The Traveling Life

After a fabulous visit with Sara, Niklas and Alva, we left the comfort of their home to embrace our new identity... travelers. It felt a little lurching the first day as we navigated our way around Malmo with our packs on and coughed up the Kronar for our first hostel stay. But on day 2 we smoothed out some of the wrinkles striding confidently on our sustainability tour of Malmo.

Our tour included stops at Augustenborg's Botanical Roof Institute and a fabulous stroll through Western Harbor, a recent redevelopment of a contaminated industrial site. (Check our pictures of the sustainability stuff here if you are into that sort of thing.) We loved the throngs of bicycles everywhere and the bus stops with digital bus tracking telling us how soon our bus would arrive to fetch us. Late in the evening we tore ourselves away from Malmo and headed to Århus, Denmark.

Why did we choose Århus? Well that's what everyone we met there asked us. We didn't have a slick answer, but we sure had a great time. We had our first Servas homestay there with Rikke, Keld and their kids Sophie, Julie and Frederic. On short notice (i.e. the same day) they made room for us in by pitching their 4 season tent in their backyard. It was the most plush camping experience we've ever had. PIC Rikke pulled out all the stops with thick mattresses, sheets, feather comforters and down pillows. After our night in the Malmo hostel where we were too cheap to pay extra for sheets, this was heaven!!! Now don't go thinking we're just stingy, although we probably are, you too would have choked at the thought of paying $65/night, not including room cleaning or sheets! We shared dinner with the family one night, the next night they let us loose in their kitchen to cook for them. We enjoyed great conversations, laughs, and local insight throughout our stay.
In Århus, the city described in the guidebook as the cultural capital of Denmark, we took in Museums, pastries and found the most rowdy and welcoming bar since Murphy's (a shout out to all you CC folks).




We borrowed free city bikes and merged into speeding bike traffic to tour the city and explore the coast line. Århus and Copenhagen both provide free bikes from stands throughout the city. To ride, you simply pop in a 20 Kronar coin ($4), unlock the bike and ride away. They keep the bikes from being stolen by making them too heavy to lift, but that didn't stop some guy from boarding a ferry to Poland with one. We even heard a rumor of one bike showing up in New York.













We fell in love with a museum called Den Gamle By (Old Town) an open air historical museum showcasing urban village life from the 1500s to modern times. This village swept us away with its cobbled streets, charming buildings, living history, and tasty pastries.




We were amazed by the visionary leadership of the museum founder, Peter Holm, who recognized in 1908 that Danish village life was rapidly changing and needed preservation. Through his efforts more than 70 buildings dating back to the 1500s have been dismantled and rebuilt in Den Gamble By instead of being demolished. The level of detail, the care and precision in the restoration, was staggering. On one door they scraped away paint layers to reveal 14 different eras of trim colors and based their restoration on that information. These folks made our rebuild at Kilo look like kids playing with legos. If you want to read more, here's their web site.


We also went to the world famous modern art museum ARoS, alas it was pearls before swine. We just didn't know what to think of the dissection of a horse in 90 jars. (Not only were the jars on display, but you could witness the slaughter set to freaky music on spooling video, oh boy!)

Bjørn Nørgaard: Preserving Jar from the Horse Sacrifice, 1970.


To unwind from that experience we took our uncultured selves out for a beer. We stumbled upon Celina's Bar, a hole in the wall at the right place when the sky unloaded on us. We almost turned tail and ran when we opened the door and the wall of smoke from the packed bar hit us. But the regulars, in Cheers fashion, called us back in and urged us toward the bar. The over 50 crowd was packed in elbow-to-elbow in a space the size of our living room. We made our way to the bar and were enveloped in the hospitality of Celina. While her mom tended bar, Celina and her husband introduced us to the regulars. Soon the rounds were flowing. We made friends with Henric the guard, Hans the policeman and the many Greenlanders packing the bar. One even serenaded us with songs of his homeland. We learned a lot about Scandinavian hospitality and relearned that there are great adventures to be had in tiny, smoky, crowded bars in foreign lands. We stumbled out four hours and 7 rounds later smelling smoky and laughing at the serendipity of finding ourselves at that bar.



There were more adventures in Århus, but we'll let 'em lie because we're tired now and you need to get back to work.