The Danish registration system

We heard before we came to Denmark that the process to become registered is long and complex.

It’s longer and more complex if you are not a citizen of EU so we got our EU passports thanks to our Dads who were born there.

On day 1 we went to the ‘States administration’ to register ourselves.

Luckily we already heard that in Denmark you need to grab a ‘number’ and then take a seat and wait for the number to come up before being served (not every place but usually all official places as well as banks, councils, post shops and even some bakeries and other shops). I expect a few foreigners would be seated a while before realising.

We had to fill in a form covering everything about ourselves including all the reasons for staying; Barry as a student and me accompanying him as his wife. We had to provide our passport, our marriage certificate, Barry’s acceptance letter from VIA university, proof we can support ourselves, and an additional passport photo.

Then we had to wait for the certificate to arrive. Which it did about 2 weeks later.

We need this document to then get our CPR (Civil Person’s Registration) number. This is the vital card that is used by everyone here. You can’t get a doctor, bank account, dentist, library card, etc… without one. We had to go to our local municipal citizen’s office (Horsens Kommune) for this one. Once there we had to take a number, wait, then fill in a form and provide the registration certificate, our passports, our birth certificates, our marriage licence, our tenancy agreement, Barry’s enrolment, a blood sample, a urine sample, an eye, one of our hands…

OK so that’s silly but by now Barry was spitting tacks over why the two organisations couldn’t talk to each other and save time and effort, and how archaic-disorganised-inefficient-…&%%#*&^%$#$...

They wouldn’t accept our original marriage certificate either as it had the word ‘copy’ on it. She wouldn’t believe us that it was the genuine one despite the signatures having clearly indented the page. She also said it didn’t matter so we are officially unmarried here in Denmark.

After waiting a further couple of weeks we got my card only with a spelling mistake in the name. As this differs from my passport it will cause problems apparently so we needed to go back in person to get it changed but thought we would wait for Barry’s one to show up. Which it didn’t.

He finally called them and found out that as he hadn’t selected a doctor it was put on hold. If he hadn’t called them we would never have known as its not in their policy to contact us in these circumstances….[more **&^%#$%^&*^… from Baz].

So the weird thing was, I can’t remember selecting a doctor myself, and when Barry rang a doctor to find out if he could use them, they said he needed the CPR number!!!! [*&^&%$#1*&^%$……]

So we went back to the Horsens Kommune; Barry telling them he would select the same Doctor as me, and me correcting my name.

Then we waited another couple of weeks for the cards to arrive.

Along with the card we received a letter telling us that we must tell then which country we have health insurance with and since we used our EU passports, this would be Britain which meant we needed to apply for the Blue Health card that entitles all EU citizens to heath cover if they travel or live or work etc, in an EU country. This could only be applied for online and to go online to the government site, we needed to have a Neme ID. The only way to get the Neme ID is to go to the local municipality (Horsens Kommune) again.

So another visit, number, wait, submission of passport again – to the same person again!!! [*&^%$#@#$%^&**&&^%$#@.......... from the inexhaustible supply of *&^%$# in Barry’s vocabulary. Mind you he has a point!]

Miraculously we didn’t have to wait for this one. We got an envelope with a code which we had to enter in a portal, on the computer in their office, then create a pin, then with our CPR number and pin entered we are given a key to correspond with a code card so that we can enter the appropriate code and get into the site – a bit like the BNZ login in malarkey at home.

So now that we have our neme ids, blue health cards, a doctor and our yellow cpr cards, we can finally go ahead and get a bank account, a library card and, if we need it, a dentist, optometrist, other-ist if and when needed.

And hopefully I don’t have to hear more from Barry on the matter!