Undskyld, hvor ligger Kansas?

“Undskyld, hvor ligger Kansas?” is Danish and translates to “Excuse me, where do I find Kansas?

That’s the title for an article Jonas Langvad Nilsson has written about Kansas for Euroman, a Danish magazine. The article will be published later this month.

Jonas adds: If some should wonder what Euroman is like I would say it is a men’s monthly magazine in the Esquire and Vanity Fair tradition (only we are smaller in cirulation and number of staff members). Euroman has ca. 230.000
readers a month which is pretty good for a country of 5 mil. inhabitants.

Jonas visited Kansas last summer: Wichita, Greensburg, Medicine Lodge, Salina, ElDorado and Yoder.

Several weeks ago, out of the blue, he called me from Copenhagen, asking for my thoughts on Kansas. I don’t get too many international calls (OK, none), so it was something of a surprise.

“Copenhagen?” I asked, “Reallly?”

He called around 5:30 one afternoon, which is 12:30 a.m., seven hours ahead of us, Denmark time.

Anyway, Jonas and I then exchanged several e-mails and apparently I’m being quoted in the article.

Cool.

It was kind of a neat connection, especially because one set of my great-grandparents emigrated from Denmark in the 1870s, my maternal great-grandfather coming from Copenhagen. My great-grandmother was also a Dane. They met and married in Kansas.

And here’s something peculiar…

Run “Kansas” through an online translator (Danish to English) and you get “maybe, perhaps.”