Suddenly I found myself missing a piece of a tooth this past week, so I stopped in at the nearest dentist's office on Thursday morning. This dentist had been recommended by some Danish friends, who said she was Swedish. So we spoke Scandinavian as we made an apppointment for the following afternoon. Most Danes and Swedes can understand each other if they speak their own language and listen carefully. Since I'm not a native speaker of Danish, I listened very carefully, and we slid over to English to discuss payment and estimated price, as there was a sign (only in Spanish) saying that credit cards were not accepted.
Friday afternoon I arrived in the office five minutes early and was greeted by a Spanish-speaking hygienist/receptionist, who promptly asked me, in English, to fill out a form. I sat with one other woman for fifteen minutes, reading a British edition of Good Housekeeping. It turned out that the other woman was waiting for her husband, who eventually appeared with my dentist, and the three chatted rapidly in French about dogs and cats. When that patient was dismissed, I was asked, in Spanish, to come up to a treatment room. My dentist kept up a running conversation with the hygienist in Spanish throughout the entire filling replacement, only breaking into English to chide me about not flossing enough, and into Rumanian to talk with her daughter on the phone--it turns out that the Swedish dentist had emigrated from Rumania to Sweden at a young age.
The hygienist/receptionist showed me down to the office and accepted payment, and we made an appointment for X-rays in a couple weeks--in a mixture of Spanish and English. I still had a half hour before I would be picked up by my Danish escort, so I walked over to the notions store to look for some cava glasses, and listened to the two shopkeepers chattering in Chinese to a background of English Costa radio, and then to Lidl for a few items for supper, and overheard several Germans doing their weekend shopping.
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