Aarhus Moesgaard Museum

I am sorry to say we drank rather too much wine last night. It was fun at the time, but we didn't feel quite so good this morning. Jeppe came by about 10.30 and while Anne had a rest, we went for a walk around our neighbourhood. It was Latin Festival here today, Latin as in the Latin quarter of Paris, and the winding cobbled streets were decked out with tricolour flags, washing strung across between buildings, pots of lavender, and other french themed sort of decoration. There was a group of girls in French maid outfits dusting anyone who came too close. There were chaps from the local cycling club, dresses like Tour de France France riders from the sixties. There was even a baguette with a stuck on moustache and a tricolour scarf, cable tied to a drain pipe. It was all very festive on a lovely clear sunny morning.

We visited the Domkirke, with its whitewashed bright interior and candle stick holders on the end of the pews - even the church is hygge. Except perhaps for the alarmingly graphic and violent paintings on some of the arches, that have been uncovered by removing the whitewash layers.

We collected Anne, then drove along the coast and through the thick forest that lies only a couple of kilometres from the centre of the city, to the Moesgaard Museum. For a city about the size of Geelong,  this is extraordinarily good. They have focused on a few main themes - the evolution of humans, the bronze and iron age people's whose artifacts and remains have been preserved in the bogs of Jutland, and the Vikings.

The presentation was almost too good - after an hour pondering the confronting evidence of hapless animals and humans sacrificed and thrown into the bog, we retreated up to the cafe for a cup of tea and some sunlight before heading back down to the Viking exhibition. We now have a much better idea of Viking Aarhus. The location of our hotel is well within the fortified walls of the Viking settlement. The evolution of humans is very immediately represented by a series of life sized figures on the main stairway - VR viewers around the stop of the stairs give a representation of the environment that each human ancestor might have experienced.

We climbed up the steeply sloping external roof to enjoy the views across to the nearby islands, then drove back into town, stopping for an icecream at the yacht marina, a busy place filled with Danish people enjoying a sunny Saturday. A bumble bee joined us as we sat in the sun.

Jeppe dropped us back at the hotel and we had a much needed rest for a couple of hours, then walked up to the train station to collect our tickets for our return to Copenhagen on Tuesday, and a low key dinner in a Thai restaurant round the corner.

We like Aarhus a lot, much easier on the nerves than Copenhagen. Maybe we should stick to smaller places in future.

Aero to Aarhus

There was a storm out somewhere to the north last night, and the lightning woke me up. I lay awake listening to the church bell ringing out the hour and the half hour till 2, then finally fell asleep again. But I was feeling a little fragile when morning came round.

After breakfast we went for a walk along the poplar lined path beside the bay. A lady with a friendly Labrador passed us. "He is going to a dog meeting" she told us as she passed, and sure enough, up ahead at the point there were some people sitting on chairs and a pack of assorted dogs milling about, and behind us were a trio of more dogs, with owners, heading off to the "meeting". It seemed very Aero that local dogs had an organised event to attend.

There was a minor alarm when, a few minutes before the ferry docked, Anne realised she had left something back in the hotel room. Luckily it was not far, and I managed to run back to the hotel and then back to the ferry before it left.

Our friend Jeppe was waiting at Svendborg, and we had a nice lunch in a traditional Danish inn, where I tried the pickled herring in the interests of expanding my cultural horizons. Jeppe drove us to Aarhus, crossing on the way the vast bridges that connect Funen to Jutland.

It was great to catch up with Jeppe, and very nice to be driven. We stopped in a cool looking neighbourhood on the outskirts of Aarhus for the best coffee in quite a while, then onto our hotel, passing the striking Rainbow Panorama ontop of the Aarhus Art Gallery.

We headed out a bit later with Jeppe and Maia to a nice cafe for wine o'clock, then went to an ambitious restaurant for a self-consciously upmarket dinner. Aarhus seems to take its newfound foodie status very seriously. It was nice to have two bright young locals to talk to about Denmark and it's enigmatic ways.

Aarhus looks like an interesting and lively city. We are glad to be here, and glad we will be heading home in week.

AeroSkobing

A bright warm calm  morning, and we resolved to do as little as possible. We have an interesting chat with the young chap who is working as a waiter here. He is a bright young man, who came to the island as a social worker working with young refugees. He had lots of insights into the rivalries between East and West Aero, and into the local way of life.

After sitting around for a while soaking up the view we went for a slow shuffle round the village, had a coffee in the town square, then visited the AeroSkobing museum. It wasn't as engaging as the Marstal maritime museum. The maritime museum seemed more connected and engaged with something ongoing, while the AeroSkobing museum had various bits and pieces of old stuff, and some interesting stories around objects that illuminated some aspect of the village's past, but all a bit fragmented and remote. AeroSkobing's heyday was sometime in the past, and its main business now seems to be tourism. Which has its own energy - it is great to see people like the proprietors of this hotel rescuing a decaying place and building a vibrant business.

We wandered down to the waterfront and had freshly smoked mackerel, potato salad and a glass of Aero ale for lunch, while watching the engaging spectacle of people manoeuvring their boats in the confined space of the inner harbour. We saw a French motor cruiser have a close encounter with the ferry - which looks like it doesn't stop for anything.

