I have to get a F***ING Dankort with chip

That's it. I can't stand it any longer. I can't survive any longer with a bloody card without a 'chip'.

Last night we went to see the film I mentioned earlier in Østerbro with a Danish friend. I'd booked the tickets earlier in the week, did the whole spiel in Danish when I picked them up, flashed my Danske Bank Mastercard and went to swipe it in the swiper but NO!! Even though the machine had a f**cking swiper on it, it was all taped over. You could only use the chip.

The very nice girl serving me directed me over to the automatic teller across the road near McDonalds, and off I trotted only to find it out of action, which sent me off on a mega-trek up and down Østerbrogade looking for another.

It all worked out in the end but it was the comment from our Danish friend that was interesting. "See, it just means you're not part of the tribe yet. Everyone would have been watching saying, 'He's not one of us'".

So, my warning to anyone moving to Denmark: as soon as you get your CPR number, GET A CARD WITH A CHIP IN IT!

Banking in Denmark

Without doubt in my experience so far, Denmark must have the most complex system of personalised banking in the world.

Take for instance banking online with Danske Bank.

With my bank in Australia, logging on is just a matter of having a User ID and a password.

Not so with Danske Bank.

While I’m impressed and rather honoured they feel getting into my account needs security measures as provided by the banking gnomes of Zurich to the rich and famous, it is at the same time immensely frustrating.

It’s not a simple case of key in your User ID and password. Nope. You have to have a special calculator. This comes with an interim password so you can use it the first time to get a more permanent password. Then you can log on to the bank.

For that, you used to have to key in your User ID, then switch on your calculator, enter the password for that and up would come a number you used as the password for that particular time you logged on to e-banking. Phew.

If you transferred money, you again had to go through the rigmarole of getting another password from the calculator to allow that transfer. And so on.

Now, ‘to make it easier’, they’ve made us choose a permanent password for when we first log on and then we need to key in a password from the calculator to make transfers and confirm that with the password we originally log on with to e-banking.

Confused? So was I. In fact, I was beside myself with a mixture of anger and frustration the first few times because I ended up being blocked out for keying in the ‘incorrect’ password three times in a row. Seriously, it’s like a quest for treasure, just to get your account balance. And my balance is never like finding treasure.

On top of that, I just tried to transfer money into NQDII’s account but, obviously because it’s a Saturday, it won’t go through till Monday!

I wonder if this is the same all over Europe or just Denmark? I’ve never come across it before.

Then, a month or two ago I received a letter from Danske Bank saying that to ensure my banking security, they were writing to tell me my employer had been depositing my pay into my account with an out of date code (or something like that) and, for my ‘banking security’, they may not let it go through in the future.

This struck me as a tad odd. Do many people complain about money going into their account? I certainly don’t, in fact, the more the better I say! And if Danske Bank don’t put my pay in to my account they most certainly then will have one very cranky customer.