One of the things I’ve missed most since coming to live in a foreign country is eavesdropping on people’s conversations.  These days, I spend about an hour, sometimes two, on the train every day.  I sit next to lots of different people, most of them having conversations in Danish.  And for the first few weeks, I couldn’t understand a word.

But the other day, I had a breakthrough – I actually understood not just the words, but the meaning, and even some of the humor, in a conversation.  It was a bit of a strange conversation, too.  I was seated in the bicycle car of the S-train, and a woman came in with her bike at one of the downtown stops.  I was prepared for yet another mundane trip, and pulled out my phone to play Snake Xenzia.  (Remember that game?  It’s on the older Nokia phones, and I hadn’t played it in ages!  But my phone here has it and I enjoy challenging myself to be the “Snake Master,” or beat my high score.)  But as the woman sat down, an older man came up next to her and started speaking about the bike to her.  I think he was complimenting her on it, and discussing the type of bike it was.  After that, he asked to sit down next to a man a few seats away from me, and they had the following dialogue…

Older man: “Er du dansk?”  (‘Are you Danish?’)
Younger man: “Nej.”
Older man: “Hvor kommer du fra?….” (‘Where are you from?’ After this, he clearly said something along the lines of ‘wait, don’t tell me, I’ll guess,’ and proceeded.)
“Kroatien?”
“Slovakiet?”
“Montenegro?”
“Tjekkiet?”
(And so on.  It was very amusing and cute the way the older man was guessing, and a bunch of people on the train were giggling at the exchange.)
Younger man: “Jeg kommer fra Jugoslavien.” (I come from Yugoslavia.)
Older man: “Ahhh, Jugoslavien!  Hvad hedder du?” (Ohh, what is your name?)
Younger man: “Samir.”
Older man: “Samir…Sa…S-a-m-i-r?” (An affirming nod.)  “Er du Muslim?”

Okay, now this surprised me.  You meet a guy and guess where he’s from and 3 minutes later ask if he’s Muslim?  My Danish eavesdropping skills kind of ended after the guy said that he was Christian, not Muslim, and they proceeded to have a conversation that involved references to Jesus and Mohammed and the woman with the bike looking very uncomfortable at whatever the old man was saying.

One of my biggest motivations to learn more Danish is having the ability to eavesdrop on many more future conversations.  Maybe someday I’ll even be able to have my own Danish conversations with strange old men on the train!  Oh, the high aspirations I have.