Anne wanted to see if she could find out more about Rasmussen, the painter whose work we first encountered yesterday. After consultation with the local Tourist information, she decided to catch the bus back to Marstal to try the museum there.

While she was gone I walked a bit of the Archipelago Trail. I was hoping to get as far a mediaeval castle mound around the coast, but I miscalculated the timing and had to turn back before I got to it. It was a nice walk though, along the side of fields of young wheat, interspersed with poppies, Queen Anne's lace and corn flowers, with views over the rolling hills out over the sea. I have a theory that Danish horses are more reserved than Australian horses - I could not break through the reserve of these two.

Late afternoon the weather turned chilly. We hadn't booked and the restaurant was full, so we had a glass of wine and an excellent pizza on the terrace, getting only mildly frozen.

We have to pack up again and leave tomorrow. I think I could happily spend quite a bit of time here. There is plenty more to see and do, and, even better, it is a great place to do not much.

Aeroskobing and Marstal.

This morning, after a lovely breakfast on the veranda of the hotel, we went for a bit of a shuffle round the village, trying to get some pictures that would do justice to the magic of this place. Some of the buildings are so tiny, only shorter persons could live in them.

Next, we caught the free bus to Mastal, situated at the eastern end of the island, about 8 kilmetres as the crow flies, 12 by bus thanks to the circuitous route. The bus squeezes down some tny streets, seemingly with millimetres to spare, but we made it without scraping anything. Marstal is a pretty place, perhaps not quite as quaint as AeroSkobing, but still with many narrow streets and pretty houses. Hygge is big, and every window seems to have model boats or wooden birds or some artful object displayed.

After lunch we headed down to the Maritime museum. We didn't have great expectations, but it turned out to be quite remarkable and surprising. A very varied collection of objects nautical, lovingly displayed and cared for. It included a collection of work by J.E.C.Rasmussen, a 19th century Danish nautical theme of painter who lived in Marstal. He visited Greenland several times, and some of his work is a very humane depiction of life there. He apparently disappeared over the side of a boat returning from Greenland. We had never heard of him but we liked his work.

We had a very enjoyable couple of hours there. Our only difficulty, apart from the lack of English captions, was our inability to find the exit. To navigate through the maze like collection of rooms and buildings one had to follow red arrows painted on the floor. We followed arrows up stairs, through spaces constructed to look like ships, wove through street scapes with reconstructed shop fronts, startled ourselves multiple times coming upon life like figures in period costume, and all the time, the departure time for the bus was drawing closer. At last we came to a courtyard and there was a door with a not particularly conspicuous sign saying "udgang" . I thought "Exit" was an international standard, but obviously not in Marstal. A really fun museum though.

But we sprinted down and caught the bus with minutes to spare. Back in AeroSkobing, we walked over to the Vesterbro - the Western beach, and enviously admired the row of charming beach huts there. A bit like the bathing boxes at Brighton, there are restrictions - on size, no plumbing, no staying overnight. But most of them are done up really nicely - lots of hygge again. I would love to transport one home to put in the backyard.

We had dinner in a shop that sells freshly smoked fish, and ate at table watching the going on of life in the harbour. A new lot of cruising boats in, tonight some sort of group of five yachts who must cruise in convoy. We visited one of the "bog bix" which seem to dot the island. These are honesty box second hand book stalls, in a variety of locations. This one was in the Aero winter bathing club room on the breakwater. While Anne selected her book, I examined the photos of club members swimming off the nearby steps, covered not by gentle sunshine as today, but by snow, and the water filled with clumps of ice. Impressive. Even more impressive was the absence of a lock on the door of the club building - it says something about what a benign peaceful place this is.

We can hardly believe we have been here for little more than 24 hours. I realise that I really like islands. And this is a particularly nice one.

Aero

Last night we were a bit later than usual getting out for dinner, and it took us a while to find somewhere that wasn't a)full and b)too expensive/trendy. The meat market area, with the food trucks, tables, benches packed with young Danes, and thumping party music, was a bit dismal, sort of like a film set for a gritty European movie. The darkening sky as rain approached didn't help.

So we were glad to find a table in a restaurant we had eaten at before, and get a reasonable dinner inside as the skies opened. But we felt a bit frazzled by the time we got home, and not sorry to be having a break from big city Copenhagen.

This morning we caught two trains, then a ferry, to get to Aeroe, each step a bit more relaxed than the last, till we stepped off onto the wonderfully picturesque island village of AeroSkobing. After checking in, we went for a shuffle round the village, and could not help but be charmed by the quaint cottages, lovely gardens, and little cobbled streets - it really is picture postcard.

Our hotel is old fashioned and a bit funky, but the couple who bought it a year ago are working away rennovating it. The restaurant is a key thing they have focused on, and it is a big hit, excellent food, and clearly the word has got out, for it was packed. What a difference 24 hours makes - sitting at dinner here looking out over the water we felt about 1000 percent better than last night.

