Our Aarhus Adventure

At the end of day two in Surrey, where I took part in a croissant taste test, I travelled by train from Slough to Belper in Derbyshire.

Of the six coaches on the train from St Pancras to up North, three were first class. And there were only three or four non-reserved seats in the remaining three carriages. Very strange.

Through darkening skies the train cut through increasingly northern towns and then began climbing into the Peak District.

Belper is a small town with a big central heating boiler company in it: Vaillant Glow-worm. The client I was going to see.

I stayed at the Lion Hotel, a partially refurbished dump in the centre of the throbbing metropolis.

In fairness, the bar and pizza restaurant were cosy and relatively stylish. But you know that, when you’re in ‘Room 1’ that you’re being punished for booking online with a clearing website and things aren’t going to be so good.

I was tired, so I overlooked the mustard colour scheme and the pokey bathroom with - as my American client once said of his shower in Luton - a shower like a fern mister.

After a lovely pizza, I retired to the uncomfortable bed, where I listened to the unmistakeable sound of the toilet almost overflowing its plimsol line.

It’s not like we had a cooked breakfast in England often but our attempts to make bacon and eggs in Denmark have been fruitless so far. The eggs are lovely. But the bacon is streaky and about 99% fat. The sausages aren’t sausages. They’re Frankfurters in disguise. Which is odd when you consider that Denmark is home to more pigs than people. Fact is, it all gets exported to places like the UK.

Last night I stayed at a country pub in a place called Badby in Northamptonshire. So I qualified for this dish, which I really enjoyed. In spite of the fact that I’d rather have stayed in bed.

We (me and my Danish bakery client) set off for Bagshot in Surrey at 8am. Only to be met by continuous traffic from the moment we hit a motorway.

We arrived at our destination at 1030. Which is just plain daft considering it’s a one and a half hour drive, tops.

Not the best journey to set you up for a four hour presentation. But it went superbly well.

Tonight, I sleep at the Royal Berkshire Hotel in Ascot. A rather grand establishment next door to the cottage that once belonged to John and Yoko. And bordering onto the house that used to be owned by that Russian who was murdered by plutonium.

Oh, and opposite a Sheik’s mansion with what’s supposed to be the most expensive wall in the UK to protect it.

This poster is on the wall of the Women’s Museum here in Aarhus.

I’ve been in Cambridge this week. Here are my observations and comments in a stream of consciousness style:

Drizzly. Windy. Worst landing ever. Airport too crowded. Rude immigration. Two out of eighteen electronic passport checkouts open. Funny being on the wrong side of the road. Hotel Du Vin. A bath! Opulence. Dinner with sons. Prices not much lower in UK. Tasteless Christmas lights. Bath. Bed. Woken frequently by Christmas revellers in silly Santa hats talking at pub volume beneath my bedroom window. Early start. Full-on morning. Drive to out of town client. Fatal accident on A14. Four hour video conference workshop facilitation with California. Late finish. Drive back to town. Fish restaurant. Dinner with agency MD. Bed. Poor sleep again. Early start. Unexpectedly quick transit through Stansted. Back on plane. Aarhus again. Home to my girls.

Sarah and I have been sleeping on the bedroom floor on top of two, reasonably priced camping mats.

If we sleep at all, we wake up aching.

And this has been happening for two weeks now.

Every day, Sarah trawls ‘DBA’, which is a kind of Danish eBay - both for a mattress and a sofa, which we also lack.

(Apart from three cheap IKEA chairs around the dining table, we all watch TV sitting on a bean bag made for a dog - complete with a white graphic of a bone on the side of it.)

Finally, we found a memory foam mattress which was very reasonably priced and ten minutes walk away.

The Danes tend not to use spring mattresses like the Brits.

The norm is a box mattress with a topper about five or six millimetres thick.

When we bought our bed, it came with IKEA slats.

Continuing to use these would feel like sleeping on a fence, so we decided to buy the memory foam mattress on DBA and then make a plywood tray to put the mattress on temporarily.

Getting wood cut and having retired the car meant a bus ride out of town to Jem & Fix.

Or Jim’ll Fix It as we call it. A DIY store.

So, we packed away breakfast and headed off on the number 18 bus to Ega, where the store is based.

About two kilometres before our final destination, the bus turned left and took what we believed to be a detour.

It continued inland for about thirty minutes, all the time getting further away from the sea, where Ega is situated.

We stuck with it, thinking it was just a variation on the usual route.

Then another fifteen minutes later, we pulled into a village called Mejlby, whereupon the driver stopped the engine and got off the bus.

