SUMMARY We head north to Aarhus by train. Lunch high on the roof of Salling department store then a tour of Den Gamle By . It’s similar to yesterday’s Funen Village nut in town and much easier to find. Also, it’s more of an urban setting (vs. farm) with a neighborhood section for 1864, 1927, 1974 and 2014. After our large, late lunch, we opt for beer, mixed nuts, Boursin-like cheese and crackers on our balcony for dinner. - Karen
DETAIL Another day on the move. We’re transitioning from Odense to Aarhus. We’re not sure if we’re coming to this city just to be able to make a CSNY joke in our blog. In any case we’re up early, bathe, pack, again have their great breakfast. Maybe too great. We don’t seem to be interested in lunch come mid-day.
We retrace our steps back to the train station. It’s clear, cool, sunny with intense blue sky, we’re getting spoiled! At a kiosk in the station we try to book train tickets for tomorrow’s train but no joy. We feel bad leaving these train trips to the last minute. Alas, the kiosk wanted out credit card PIN numbers, which don’t exist. We give up. We’ll try again later.
We drag our bags down the escalator to our quay. Our tickets say we’re in car 91 and there’s a big “90” sign over our heads, we’re feeling good. Nope. Totally unrelated. We need to look at the map of the train on the TV screen and find our car (‘wagon’) and then find the corresponding letter. We want to be standing under the big ‘A’ and we’re now at ‘E’. We’re hell and gone from ‘A’ but we have time.
In the train there’s 2nd class, 1st class “sit anywhere” and 1st class assigned seating. To balance out our hour standing from Nybøking, we opt for top tier, “just to try it out”. So nice. And we’re in a “quiet car” to boot!
We’re in a private room in the two seats facing each other by one of the windows. Across the aisle are three more (empty) seats by the opposite window. Glass partitions with a sliding glass door separates our space from the next section. We have adjustable seats, adjustable sun screen, water, hot tea or coffee, newspaper, magazines, table, electricity. Nice. Maybe if we’re not on the train very much can we justify the extra expense? We’ll have to start saving our DKKs.
Oh, and we also have WiFi on the train. Our hotel invoice shows up in my email. It appears we were double charged for our room! Grrr. I dash off a short (but nice) note to the hotel. The quick return note explains that the payment from us, for the beer, and the payment to the hotel from hotels.com (for the room), both appear on the same bill. All good.
I head to the lavatory (between 1st and 2nd class). It looks and smells as you’d expect for a small enclosed space where standing men try to pee into a small toilet as the train lurches from side to side.
Halfway to Aarhus (rhymes with poo-er goose) the whole train pulls into some station and soon our half of the train continues on towards Aarhus and the other half of the train continues on towards somewhere else.
At the hotel our bubbly receptionist is nice and chatty. She gives us advice about where to go in town and what to see. She says we’re in a great room with a view of “the rainbow”. OKs… whatevs… It turns out, if you have a good room in Paris, Rome or London, you’re looking at the Eiffel Tower, Coliseum, or Big Ben. Here? It’s the Rainbow on top of the ARoS art museum. Ours does and it’s pretty cool.
Our hipster receptionist, at our hipster hotel (Raddison Red), recommends lunch on the roof at a nearby multistory department store. Sounds like fun so off we go. It turns our to be very cool and there are lots of people there and more showing up all the time. I don’t know if this is where all the cool kids go, but there's a lot of them here (older people too). Lunch is great, as is the view. They have parts of the multi-level roof at extend out over the street, five stories up, with a glass floor. My stomach did turn but I did walk on the glass. Eeesh.
Next we walk to another outdoor museum. On the way our route has us walking along the river for a bit. It’s grassy, overgrown and of an unappealing color. OK, don’t need to go back there. The museum, on the other hand, is super cool. They’ve been moving buildings from various parts of Denmark for more than 100 years. Everything is grouped by age, with some of the buildings from the 1700s to 1800s. Other time spans are in the 1970s where they have a Blockbuster Video store. 75+ buildings in all. They have them set up with mannequins doing the flour grinding, candle dipping, shoe cobbling or casket making, showing you how all these things are done. At one point a lady in costume ushers a flock of geese onto the mayor’s lawn and they went to work trimming and removing pests. It was fun and good exercise.
Next door, unrelated, is the botanical garden in a few huge green houses. Given how much time we’d spent at the last museum we just had fifteen minutes to walk through the plant spaces. They, too, are very cool and well done.
On the way home we stopped into the grocery store on the first floor of our building and grab a few things for dinner. Boursin type soft cheese and some crackers, nuts, cookies and a big beer (just to try). This became our dinner, out on our balcony overlooking the rainbow. We agree that life is good.
Photos
Back on the rails, but this time in a bit more luxury. Newspapers, magazines, coffee, tea. Very civilized.
Walking to our hotel from the train station we see where someone emptied an unneeded box of laundry soap into a local fountain. Such kidders.
Our rooms balcony overlooks the ARoS museum and it's iconic Rainbow Walk on top. Pretty and unique.
Across the street from our hotel we popped into an old building cum event space. They're having a pop-up outlet store.
At the department store where we had lunch on the roof they're having a big Slutspurt sale, up to 70% off. We never did find out what that means.
Part of the roof and the pedestrian street down below. Fun and interesting. Great views.
And great food for lunch. Tasty and healthy.
Walking to the ourdoor museum we were intrigued by the pedestrian stop and go lights. So Scandinavian!
The 75+ buildings of the museum were divided by era. Very interesting!
And very well done. Authentic. The craftmanship required to relocated these buildings here is amazing. Horse cart rides around adds to the authenticity.
I'm always a sucker for a mill, wind or water.
And lawn mowers. These geese obvously love their work.
Transitioning from the olde times to the new was interesting.
Lovely plants nextdoor in normal style greenhouses and one huge greenhouse.
I think the kids are alright with it as long as there are flesh-eating plants.
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