TRAVELING in style : WORD PLAY : SPENDING A FEW WEEKS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE IS WHAT VACATIONING IS ALL ABOUT.

BY AND LARGE, I DETEST VACATIONS; and all the vacation paradises I’ve ever gone to, I was glad to finally leave. White beaches, golf courses, big swimming pools: The problem with paradise is that there’s never anything to do there except experience continual bliss. How long can a person stand to do that?

I didn’t know what a true vacation meant until four years ago when I married a Dane. I now spend my vacations in Denmark, my motherland-in-law. I get on a plane in Newark at 6 p.m. and fall asleep. Seven hours later, I land at Kastrup Airport near Copenhagen, get into a taxi and say, “Dav, jeg vil gerne tage til Jagtvej nummer femten, i Norrebro.” Spending a few weeks in another language, I find out, is what vacationing is all about.

In English, I am who I am, an ambitious guy with a liberal education. But in Danish, I’m sweeter and dumber. My IQ takes a sharp dip in Danish, I smile more, I speak with my hands more. Every time I answer the phone, or order dinner, or go to my dentist, or buy a train ticket, it’s an adventure, and that’s the beauty of a language vacation.

You see, I love everyday life and don’t relish the thought of camping out on Tibetan mountaintops or rafting down the Amazon. I like to have a warm shower and sleep in a familiar bed and wake up and plug in the coffee maker. So my wife and I have an apartment in Copenhagen where I keep my socks, a typewriter, a chess board, my Smithsonian Collection of Country Music tapes and other basic necessities, not far away from St. Alban’s Anglican Church where I can go and speak to the Lord in the language He knows best. But the rest of the time, one can speak Danish--a sweet, chirpy musical tongue that is much nicer than English because I don’t know how to be rude in it yet.

Denmark is no vacation paradise. It is cold and rainy and dark except for June and July, when it’s extremely expensive. The ocean is too cold to swim in, the white beaches are on the west coast of Jutland and crowded with naked Germans, and both of Denmark’s golf courses are booked up far in advance. But for me, there’s no place like it.

A writer is always working, especially when he’s on vacation: You sit by a pool and your mind starts to race and you reach for the yellow pad. The way to slow down is to get into another language. In Denmark, after a week, when I start to think in Danish, nothing could be more relaxing. I think to myself, “It is a good day. That sky which is blue, the weather which is warm and sunny, a delightful experience it shall be to sit here in the park which is green, perhaps sleep during two minutes or three, and soon I will go home and there shall we all eat a very fine dinner.” Whether it’s true or not, that is the way I think in Danish.

It’s hard to speak Danish in Denmark because most Danes speak fluent English, so I like to travel out to Jutland and visit some friends who have small children, Cai-Ole and Anni and their kids Peter, Lena, Ditte and Ane. We sit around the supper table and jabber in Danish, which, of course, is all the kids know. The kids understand that I’m American, I think, and yet it amazes them to meet a grown-up person who doesn’t know the right word for “misunderstanding” or “spatula” or “spices.”

I once made them a big Mexican dinner with tostadas, tacos, guacamole, salsa, and refried beans, a major project considering that small-town Danish groceries don’t feature Mexican specialties. But I managed OK until I needed cilantro and couldn’t find the spice rack in their kitchen and couldn’t think of the word krydderi, which is Danish for spice. So I asked them where their mother kept her “spices.” “Spice,” I said, loudly and clearly.

They looked up at me, puzzled. Spice. Then the littlest girl smiled. “Speece?” she said. Spise is Danish for “eat.” “Ja,” I said, “let’s speece.” So we did and it was good enough without the cilantro. I missed the cilantro, but the kids thought it was fantastisk.