Buses departed at 8:00 AM on Thursday. We traveled with our programs, and within the Architecture and Design program there were three groups. Each group followed a slightly different itinerary, and my group set out for our first stop, Hagested Kirke, a somewhat historic church in the middle of Nowhere, Denmark. The Danish countryside was nice to see, and while I can't say that it was always gorgeous or was particularly worthy of comment, after three years in rural environments, I was ready to escape the city. The church was nothing special, but it presented an opportunity to sketch, something we would all be encouraged (required) to do over the next few days. So it was out with the sketchbooks, cameras, and critical eyes, and everyone took part in quiet contemplation and furious scribbling for the period of an hour. While in general not a particularly interesting spot, it is worth noting that Danish cemeteries are apparently the best landscaped areas in the entire country. The one at Hagested Kirke was meticulously maintained, with each particular gravesite demarcated by its own bonsai-esque hedge and surrounded by an assortment of ornamental plants and trees. Pretty cool. After an hour, it was back on the bus and off to our next stop.
We next hit the ferry for a ride to Århus, Denmark's second largest city. The ferry was surprisingly plush on the inside -- a far cry from any salt-soaked harbor ferry in the US -- and traveled at a ridiculous clip. The ship threw off an absolutely monster wake, and while it was entertaining to imagine wakeboarding back there, it would have been completely impractical, as one basically would have been dragged behind the boat while be soaked with the entire contents of an Olympic sized swimming pool every second. Trust me, it was big. About an hour and one catnap later, we arrived in Århus, which it turns out is almost completely different from Copenhagen.
Århus appears to be much more of a working city than Copenhagen: the waterfront is dotted with various docks and factories -- as opposed to Copenhagen's various opera houses and museums -- and the skyline is marked by several smokestacks. It turns out that Århus is also correspondingly less fussy than Copenhagen, making it generally that much more fun to be in and hang around; I didn't feel like I was going to get yelled at for stepping into the street every single second.
Our first stop in Århus was the Århus City Hall, designed by the Danish architectural equivalent of Jesus, Arne Jacobsen. The building is notable primarily for the fact that due to its prolonged design schedule, Jacobsen and a few others had the privilege of designing everything, both inside and out. Outwardly, the building is a disappointment. Supposedly a landmark structure, its appearance is no more notable than any exurb office building back in the states. We later learned from our tour that the entire structure is clad in marble "from Norway," but after years of wear, the effect is more concrete stained by birdshit than gorgeous Norwegian marble. It is a seriously ugly building.
Inside, it has its moments. A lot of the furniture and several light fixtures are quite beautiful, and the quality of light in some spaces is really sensational. Besides that, I was underwhelmed. Parts of the building resembled a prison, while others brought to mind the tackiness of someone's grandmother's house, albeit without the requisite plastic-covered furniture. One room -- "The Wedding Room" -- had walls made of a special hardwood imported from western Africa, yet they had decided to have some two-bit Danish artist paint all of the wildflowers of Denmark all over the room. The effect was more Bob Ross than Leonardo da Vinci, and without the awesome hair. The most egregious addition to the building, however, had to be the mural that graced an enormous wall in the front lobby. Honestly, it has to be the single worst piece of artwork I have ever seen in my life. And remember, I was in preschool once.
I think the building would actually have been better off getting a group of preschoolers to fingerpaint the entire thing; instead, it looks like they sent out the B-Unit from the Perkins School for the Blind (and quite frankly, that is an awful insult to the Perkins School for the Blind -- I am sorry already). The colors are awful, the people are portrayed like department store mannequins, and there are at least five different perspectives in the mural -- all done incorrectly. The worst thing about it has to be the fact that the painter painted himself in in the bottom left corner, just plugging away at his work. He has a ridiculous mustache. This comes as no surprise. Our tour guide informed us that at first when the painting was revealed, the townspeople were angry, because they did not want nude people running around the walls of their respectable public building. I am surprised that is all they took offense to. However, the nudity is perhaps the most irksome thing when one has taken to hating the artist (as I have, if I have not already made that clear): people are portrayed in various poses in their birthday suits all over the mural, and yet our hero, the painter himself, is shown surprisingly modestly. I think that's just cowardly. The painter went through great pains to depict the genitalia of every other person in the work, in his characteristic, cartoonish style, and yet he deprived us of the chance to laugh at his own manhood. Personally, I would have loved to see this tragically awful egotist attempt to paint his nether regions. Progress probably would have stalled for months until he got it just right, and by then the townspeople would have been left with nothing more than a man, a mustache, and a comically large phallus -- something I think would have made for a much more pleasing composition. But enough on that.
Perhaps the highlight of the Århus City Hall was getting to climb to the top of the tower, where we were rewarded with views in all directions. There are very few tall buildings in Denmark, so the tower put us comfortably above the level of all other structures. There was plenty to look at.
After a few minutes, we descended, and it was off to ARoS, the Århus museum of art. The building was somewhat cool on the inside, though not all that different from other buildings of similar purposes, and the art was similar. As one would expect, the museum's collection consists mostly of Danish artists, and in a country of only 5.3 million people, finding artists worthy of praise at the global level would of course be difficult. There was one work from Robert Rauschenberg that was impressive to look at, but besides that, there was little else. Some of the most recent work from the 1980s-on was entertaining and provocative, but any Danish work before that seemed far too derivative of everything else. There were several times when I walked up to a painting hoping that it might be a little-known work from some 20th century master along the lines of Picasso or Matisse, only to find that it was just a bad Danish knockoff. Why anyone calling themself an artist would knowingly copy someone else is beyond me, but I guess that is why there are only a few great artists who have been able to separate themselves from the rest of the mural-painting horde.
Our lodging for the night in Århus was the Århus City Sleep-In, a hostel with some sort of globe-trotting tortoise as its mascot. The accommodations were typical hostel fare, and the five other gents in my room and I were all wary about putting our clean, disease-free sheets on the dingy hostel mattresses.
By then the night was ours, and I shared a meal ($20 Cobb salad, $10 beer) with some classmates canalside in downtown Århus. The food was good, the beer cold, and the conversation lively, and after the meal we joined up with more of our American brethren and made a mass exodus to the last grocery store open (it was 7:45, and pretty much every store in the entire city was closed already) to buy alcohol. Minutes later, we all tumbled out, carrying as much as we could, and elected to sit on some benches next to the canal, as it was obviously far too early to go to a bar.
What resulted was one of the most enjoyable times I have had so far in Denmark. Conversation ranged from squirrels (really) to politics, and it was nice to have an earnest conversation and get to know some new people. I'll spare details from the rest of the night, but we spent quite a while freezing our asses off by the canal before moving to an Irish pub for a bit (where everyone was speaking English! ...It's kind of pathetic how comforting that can be), and then retired on the early side, as it would be a 7:00 AM wake up call the next morning.
This concludes day one.
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