WHY eating and drinking are both IMPORTANT in Denmark

I was kind of surprised that my whole weekend was about eating. My landlady invited me to her family dinner, where I met her parents, siblings, two nephews and a niece and we ate for hours till it was 9 o'clock. A Japanese girl also invited me to her place to have lunch, which turned out to be a mini Asian gathering because there were Japanese, Chinese and Korean. We ate from 1 o'clock to 6 o'clock, chatted a great deal about girl stuff, and came to the conclusion that Asian people do have a lot of similarities concerning cultural backgrounds, values, social realities and lifestyles, which made it way easier for us to make friends than with European people. It is quite true that when we are in our own countries, we know how different these three countries are, but when we are all in Europe, we suddenly feel that we are actually quite similar because we somehow all belong to the Asian category.

Actually life in Denmark, now as I see it, is to a great extent about eating - eating and drinking. There is reason to this tradition, of course; based on what Danish people say and some outsiders' guess, the reason could be: the cold winter. Denmark is located very north, so its winter is both very long and tough. They may have 5 months of winter when the sun rises at 9 o'clock in the morning and sets at 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The coldness just keeps people staying at home, and long time of darkness and little sunshine can really make people feel depressed. So, there is nothing else to do at home except eating and drinking some alcohol, which both keep people warm and make them happy. Then when summer comes, they love to sit in the yard, drinking tea, and enjoying the precious sunshine.

This may also account for why Danish homes are usually decorated with much taste/style/sophstication - people simply spend so much time at home, so how can they stand it if the interior design looks terrible? XD

Also according to my landlady's brother, the traditional Danish food is very heavy (huge steaks with gravy, boiled potatos) because weather was cold and Danes back at that time were usually farmers. They did a lot of manual work so they need lots of meet and heavy food to give them strength. I was lucky enough to try some real traditional Danish food at my landlady's parents' home. I have to say it tasted really good and I enjoyed their tradition very much.

What I enjoyed most was actually the dessert after the dinner (p.s. dessert after meal is another Danish necessity). It is pear with liquor (heated on a pan), plus cream and ice-cream. To put alcohol in dessert, that is to me, very Danish. But my landlady's family told me that it was nothing traditional, but something invented by them. So, stereotypes are most of the time wrong. :)