In summer 2016, I moved to Denmark, under a kinda talent work permit that was confusingly named greencard, and later was ended by those Far anti-immigrant Right parties like DF, who were mainly against foreign work labor while pretending to be against refugees. A party that was founded on hating others and classifying based on their stupid things like race, color, and religion.

The first year

The first year was like a "tourist" experience. Especially that I went there during the summer, and that summer was also pretty sunny. I was spending my savings to understand this new environment better and hopefully find a relevant job within the IT industry.

Then, after about 6 months, I found my frist job at a startup in Aarhus. Rented a place through Airbnb, moved there, and found a more permanent solution for rent. I rememeer I had to go to the open house at 6 AM, even though it was supposed to bein at 8:00 AM, and I was not even the first person in line! I was lucky to rent that place because the first two ones found a cheaper option somewhere else. That was the momement when I got the worst desease I ever got: chicken pox, at that age! Apparantly, unlike Iran where chicken pox is not common at all 1, everyone in Denmark prodly gets that desease and so in my age they remain immune; but in that age, it was kinda horrible! I could not go to work for 2 weeks; and then lost my job for some other wired madeup reasons.

During that time I also went to a cybersecurity conference in Billund, which I am not sure if I was supposed to go or not. The main reason I wanted to go there was to see Legoland, but that was closed. But my manager, the CTO of the company, wanted me to go there, because he had no idea what they should do to be compliant with GDPR, which was not enforced yet back then, so he told me to go to that conference and see if you can figure this thing out! Then I realized that was a national-security kinda conference where people from PET (Danish intelligence), banks, top NATO Generals, and even the FBI representative in Denmark were attending! I was the only "nobody" there...

Danes are raised to proudly become racists

Later, I joined a Danish startup, and a week after I began my work there, I saw that this is what they had put on their website instead of me:

Then, I said, but guys, this is a typical emoji used for black-skin people, which was okay to use if I was. And after that my colleagues were kept telling me that

no, look! you are not white, and you are black — trying to convince me to accept that they are not blind, and I am wrong!

This is the close-mindedness that the Danish society suffer from. They never accept their mistakes, instead try hard to convince others to believe every shit that they say.

Years after that

Empty cities

A few years passed, and living in those empty cities kicked in. For a person who was born in a crazy crowded hyper-city like Tehran, it was boring to see almost no one on the streets after 7 PM! Even during the day, you can only see people in the city center, and only in the capital city, Copenhagen!

Danish language

The privilege of residing in Schengen area

Unfortunately, Iranian passport has become quite useless these days, and so back then when I was in Iran, I could not travel anywhere except a few countries like Turkey, UAE (not anymore), or Armenia. But, living in Denmark gave me the chance to freely travel to Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and many other European countries to see the world better.

[1] In Iran, only those who live in the poorer parts of the country get chicken pox.