, and New York have done for quite a while.

Sure, it’s been nice to hear that we’re surrounded by driven, adventurous, and international peers - whether they’re foreigners who’ve relocated to Copenhagen or Danes who’ve lived abroad. But now (finally!) we can actually meet each other.

Custom House - the collective of French, Italian and Japanese restaurants on the waterfront by Nyhavn (appropriately created and managed by London-based Conran Restaurants) - is taking on the task of gathering creative expat minds over tapas and wine.

Check out the invitation here. The upcoming event will be Custom House’s third - and the first two seem to have been a hit.

The evening sounds like a great opportunity to meet some fun people in what my Danish friend - who always seems to know the cool locals’ spot-of-the-moment - described as the place to be. If the location, ambiance and food are as good as people say they are, this expat night might turn into quite a popular trend - definitely worth a try.

Hope to see some of you at Custom House, Havnegade 44, at 18:00 on Tuesday, September 25th. The invitation is open to all internationally-oriented minds - and as you’re reading this on a site about international communication, that means you!

As a newcomer to Copenhagen, I thought I’d visit the DAC (Danish Architecture Centre) to see the Copenhagen Changing exhibition. The bookshop there alone is worth a visit, with its comfy seating and skyscraper-high shelves stuffed with every conceivable book on art and design.

The exhibition is excellent. It shows how the city is developing – now and in the future. Each of the six featured areas (Valby, Frederiksberg, Nørrebro Station, The Harbour, North East Amager, and Ørestad) is represented in large wall panels full of colorful maps and images. The architecture and planning for these areas is refreshingly edgy (I guess I’m still a Milton Keynes girl at heart!), and I came away from the DAC with a good insight into how Copenhagen is being transformed from an industrial city to a thriving cultural metropolis.

What really impressed me was how well the exhibition encouraged interaction with its visitors. Copenhagen X has done a great job of presenting the information in different formats (video, podwalks, maps for cyclists, slide show, posters, catalogue/city guide, online tour, guided tours through the city, workshops and activity packs for kids). I really like their website (sticky notes on a Copenhagen landscape), and the Gallery section is particularly good because it features a summary of all the projects. The exhibition is on until 21 October 2007 and really worth a visit!

Along with almost everyone else in Copenhagen it seems, the Eye for Image team took part in the DHL Relay in Fælledparken this week.

Special mention to David, Nathalie, Andrew, Mandy and Matt for actually running while the rest of us huddled in the tent drinking beers!

Would-be Steven Spielberg Dan has put together a great video of the night, which you can see over at YouTube.

In the meantime, take a look at the gang in action below…

Over the last week, I’ve been doing some work for Carlsberg. The task is for The Brew, the company newsletter, and has involved writing two articles based on three interviews.

After completing the interviews, I sent my first drafts for review. And each time, I received feedback from the interviewees the same day (in one case, within an hour). It’s wonderful to write for a company that is so swift in replying. The benefit for Carlsberg is that their texts are still fresh in my mind when I implement the changes and suggestions.

These aren’t the first articles I’ve written for Carlsberg. And every time, the people there have responded quickly and positively.

It seems like the work practices are as refreshing as the product!

The highly respected Monocle magazine has named Copenhagen as the world’s second most livable city.

The article is for subscribers only but thankfully Visit Copenhagen has provided a précis of Monocle’s chief findings:

“When it comes to quality of life, Copenhagen is pretty hard to beat. In fact, only Munich does better in Monocle magazine’s recently published survey of the world’s most liveable cities. To sum up the spirit of the Danish capital, Monocle writer Stuart Husband quotes the advertising slogan ‘there’s something modern in the state of Denmark’, which in his view ‘encapsulates Copenhagen’s current mood of creative maelstrom and youthful dynamism rather adroitly’.

Contributing to this sense of dynamic modernity is the new wave of architects, designers and chefs - combined with ’some joined-up thinking by city officials’ - which has seen Copenhagen reborn with ‘a bullish mood’. Monocle lists a number of ‘metrics’ that contribute to Copenhagen’s high placing. They include public transport, the extension at the city’s airport, the freshly-minted statement buildings lining the harbour, a well-developed bicycle network, the café culture, the neither harried nor sleepy pace and design and creativity.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I wonder what your thoughts are?

