Day 75 | Aarhus

Henrik returned home from his work in the prison at around 7 in the morning. I didn’t want him to stay up after a long night so I set the alarm early. I drove 160km to Aarhus (Århus). It’s Denmark’s third biggest city and I saw many pictures of it and somehow I already liked this place before I got there. Recently it was nominated Europe’s 2nd hottest travel destination by Lonely Planet.

I got there pretty early and was looking for a parking space, it took me a while to find a free one and it was 4km outside of the city so I had to walk 40 minutes to get into town. I never use any maps to find my way around but try to find the nicest places myself. I started in the old town where they have all these nice buildings, every house has different color and the patterns in the buildings somehow attract me.

Why I really wanted to visit Aarhus was because of the ARoS museum. It’s a huge building and on top of it they have this donut panorama lookout. The glass has different colors so you don’t need an Instagram filter when you take picture.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BF9gFRVki6N/
The museum has many different exhibitions varying from Chinese art installations to middel age paintings. My favorite part was “school of disobedience” by Jani Leinonen. His art was about the big brands in the worlds who influence the costumers in a negative way. A huge installation had the sentence “The most terrible things, war, genocide and slavery had resulted not from disobedience but from obedience”. Every word was written in the logo of a well known brand like Heineken, Ikea, McDonalds and also Volkswagen.
The fast-food sector also played a big roll in this exhibition. Ronald McDonald was shown on a cross and even beheaded by a guillotine. On a screen they showed an interesting and funny story, some guys from Finland stole a Ronald McDonald statue at a restaurant. They made an ISIS like video where they demanded money in exchange for the release of the statue, when they didn’t pay they would behead him. McDonald’s didn’t reply and so they decapitated. This story even made it to CNN.

From Aarhus I drove 7km to Thomas and his family in Åbyhøj, who was my next plugger. Their house was under total renovation and on all sides there was placed scaffolding. I was surprised to see that they had a Better Place wallbox. Better Place was an innovative startup from Israel, they installed charging stations which could swap battery’s. You could park your car on it, then a robot would take the empty battery out and will put a new full one in. Great idea but unfortunately they want bankrupt four years ago.

Thomas, his wife Annette and daughter Cecilie where nice people, Thomas is a union worker and does gardening. Annette is a consultant for unemployed people who are looking for a new job. They made a nice dish with fish and afterwards we drove to Aarhus to get ice cream. We did a little detour and they showed me the harbor of the city where many new apartments are being build.

Back home I went to my room and watched the Champions League final on a livestream. When it finished I went outside to get some stuff from my car, stupid mistake. When I left the house I closed the door, during the day it was opened but they had locked it now. It was around 12 and Thomas went to bed an half hour earlier, I rang the doorbell a couple of times but they didn’t hear it. I could see that the window from the bathroom on the third floor was open so I climbed the scaffolding to get there but there was plastic in front to protect it from the rain, bad luck. In a final try to get their attention I tried to call their names in the garden as their room was on that side but they where already dreaming deeply.

Luckily I had the car key with me so the only (but not uncomfortable) option was to sleep in the car.