Jessica de Gruchy

Name: Jessica de Gruchy
Age: 39
Nationality: Canadian
Company: tamigo
Title/education: Content Lead & UX Writer

I ended up in Denmark because

I had been travelling for some years and was looking for a place to settle down for awhile. I got a Working Holiday visa to Denmark because I was fascinated by Scandinavia. Shortly after, I got my job at tamigo, and decided to stay in Copenhagen and see how things unfolded. It’s now been 5 years.

What surprises me most about working in Denmark is

The openness in the workplace. Work is not just a place to be serious and focus only on your tasks, it’s also a place to make jokes and share personal anecdotes and have fun. You can be just as relaxed at work as you are in your personal life, which is a breath of fresh air.

My Danish colleagues are

Relaxed and easy going. Even though Danes can bring a lot of their personal life into work, they can also easily separate their personal life from their work life when they go home - it’s just part of the culture. So even though that’s been quite different for me coming from Canada, it’s been a nice practice trying to ease into that mentality.

Life in Denmark is

Laid-back and stress-free. Life definitely has a slower pace here than in North America, which took me getting used to. People say Copenhagen is a big city that feels like a village, which I very much relate to, and the feeling of comfort, familiarity, and security that brings is quite special.

I would recommend anybody moving to Denmark to

Research the country and culture. I had naively assumed that Danish culture must be close to Canadian or North American culture, but there are some vast cultural differences I didn’t anticipate. It doesn’t mean those differences are bad, but it does help to have a better idea in advance whether Denmark is a right fit for you or not.