He was lovely and when we told him we’d caught the wrong bus, he smiled and said that was alright as he was turning it into a number 12, which would go through Ega on the way back into town.

In twenty minutes.

Ten minutes into the wait, I popped to a local shop to buy us some lunch but a problem getting a sandwich out of a glass case led to me nearly missing the bus and having to sprint to get on it - potentially having missed Sarah and Daisy, who didn’t know where I’d gone.

After an eternity, a trip through rolling Danish fields complete with horses and tractors, we arrived in Ega. But the wrong side of it. With time not on our side because we’d told the guy selling us the mattress we’d be back by 1600.

Since the DIY shed was a ten or fifteen minute walk away, we decided to shelve the plans and caught the bus home.

As we opened the door to the apartment, we got a text asking us to go to see the mattress at 1715.

Meaning that we could have bought the wood.

Then, half and hour later, we get another text which told us that he was sorry but the mattress had already been sold by his girlfriend.

So, basically, we’d wasted an entire day on a bus preparing for a mattress we weren’t able to buy.

Sleeping on the garden fence was no longer an option. We were doubly in need of a good night’s sleep now after all we’d been through.

So, after much discussion, we decided to drive to IKEA, where we bought a new memory foam topper.

This made a huge difference.

It’s like sleeping on a wooden floor instead of a marble one.

This country, lovely though it is, has one serious flaw.

There aren’t enough electricity sockets to go around.

For overseas readers, this is what a standard, smiley face socket looks like.

(Exhibit A.)

You do see sockets around.

Normally half way up a wall next to a door.

Just exactly where you don’t need them.

This means everybody has to go to IKEA to buy extension cables.

Hundreds of them.

And they cost a small fortune even if you get cheap ones.

We have twice as many as the Danes because when you plug in a UK plug, the adapter blanks out the next available docking position.

All these wires make for a right mess in our stylised, minimalist world.

And if they did Health & Safety over here, they become a very big trip hazard.

It’s taken me a bit by surprise how the Danes embrace Christmassy things in November.

It happens in the UK, too, but I think we thought us Brits were just a bit over-commercialised.

The lights are on. The wooden sheds are already dotted around town selling heated-up nuts and crepes.

But it’s incredibly tasteful.

There are some naff things you can buy but generally there’s a romantic restraint shown in the shops and arcades.

Salling, one of Aarhus’ two big department stores, is lit up like a Christmas tree. But there’s no nodding red-nosed reindeer or flashing Christmas puddings.

It’s cold and icy, which suits the yuletide season. But the paths are clear and gritted, so you don’t go arse over tit when you’re buying your presents.

Which we aren’t doing yet.

We have no bed or sofa.

All we want for Christmas is a bit of normality/calm/slowness/predictability.

Met with an inspirational man called Arun last week. The innovation brains behind the world’s seventh largest dairy company - owners of Lurpak amongst other brands.

Before we moved to Denmark we dreamed of summer houses in the summer and snow in the winter.

Both dreams ended up coming true.

This morning we awoke to see a sky heavy with snow.

Big flakes the size of postage stamps.

We got a good, two-hour pelting.

We decided to go out in the middle of the blizzard. Right down to the sea front. Which is only about 500 metres away.

What a spectacle. The sea was angry with choppy waves and all the boats were in their sheds.

Every Dane was properly dressed from head to toe in waterproof fabric. Wellies were standard issue.

A group of locals were sitting underneath a tree sipping Varm Chocolat.

Daisy’s cheeks were rosier than a Californian apple.

On the way back to the apartment there were a couple of stranded yellow bendy buses. But otherwise, everyone just carried on regardless. Winter tyres were being fitted and steps swept and salted.

Daisy had a birthday party to go to so we had to drive a few kilometres just as the snow stopped falling.

All the cycle lanes had been cleared before the roads were tackled. We must have passed over twenty snow ploughs of varying sizes.

As we wait for Daisy to get back from her party, a flat bed truck has just arrived outside. Two men leap out and clear the snow away from all around the street litter bins, throw some grit around them like confetti over a bride, then drive off.

This country is used to winters and snow.

Sarah has conjunctivitis.

She calls the doctor’s surgery.

They ask for her CPR number (citizen’s number).

Then they ask what’s wrong with her - they now know who Sarah is and where she lives.

Then they tell her to go to the local pharmacy at 1pm where the eye drops will be ready.

It’s at a time like this that you realise all the hassle of getting the CPR was worth it.