Our Aarhus Adventure

35 nights after arriving in Denmark, it was time to leave the summerhouse. Partly because it’s against the law to stay in a summerhouse as your primary address. Partly because living in Skaering is just too far away from school. The half hour drive at 7am is not easy.

Lovely though the cabin was, I won’t miss walking over slugs to get to the outside toilet in the middle of the night. Or feeling dirty after having a shower, after having to walk across the flag stones and up the slippy wooden step to the living room.

There have been some comical times.

Trying to maintain a sense of professionalism can be pretty difficult when on the phone to a client sitting atop a pile of underpants. Albeit freshly laundered ones. That’s me sitting on the pants, not the client. As far as I know.

Or preparing a presentation on the desk that’s also the kitchen table and the shelf for everything that doesn’t have a home.

But, all things considered, it was a lovely start for us.

Sadly, though, we couldn’t find anywhere to live. We’re moving into an apartment for a month, from 9th October. In between, we’re moving into a hostel in the forest on the edge of town. It’s where we stayed the first time we came to Aarhus.

Sarah is in the UK doing a photo shoot for her Christmas product line-up so it’s me and Daisy - plus her brother Paddy for a couple of days.

He got the train from Berlin, where he lives and works, to enjoy one night on the sofa before our move to a little room with bunk beds.

So, time to cram the car full of bags again.

My client, Lantmannen Unibake, has an agency called Opening, in a town called Vejle, which is pronounced a bit like ‘vile’.

The agency had failed to impress the marketing director with some urgent creative work so I was drafted in to work with their new Kreativ Chef (creative director) called Albert. He’d only been in the agency for three weeks.

We got on like a house on fire and had a very enjoyable day working on a campaign for a new range of mini Danish pastries called ‘MiniMania’.

The agency was in a stunning factory building on a street that seemed full of all things Chinese, ranging from food stores to hairdressers. Which is funny because there were no Chinese people to be seen.

It’s been lovely to have had our first guest at the cabin this week: Kit, Daisy’s older brother.

Even at 18, Kit is taller than his dad, so we expected to be a little cramped indoors. But actually it was okay. Daisy slept on the sofa with him, each having a portion of the L shape. Leaving me and Sarah up the ladder in the roof.

Having somewhere to lay our heads has been a preoccupation this week. There is absolutely nothing coming on the market. And if anything does come up it’s snapped up as soon as you can log into the website. We went for a viewing of a flat which was part of a house a few days ago, only to be standing outside the property with half a dozen others.

We left without seeing it. We figured we didn’t stand a chance, as it was an easier choice to choose a Dane. Not least because they probably had a Danish bank account, which we don’t yet have.

Fortunately, after a lot of effort, we found a place for a month. A beautiful, small apartment in the centre of town. The man who lives there is out of town for a few weeks and wanted to rent it out. It has two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a living/dining area and a small wet room.

We can even use his car if we want.

Problem is, we have to move out of the cabin on the 3rd October and we can’t move in to his place until the 9th. Which means a trip to the hostel again, probably.

During the week we took the opportunity to go for a sauna. The place we went to is right in the middle of town opposite the police station and looks like the kind of building that ought to be a thirties cinema. Between 130 and 3pm you can get onto the Wellness floor, where there is a spotless array of showers, steam rooms, saunas, plunge pools and jacuzzi. We felt clean for the first time since we arrived.

Kit enjoyed walking on the beach and was very lucky with the weather. We’re having an Indian summer here. It’s official.

Saturday morning we took our Trangia burners down to the beach and cooked a lovely breakfast in the sunshine. The sea was calm as a mill pond.

We’re only 49 km from the airport so it was an easy trip to drop him off for his lunchtime flight back to Stansted. We did a little drive to Ebeltoft, en route, which is across the bay from where we live. Then we stopped for a bit to eat at a roadside truck stop. It was a bit like a burger van with an American style breakfast bar, surrounded by a conservatory. Next to it was a bit chopped off of a small ship: the bridge and a bit of decking.

Inside, a lovely pensioner cooked the best chips we’d tasted for a while - our decline into eating as badly as the Danes seem to has begun.

Parking at the airport was a doddle. And the first five hours were free.

To be honest, in that time you could fly to the UK and back and still not get charged.

We enjoyed the view of the blank runway from the cafe bar upstairs called the Kok Pit.

