Day Two:

The sun rose on day two, and so did we, after a surprisingly restful and scabies-free sleep on our thin hostel mattresses. After a brief shower and a traditional Danish breakfast at the hostel, we all piled into the Sally Bussen and set off for whatever the day had in store.

Stop one was Århus University, another masterpiece of Danish Functionalism. Again, I was underwhelmed, as I frequently am with Modernist buildings, but the campus itself was lovely. On a nicer day (it was wet, cold, and windy -- a precursor to the Danish winter, methinks), it would have been great to sit outside by the duck pond or read a book in the amphitheater, as long as one could overlook the hideous architecture. All of the buildings were the same yellow brick and followed the same language of proportions. This would have been a pleasant effect if the buildings themselves were pleasant, but otherwise it was less than inspiring. The insides, again, were nice enough, and if I'm allowed to make an enormous generalization, I think the Danes are more adept at creating spaces and industrial design than they are at true architecture. But that's just me.


Next up was the Århus Crematorium Chapel (if you think it's weird that we visited a crematorium, you ain't seen nothing yet), which was a pretty cool building, but I don't really have any pictures, so I'll spare excessive descriptions. Maybe if I ever get really motivated I'll scan in some of my sketches, but probably not.

Our next diversion was Komfort Husene, a new Danish development that looked suspiciously like 1950s suburbia. Our tour leader touted the subdivision as cutting-edge, progressive design, because all of the buildings are passively heated and cooled. However, she seemed to overlook the fact that the buildings were all in the middle of nowhere and would require a minimum of fifteen minutes' drive to get anywhere relevant. In fact, she later told me, some people living there would probably end up driving an hour each way to work in Århus. I didn't realize that it was even possible to drive an hour straight in Denmark without running into the ocean, but I guess it is.


I find "cutting-edge" new developments like these particularly infuriating. It's one thing to build a new subdivision and rape the land and place where you put it, but it's another thing completely to do it under the pretense of creating environmentally-friendly housing. How long will it take people -- in Denmark, of all places -- to realize that American, car-oriented suburbs will never be environmentally friendly? Until we start building places more readily accessible by bike and public transportation (they need not even be traditionally urban, for those less willing to live in a city), our towns and cities will never be as efficient as they could be. Furthermore, besides their increased insulation, the buildings on this particular site ignored countless important factors when considering good building in general, not to mention sustainability. The houses are built on a green fields site (industry jargon for, "green fields that used to not have anything on them"), they're all surrounded by conventional sod lawns that will require fertilizers, pesticides, and maintenance, and the development might as well be in Tornado Alley, because the wind was a howlin' when we were there, and Denmark is a pretty windy country. Why the architects (a collection of noted Danish designers) didn't opt for trees for shade and wind protection or two-story construction to minimize the building footprint is beyond me. Sometimes I just don't get it. Oh, and did I mention the cost? 6 million Danish kroner per -- also known as $1.2 million dollars. If I wanted a long commute and a one story suburban starter home, I would have lived in Dallas.

I got on the bus early at Komfort Husene, unwilling to sketch faulty design, and sat for a while while our bus driver was passed out in the front seat. The driver had actually made for great entertainment thus far on the trip. He seemed new to driving, as the bus stalled four times on day one and five on day two, and he also didn't seem to realize that none of us spoke Danish, because he kept getting on the microphone and saying things really enthusiastically in rapid Danish, expecting that maybe we had learned to understand him in the minutes since he last spoke.

After leaving suburbia, it was off to Jelling, where we looked at some sweet mounds. There was a pretty good modern art museum there, and the town itself was quite charming. I always think it's weird how things like art museums always seem to be in completely random rural towns, but hey. I guess the mounds keep a steady stream of tourism going. God I love mounds.


Just say "mounds" a few times, and you probably will too.

Our final stop for the day -- our days were absolutely packed, and were almost as tedious as I'm sure this blog post is -- was the "Municipal Building" in Vejle. To me, "municipal building" essentially means, "town hall," but apparently to the Danes, it translates to, "mystical land of wonder and awe." I have no way of describing the point of this building, but it was awesome. The structure itself had some cool parts, but again, without pictures my descriptions are mostly pointless. What was awesome about it, though, was how much random stuff they managed to cram in there. Apparently, the building is somewhat of a museum, and has various children's exhibits on Vejle, nature, and other random things. There is a big aquarium in the basement. It seemed that around every corner was something that much more surprising, fun, and absurd than that which came before it, and we were enthralled. Kids' museums rule.

Finally, the day was done, and we again stocked up on alcohol before heading out to our hostel, which was removed from the rest of the city. We were initially disappointed that we wouldn't be able to spend a night walking around the city, but our disappointment was made up for when we found out that our hostel was more of a really nice motel than trashy hostel (private, clean bathrooms; spotless rooms; and sweet ammenities), we and another DIS group would be the only ones there, and it had a trampoline.

Another fun and notably hilarious night was had, which included the by-then-traditional sitting outside and freezing our asses off for a while. It was great. Also, there were lots of bros there, so incredible advances were made in the "bro" lexicon -- terms such as, "brozone layer," "brocery store," and now that I think about it, "brocabulary." Talking bro is so fun.