Our Aarhus Adventure

We’ve made two recent trips to see the adorable bunnies at Godsbanen.

There’s a big hutch the size of a greenhouse where you can feed them, stroke them and fall in love with them.

Next door is the hutch where the daddy of them all lives.

It’s re-opened the discussion about pets - which we aren’t allowed to keep in our current apartment.

Godsbanen is an ex railway carriage garage and it’s one of the first places we visited when we arrived in the city.

Outside the rear door there’s a kind of hippie colony where everyone seems to be smoking a bit of happiness.

Yesterday we went to the first day of the annual Viking Weekend in Mosegaard, which is a few minutes south of the city on a beautiful stretch of coastline, edged with a huge forest.

We joined our friend Tina and her daughter Kamma and took the number 31 bus right down to the beach.

To be honest, this wouldn’t have been our kind of thing usually. Watching grown men pretend to fight each other, dressed in hessian, wouldn’t normally have had a great appeal. However, in this case, we’d heard great things and decided to give it a try.

As we went to buy our tickets, which were just a few pounds with kids free, we passed gangs of men, women and children chanting and getting psyched up for something. If you blanked out your fellow visitors and concentrated on these people - in this marvellous setting - you could easily be convinced you’d stepped back in time. These people were totally authentic. They went about their duties totally seriously. It didn’t look like role playing at all.

Apparently, some of these Vikings actually make the trip by longboat from Sweden. And some of the characters had travelled from as far away as Texas to be part of the event.

Day-Glo wrist bands taken care of, we walked past a forest archery school and walked up the hill to what had become a Viking settlement.

There were stalls selling food and drink but this was the only nod to commercialism. No plastic Viking hats. No mugs. No t-shirts with ‘Keep Calm And Rape And Pillage’ on it. No, instead you could watch wooden bowls being made, shoes being hand crafted or meat being smoked over open fire. Although we did buy a very reasonably priced sheepskin.

The highlight of the day actually happened twice. A huge, mock battle involving hundreds of Vikings. This seemed to involve actual injury. Swords and knives had blunt ends but there was some heavy hitting going on. Beneath the roar of hundreds on the battlefield, you could see some guys being genuinely clocked.

The carnage continued for the best part of an hour. Garrisons waiting to join the battle ran on the spot as if preparing for a race. There was no laughing or joking. This was as close to real as it gets.

Horses galloped amongst the ‘dead’ bodies, strewn across the field.

The finishing touch was a mass charge against the audience.

It was all very Monty Python at times, not least because while the battle waged, a couple of volunteers in hi-vis jackets strode in front of the audience, ignoring the battle altogether and probably talking about Facebook.

After a brief archery lesson, we all went down to the beach, which was peaceful and beautiful.

A wonderful, summer’s day getting a little closer to Denmark’s history and the origins of its national character.

It explained the popularity of beards, if nothing else.

Mallorca was hot and although we dunked Daisy in cream at every possible opportunity, she returned looking healthier than before, thanks to a slight tonal change.

Daisy’s Danish is coming along really well. This picture shows her spending time with her Danish friend, Kamma. Kamma speaks very little English but the two girls managed to spend the best part of a weekend together with no communications problems at all.

I’m beginning to make progress. My comprehension and pronunciation are both getting quite good but I’m only just beginning to say things.

I’m using a Danish keyboard on my computer so that I can do the extra vowels: å,æ and ø.

Just before we went on holiday we decided that it was time to move.

Not from Denmark but just across town to another neighbourhood.

We absolutely love Trøjborg and we love our apartment. But we think it would make life easier to be closer to the school and live somewhere a bit bigger.

Even though Daisy goes to school independently, our lives pretty much revolve around her school. She enjoys staying for after school activities and likes to have school friends over.

On a cold winter’s night, spending half an hour on a bus across town isn’t fun-

And on a cold winter’s morning, the prospect of that ride isn’t enticing. We have to get up so early to get going.

Frederiksberg - where we’re planning to move to - is the other great place to live in the city centre. It’s a lovely neighbourhood, close to shops, school, railway station, forest, sea, street markets and town. We already like it and are planning a fact finding mission before the school term starts on August 8th.

Denmark is on holiday. For the whole of July. Nobody is here and nothing is getting done.

We’ve just been for a week in Mallorca ourselves to get some sun.

And we’re coming back to a big workload.

Writing the blog has been sporadic so I’ve decided that I need to make the contributions regular so it doesn’t look like we’ve died.

So, look for a new post every Sunday.

There will be other posts from time to time but that’s going to be the regular one.

Recently, Aarhus’ Latin Quarter had a day of celebration. This picture typifies the mood here.

There has been a huge gap in the blog of late, so I hope those of you who are regular readers aren’t thinking it’s gone for a Burton.

The thing is, we’ve been pretty busy.

We’ve had a steady stream of guests from the UK, both friends and family. And in between the visits we’ve been getting more integrated out here.

Daisy now has friends over to stay the weekend, I have a new office and Sarah is launching a new version of her business in the UK.

But the biggest thing that has happened is the change in weather.

Suddenly, a few weeks ago, someone on high hit the warm switch.

Every morning for as long as we can remember, we are greeted with blistering sunshine coming through our bedroom blinds.

And, after days of wall to wall sunshine, sunset seems to be close to eleven.

The transformation this makes in Denmark was something that we’d heard about but never properly understood.

Every street becomes a place to eat al fresco, listen to live music or hang out on a doorstep.

It was already the City Of Smiles but rapidly became the City Of Broad Grins.

The Danes worship the sun and never take a single ray for granted.

You walk past a department store and there’ll be some twenty year old girl pressed against the wall as if she’s lying on a sun lounger.

The beach at Risskov was full of bodies, where before it was a place to walk uninterrupted.

The barbecues are working overtime and those disgusting pretend sausages they eat over here are being bought in big bags from supermarkets.

We feel like we are living in a holiday resort. Even better than we thought it would be here.

There’ll be another couple of posts very soon showing you what we’ve been getting up to.

The last couple of weeks have been the best yet. We absolutely love it here.

Over the weekend I claimed my birthday present, which was a trip to Berlin. Not only to see the city but to spend time with Paddy (Daisy’s eldest brother) and his girlfriend Kelly.

We took the train from Aarhus, via Hamburg, which took about six hours.

It was a chance to rediscover what is great about train travel. Particularly when compared with flying.

We took far too much stuff, as we discovered when we re-packed to come home, but we didn’t have to worry about putting 100ml liquids into 20cm x 20cm clear plastic bags. Or removing our shoes, belts and loose change before setting off.

Danish trains are big, comfortable and inexpensive. A seat in second class is not only bigger but better designed than anything First Class in the UK. We sat back and watched the Scooby Doo repeatable rural, flat landscape go by.

Hamburg was a pleasant shock on a Thursday afternoon. Big, bustling and very definitely un-Danish.

The first thing that struck us was how multi-cultural it was. And relatively beard-free.

The central station at Berlin was an even greater shock. An absolutely huge, multi-storey station, complete with shops and restaurants. An amazing glass and steel structure that shouts ‘adventure’ when you arrive there.

Paddy and Kelly were great hosts and we crammed so much into our trip, including the Brandenburg Gate, Norman Foster’s Reichstag bubble and bits of the wall. And we had the best food we’d had in six months - Vietnamese, Turkish, Thai and USA.

What an amazing place. Can’t think of a city we’ve warmed to so quickly.

It’s tiring travelling comparatively huge distances across town to do stuff - compared with Aarhus - but there is so much to do and see, it has to be done.