With that, our independent traveller was gone.

On Thursday last week, Sarah, Daisy and I turned up armed with a handful of documentation (birth certificates, bank statements, egg and spoon race certificates) in order to get our resident’s permit. This is step one towards getting your CPR (citizen’s card), without which you can’t get a bank statement, see a doctor. Or breathe, probably.

This meant taking Daisy out of school for the afternoon, so that we could prove she existed.

The offices were down by the docks in a beautiful building called Pakhus 13. In days of yore it would have been a place where ships were loaded before setting sail. Nowadays, it’s one point of entry for people wanting to settle in Aarhus.

I’d been here before and I was expecting some riddle-me-ree type experience with hours of interrogation and form filling.

So, imagine my surprise when we were greeted by Claus Bang. Sarah had phoned the office and spoke to Claus a couple of days before. He poo-pooed the idea that residency would take weeks (as we’d previously been told) and invited us to pop in that afternoon.

Claus was lovely. He ran through the paperwork we’d got and gave us one extra form to fill in.

Thinking I was being helpful and ultra-thorough, I mentioned I’d got proof that we were staying in a summer house.

This was like pushing a red flashing button. I’d put my size 11 (46 in European) in it.

Oh dear. Claus’ face couldn’t hide his alarm.

‘You won’t be able to apply for residency with a summer house address. Not even us Danes would be allowed to do that,’ uttered Mr Bang.

At this point I should let you know that Bang is quite a common surname in Denmark. Think Bang & Olufsen. And I know one person in Risskov down the road called Henrik Bang.

I digress.

I politely pointed out to Claus that I’d been told we could live in a tent for all the authorities cared.

Claus seemed quite appalled to hear that this is what I’d been told. He said he’d see what could be done but...

Me and my big mouth.

I was beginning to feel that this visit was going to go exactly the way I’d feared.

After a few minutes - it wasn’t busy - we were ushered to see a woman called Sonja, who seemed to have had her entire personality removed.

Her sullen, humourless disposition was almost funny. We hadn’t met anyone like this in Denmark. She was straight out of some universal civil servant jelly mould.

However…following a slight hiccup with Daisy’s birth certificate (we needed to present her with the one with her parent’s names on it) Sonja just tapped away and occasionally printed something out, stapled it and added it to a pile of paper.

After about fifteen minutes we were presented with our residency certificate. Daisy’s would follow by post.

Then it was back to reception.

Five minutes later, we were sent back to a desk next to Sonja’s and a blond man who’s name escapes me did some further typing and clicking.

Then he handed us two sheets of paper. One each.

Each bore our CPR numbers.

Daisy’s would need to be applied for once her residency paperwork arrived.

Then we were handed a ‘Welcome To Aarhus’ pack and told where our doctor was.

Done.

After thanking Claus, we left and sat on the nearby commuter train platform. In a daze. How could this be?

Not only could we stay in Denmark, we could also pay taxes and use their NHS. Oh and get educated up to and including University.

Phew.

We were very lucky to wake up on such a beautiful Saturday morning this weekend. The sea was as still as a millpond and there was some heat in the sun even early in the day. It struggles to get past 18 or 19 Celsius here at this time of year so everyone makes the most of the outdoors while they can.

Just a couple of minutes down the track from the summerhouse is our little stretch of sand. There are bushes with edible fruit - including blueberries - and then little dunes with the kind of grass that scratches your feet.

There are seats and picnic tables dotted around. We chose our spot and got the camping stove out.

Yesterday was a day you couldn’t make up. Daisy’s school (AAGE) played host to the Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, who came along to give a speech and formally give her blessing to a couple of benches near the playground.

AAGE had been renting the building it’s now based in. Not the loveliest looking buildings. A former engineering faculty for the university, I think. But a generous donation from the Salling Foundation (Aarhus’ big posh department store) and other big Danish businesses made it possible for the school to buy the building. So yesterday was the day to celebrate the opening.

The event couldn’t have been more low-key if it tried. There were a few plastic bollards outside the main entrance to the car park but no evident police. A group of parents, dressed relatively smartly, waited outside the school before being ushered into the big gymnasium.

No bags were searched. Nobody even questioned whether you’d been invited to attend.