After dinner we went for a walk around the dock area, with a smattering of cruising yachts and some larger boats that look like they run cruises for teenagers - guessing by the groups of teenagers sitting rather mournfully on the decks. The harbour is set up very nicely for visiting yachts though, with a very solid building with woodfired  barbeques, plenty of power hookups, nice facilities block, and even a second hand book shop. I think this would be grand sailing territory, with lots of little islands and lots of anchorages. A fair bit of wind too I suspect.

We are very happy to be somewhere so beautiful, and so relaxed. This is a sort of holiday from travelling, and I think we have chosen the right place for it. 

Roskilde

This morning we got down to the station reasonably early, bought a couple of all day tickets, and caught the train to Roskilde, site if the World Heritage listed Domkirke, and of the Viking ship museum. We got there before 10, and it was lovely to be somewhere a bit quieter. We enjoyed the stroll down the main Street, looking in the shop windows, without the feeling that you were getting in the way of a crowd of pedestrians behind.

In the pavement outside the church was the familiar Camino St

Ymbol  a of the shell. A long walk to Santiago de Compostela from here. I wonder if people actually do it.

The Domkirke itself is built of brick, with details picked out in colourful paint, and as the burial place of royalty and of the rich and powerful, it is packed with over the top marble monuments. Some of the tombstones on the floor were both creepy and incomprehensible.

But there was also some great woodcarving, in the stalls lining the main altar. I really liked this lecture, representing Luke the evangelist.

After a while, someone started up the organ, playing churchy music, which drove us out soon after. We walked down the hill to the museum through a solid rain shower, and got there in time to find out that the boat tours were all booked up till 2.30. I had rather fancied the idea of rowing a Viking boat, but it was not to be. My advice for visiting Roskilde is get down to the museum early and first, and visit Domkirke second.

Notwithstanding, the Viking museum was fantastic. The whole enterprise of raising, documenting, preserving and presenting what is left of the five Skuldelev Viking boats is impressive, and is vividly recorded through videos, photos, the boats themselves and models, replicas, and the ongoing activity of boat building. The way they have made building replicas of the boats part of the museum, and the effort they go to get school kids to engage with this part of their heritage is really fantastic. There were groups of teenagers rowing and sailing, clearly having a great time.

While we were having lunch we watched two teachers with a group of tiny kids, maybe 5 or 6 Years old. With one of the people from the museum, the teachers and the kids all donned mediaeval looking hoods, then set off carrying swords, barrels and fur hides in a procession round to one of the boats. The kids were totally serious about it, as if they were loading up for a raiding party. I can't think of another museum I have seen that engaged kids so much.

By the time we were leaving it started to rain again and we had a long wet stump back up the hill. One can see why the Vikings chose this place for a fortified town - any attacking force would be totally stuffed by the time they got up the hill. We were anyway. We caught the train back to town, and headed home for a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

We are going to Aero tomorrow, which I am sure will be nice, but we are feeling a bit weary of packing. Anne is on strike packing wise. But I guess the adrenaline will kick in and that will get us out the door.

Copenhagen laundromat and museum

According to the mythology of the local bronze age people, a horse pulled the sun in a chariot up into  a the sky. Horse did a good job  a this morning, a beautiful sunny Sunday morning here, and after breakfast Anne was for a quiet morning, and I was good for a bit more exploration, so I volunteered to take our washing to the nearest laundromat, a couple of kilometres away. I unboxed the Brompton, and set off with washing loaded into its wonderful front T bag, joining the sedate flow of morning cyclists. I found the laundromat no worries, but once again dismally failed the laundromat IQ test.

First mistake, which cost me 24 DKK, was to select and pay for an out of order machine. Second mistake was to assume that the machine did both wash and spin - in fact there is a separate centrifuge machine for that. Third mistake was failing to grasp how the drier worked. It said 1 kroner for 48 seconds, but you had to press the button for each 48 seconds you wanted. Put in 10 DKK, press 10 times. Luckily nice Danish people in the laundromat helped me at each conceptual hurdle I floundered on, but I was a bit addled by the end of it all. Getting lost when I went for a ride while the washing cycle was in progress didn't help my confidence.

But, I made it back home with a bag of warm clean clothes, so it was overall a successful outing. After lunch we decided to have a look at the Nationalmuseet. I must confess we chose it because it was close by, but it turned out to be excellent. Those Danish bogs are terrific at preserving elements of the material culture of Bronze Age people's, and there are things like the clothes of the Egtved Girl 1370 BC - if you saw a teenager in the street today wearing them, it would not be too unusual - wooden shields, axe handles still with flint axe embedded, cauldrons, and even a finely detailed cart - the Dejbjerg Wagon - complete with much of it original decoration. And a fantastic model of a horse pulling the sun - the Sun Chariot. And some seriously good hoards. Really wonderful stuff, and well presented. A great Museum highly recommended.

We liked the curation style here, and enjoyed the more contemporary exhibits too, including the last hash stall from Pusher Street in Christiania Free Town. It is strange though to see clothes and artifacts in an exhibition context that we remember people wearing and using.

We also collected our tickets for the trip to Aero, so all in all a good, quiet day. Just as well as we are a bit travel weary at the moment.