Oh, and in case you were wondering, here’s the full top 10:

1. Munich
2. Copenhagen
3. Zürich
4. Tokyo
5. Vienna
6. Helsinki
7. Sydney
8. Stockholm
9. Honolulu
10. Madrid

Newsweek’s article on Second Life struck me so profoundly that I got myself an avatar in the virtual universe the moment I got home. My navigation through the 3D universe still clumsy, I accidentally bumped into a “man” who took it just as seriously as if I’d pushed him over in person. The emotions were incredibly real, and I was amazed at how easy it was to get sucked in.

Like Harry Potter, sushi, Facebook, and other wildfire-like phenomena that suddenly attract the masses, Second Life is something you have to experience for yourself to understand the appeal (or lack thereof, depending on your taste for virtual existence).

It turns out that “a recent Dutch study found that 57 percent of Second Lifers spend more than 18 hours a week there, and 33 percent spend more than 30 hours a week.” But that’s not all. Gartner Research center estimates that “by 2011, four of every five people who use the Internet will actively participate in Second Life or some similar medium.”

Clearly, Second Life is huge - as is its potential for connecting people, companies, and ideas. When Harvard uses it to teach classes, you know it’s not just a fad.

So now that we’re blogging over there on Svanemøllevej, don’t be surprised if we soon come to a computer near you as a virtual Eye for Image cafe in Second Life! Will you be ready to join as the virtual you and swap some First Life time for a world where you can fly, travel the world in seconds, and alter your appearance as often as you like?

Here at Eye for Image Towers we’re all looking forward to the launch of our brand new website.

The existing one is functional but rather simplistic and a little unwieldy. The new site, which we hope to go live with next month, will not only be a lot more attractive it will also enable us to engage with our customers and readers a lot more.

As well as a more streamlined and better integrated area for our popular Wordspin portal, this blog will also benefit from enhanced functionality. For example, we’re currently working on putting together a list of other sites that you might find interesting - known in the blogging world as a blogroll.

Definitely making that list will be hovedpaabloggen.

But what about you guys? Can any of you recommend any business or communications sites we should be checking out?

I finally figured out all the technical details, so here’s some pics of our housewarming party last week, albeit a little late!

I’ll shift from our communications focus slightly to share a bit of news that’s made me extremely happy.

As a newcomer to Copenhagen (I’ve been here ten months now) I’m constantly looking for new entertainment and - for better or for worse - find myself comparing Copenhagen to other big cities I’ve lived in: London, Boston, Paris, Washington DC, Moscow.

You can imagine my thrill, then, when I discovered that Copenhagen has reached top-cosmopolitan status! That’s right - it’s now right up there with Paris and Milan. How did this happen? Apparently, in large part due to creative newcomers from abroad. It’s nice to think of Eye for Image’s staff as fitting into this category that’s helping Copenhagen get in a positive global spotlight.

An excerpt from Creative minds are flocking to Copenhagen: “Copenhagen has become a magnet for the creative class e.g. engineers, doctors, designers, researchers and programmers, who are flocking to the Danish capital like never before.”

The article quotes Mark Lorentzen from Copenhagen Business School who argues: “The change in Copenhagen has been tremendous. The capital is now in a class with cities like Milan, London and New York. Highly trained, creative people choose between these cities, and to them Copenhagen has become a place where they would like to live.”

Now I’m even more committed to discovering the creative gems this city holds. After all, the status is recently acquired, so there aren’t as much in-your-face marketing to promote social events as in cities that have had this status for ages. But I think that even in my short time here, there’s been a shift towards an ambiance that resembles other tourism and creativity magnets.

What do you think - is this status award long overdue? Or is Copenhagen still lagging a bit behind the Londons and New Yorks of the world? And finally, do you think the creative class in Copenhagen really is growing? I’d love to hear your thoughts.