Minutes later, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark entered the room to a polite round of applause. She smiled and waved before taking her seat next to Karin Salling (the widow of the former Salling owner), Peder Tuborgh (CEO of Arla Foods), Per Bank (CEO of Dansk Supermarked) and Jacob Bunsgaard (the Mayor of Aarhus). Alongside was the Director of the school, Charles C Hanna, a friendly sounding and warm spirited American.

Daisy wasn’t in the gym. She was upstairs in her classroom, where the Princess was expected to visit.

After some great mini performances - a poetry ‘slam’ and a song written specially for HRH - there were speeches from the honoured guests. All were excellent. The Princess seemed genuinely lovely and the businessmen and mayor spoke of their passion for the school. The reason AAGE is so popular is that it addresses a fundamental need: a place for incoming employees to educate their families using the International Bac syllabus.

After a closing speech from the Director, the Princess left, stopping to sit and chat with some of the kids, who showed no nervousness in approaching her.

Upstairs, she visited Daisy’s classroom. When she asked, in that Royal way, what the class was working on, it was (unsurprisingly) Daisy’s hand that shot up with the explanation. She showed the Princess her iPad, which had Mary’s picture on it. Good move.

We knew all this had happened because Miss Cree, Daisy’s teacher, came up to us at the playground fence a while later, just as the Princess was commemorating a friendship bench and Mrs Salling was planting a tree.

Finally, as we waved our AAGE and various national flags, it was time for Mary to leave. Sarah and I were determined to press the flesh and we got a warm, strong handshake from HRH as she left.

She struggled to get into the car as many of the kids were posing for selfies with her. She almost seemed to encourage it.

Her black limo had a really good number plate. Just a crown logo and the number ‘8’.

There were a couple of police around but none of them prevented anyone getting close to the Princess.

No helicopters. No road blocks.

Anyone who knows me will be asking how the UK’s biggest republican and Royal critic could possibly have written all this without the sarcasm button being pushed in really hard.

But I have to admit, it was a great day.

Today, I needed to think about work and my plans for Denmark domination. It helped to do it here.

I’m always snapping away in supermarkets and shops. I have a schoolboy enthusiasm for stuff like this.

It’s been a week of really lovely weather. Two women we met swimming in the sea referred to it as an Indian Summer. Which must be great, considering we understand there hasn’t been a Danish one.

We’re slowly but surely getting into the routine of getting up early. We’re on the road by 715am and we know all the best ways to wiggle through the city to school. We’ve ranked supermarkets from Fotex to Remy 1000 and we’ve likened ones like Fakta to Tesco Metro. This has helped us keep our costs down. We don’t have a freezer so we’re having to plan what we eat more. And we’re not really wasting any food at all. Some things are more expensive in Denmark but you can avoid them if you shop around a little.

Daisy did her first big bike ride yesterday - 17km to a really awful little village with hardly any shops but a tower block not dissimilar to the one in Mary, Mungo and Midge.

(Daisy hadn’t heard of Mary, Mungo and Midge before, either. Take a look on YouTube.)

Not having a TV is very liberating. We didn’t watch much in the UK so it’s not as though we’re missing Corrie or EastEnders. But we don’t find ourselves slumped in front of a screen watching things for the sake of something to do. We have a few Only Fools And Horses videos and a handful of episodes of Fawlty Towers and that’s it.

Daisy spends hours amusing herself on the swing under the tree outside. Or obsessing about her new bike, which she loves. She’s becoming much more outdoorsy. She rarely has the family iPad in her mitts.

Sarah and I are slowly crawling back into work mode. It’s difficult here because we don’t have a lot of space and it’s a holiday home so everything about it suggests you should be relaxing. We’re also quite worried about the lack of rental property on the market and/or the speed at which it’s snapped up when it goes up online.

I’ve been into town once to stock up on plug adaptors and paper for writing letters. The City of Smiles hasn’t disappointed. I went into an old fashioned hardware shop that is - as many old fashioned hardware shops are - slap bang in the middle of the city centre. I told the shopkeeper I couldn’t find a way of inserting our electric toothbrush plug into an adaptor I’d bought from them. Puzzled, he opened a new adaptor pack with his pen-knife. Then he managed to do what I hadn’t. So, it worked perfectly. I felt guilty so I offered to pay for the product he’d opened. But he wouldn’t hear anything of it. “You don’t have to pay for it. It’s just good service," he said.