As my first week in Denmark comes to an end, I’ve found there is only one word that could capture my experience this far: hygge. Americans won’t know what hygge means, and looking it up on Google will not suffice. To understand hygge, you have to meet the Danes and absorb their personalities and calmness, you have to go to a dimly lit restaurant with blankets around you. But really, to understand this concept, and why it captures Copenhagen in its entirety, you must see and feel it for yourself.

Let me explain further. Copenhagen is one of the largest cities, yet I’ve come to find: the most coziest. One of my favorite moments in the past week was not immersing myself in the hippie commune across the bridge, or riding my bike through Stroget for the first time, but it was shopping for groceries. Even the simplest tasks here are the warmest, and most welcoming. Something about the smallness of the grocery store, the roses for sale outside, and the limited options they had to provide you with. You couldn’t walk past someone without briefly touching them, but it was okay. It wasn’t uncomfortable, it was a reminder of our closeness.This is why Copenhagen is ruled by “hygge”. Hygge is not synonymous with coziness or comfort as I’ve been saying, because it’s power and meaning stretches far beyond that. The only way I can explain this is how the first Dane I met here explained it to me, a clueless American: hygge is a sensation. It’s not just a feeling, or an adjective, but the sensation of warmness and contentedness surrounding you. It’s the small minor things which make us feel alive and present. The most beautiful part is, I’ve experienced this sensation before. As have you. I could think of a hundred times I’ve felt this sudden sensation of satisfaction, from walking into my favorite teacher’s classroom as a child to falling asleep in my mother’s bed next to her. We all know what hygge is. But what the Danes have done is verbalize this, they have made it tangible. And through its visibility and presence in Danish society, people are happier. They are emotionally understanding of this sensation, this feeling, and the people here strive to emulate it. And they succeed in doing so.

This feeling is one of the first travel-revelations I’ve had: that everybody in the world is connected through this inner feeling and our desire for it. Americans may not fully understand the definition of hygge, they may not even realize that they live it every day. But we all do. The feeling of hugging your kids after a long day of work, the feeling of having a coffee break with a friend during a busy morning. The feeling of walking into your home, your room, whether it be at school or not. Some describe hygge as the art of building a sanctuary and community, to pay attention to the small details which matter. I am finding the similarities between Danes and Americans, even between Swedes and the French and every diverse human I’ve met thus far. We’re not all so different. I guess I didn’t have to travel 10000000 miles to know that. But I’m glad I did. Because our differences are what unite us, not separate us. We talk about our differences in cultures because culture is what makes us who we are. I can’t make any grand statements about Danish culture. Because it’s only the beginning.

It’s only the beginning.