Day 3 Aarhus / Day 1 Aalborg
Separating from the boys today. They are off to do something or other I don't really care about. We'll catch up again in Copenhogen on their last night in Denmark.
Today I'm going north to visit Aalborg but I have a couple of things to see in Aarhus first.
First up is the Aarhus library! I mostly started going to libraries because Amy is a librarian and I was taking the piss a little bit by sending her pictures of these nice libraries. But I've actually started to find it really interesting seeing the various styles of buildings and how they structure their collections and how they are using the libraries. This one was pretty nice. Different to the Helsinki one which was in an old building this one is a lesson in modern Scandinavian architecture and design. Lots of curves on the outside (and some great playgrounds!) of the building but inside it's all straight lines and open spaces. Great building. I obviously don't care about the collection of books in Danish though I suspect they have a lot of books in English as well given the amount of English I heard being spoken by students in there.
After that I'm off to the ARoS Kunstmuseum (art gallery). It also is a pretty distinctive building because the top floor of is an artwork called Your Rainbow Panorama. Basically it's a circular walkway on the top of the building where the glass progresses through the colour of the rainbow.
I kind of expected it to be a little bit weirder for some reason but it wasn't really that interesting an experience. I will say that I found the blue glass to be the most pleasant section to look out of and the red glass to be my least favourite.
It wasn't my favourite gallery but it did have some pieces that I really liked, particularly in the Danish artists section. There was also a really famous piece by an Australia guy which is called "Boy". It's a 5 metre fibreglass sculpture of a squatting boy. His expression or emotion seems to change a bit as you move around the sculpture.
There was a big gallery on British artworks post WW2 that I thought was completely shit. Not a single picture I liked in the whole lot. The ground floor had a bunch of installations based on the theme of light which were OK on the whole but not terribly exciting. Probably the most interesting one was a big pillar that was programmed to flash when whatever computer system it was linked to detected a star dying. I mean the piece itself was pretty boring but I like the concept.
Finally there were a couple of pieces that reminded me of poop which I found funny. #maturityisoptional
Finally I was headed to Den Gamle By which is a "village" in the city where they have relocated and restored a variety of buildings that illustrate Danish construction and design throughout the last few hundred years. They have paid actors they are calling "living history" who wander around in the place and give you the story of their character apparently but I didn't see any on the day I went. It was interesting and there were some beautiful buildings in there. I ran out of time and didn't get to explore it all but I saw the oldest stuff which I think would have been the most interesting to me. I'm not sure the exhibit on stuff from the 70s would really have had any appeal to a child of the 80s.
Train time! Headed back to the hotel to pick up my bag then go to the station.
A nice 2 hour ride to Aalborg on a very comfortable train. Like the bus the scenery is lovely and you go through many beautiful little towns on the railway line.
Aalborg strangely doesn't seem to have any hostels so I'm staying in an apartment through AirBNB for the next couple of nights. My host's name is Charlotte and she is a Dane who spent 6 months in Sydney at university.
Charlotte let me know that about 10 minutes after my train arrives the local Sallings Department Store was having a bit of a party to light up the Christmas lights on the outside of their store. This is a big thing each year apparently. I hustled off the train and took off down to the main drag but was about 5 minutes late for the flipping of the switch. I did catch the street party though which only lasted about half an hour weirdly. Just enough time for a band to do half a dozen songs and for me to realise there were no stalls selling beer. Just as I'd decided to go into the Sallings store to get a beer the band wrapped up and it was over. Very strange. Why go to the effort and not have a bunch of food and drink stalls around for people to spend some money and have a bit of fun?
So I headed around the corner to the local brewpub and sampled a couple of their wares while I waited for Charlotte to get back from the party so I could get into the apartment. I had a couple of beers which were OK and started chatting to a guy at the bar whose girlfriend worked there. Nice single-service friend (#fightclub).
Finally headed back to the apartment, met Charlotte and dumped my stuff. Really nice chick and she's definitely spent time in Australia. We have a chat for a while and compare travel plans and eventually we go out for a drink at a craft beer bar her friend works at.
I found out (from Charlotte again - font of information!) that today was J-Day. J-Day is a genius marketing concept that someone at the Tuborg brewery came up with over a hundred years ago. They tried to make a Christmas beer and it didn't turn out very well but they had produced some enormous quantity of it so they decided to give it away for free on this particular day as a Christmas gift. Apparently people liked the beer (or the freeness of it) and so the tradition continues to this day.
There's a big party street in Aalborg which apparently goes nuts on this day so I had intended to go down and check it out. But I was having such a nice time at the craft beer bar that I totally forgot about it. Probably just as well. I'm not really into that whole drinking cheap shitty beer with hundreds of people jammed into a single place.
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