Danes in Boston

I was really surprised how many Danes there actually are in Boston. I know Boston is very international and all, but still, Danes… We are an exceptionally small country (despite of what we might think). Anyway, the first Wednesday of the month DABGO (a group of Danes in Boston) meet at a restaurant at the Boston waterfront for an event called “Stambord”. I found it on Facebook, which has several groups for minorities like Danes in Boston. I got there ten minutes early (for ones the subway was running smooth) so I got seated at the bar and ordered a Harpoon IPA (local beer). There were a few people sitting at the bar, and the TV was showing a pre-game baseball show. I got my beer and the bartender asked me “glass or bottle?” “Just the bottle is fine”, I said. After taking a few sips the guy next to me asks: “Are you here for the Danish event?(with a clearly Danish accent)” That, I was. He figured that since I was drinking from the bottle there was a good change I might be Danish. Or maybe I had an accent as well? He was a construction engineer from Northern Jutland working on a project north of Boston. Actually, he had lived in Copenhagen but again the accent gave him away. Northern Jutland was where he was was really from. He had been here for about a year (and knew that the Harpoon IPA was brewed very close to the restaurant). We talked about what had brought us to Boston and soon more people were showing up. Many faces that were new to everyone. A PhD-student in physics form Copenhagen and his girlfriend, another PhD-student from DTU during studies on the drug testing processes of medical companies and many more. Some were here for a few months and some for a lifetime. They had come for either education, jobs or love and some ended getting stuck (I can’t blame them). It was a very heterogeneous group of people almost sharing an exclusive connection to Denmark. The “inventor” of these events are a guy named Arne Hessenbruch originally driven to Boston by a girl. As I remember he’d lived in Boston for about 15 years and runs a company helping Danish or Northern European companies getting settled in the Northeastern US. Other than that he runs the networking groups Danes in Boston and Europeans in Boston, which are quite big. And then, he is also the man who knows everybody (and their names). He is indeed a professional networker of the kind I have never met before.

The evening quickly went by and when the clock was approaching 11 p.m. it was time for the last of us to go home. I got a lift to South Station from a Danish/American couple and got on the Red Line headed for Harvard Square and home. I’ve never been much of a networker (at least not professionally speaking), but I was a very nice evening. I got a lot of answers to questions, heard many new and interesting facts and stories and I’m absolutely sure that I’ll go again. Who knows, maybe I’ll even end up meeting with them outside “Stambord”.