Wilkommen til Århus

So I was back home for a luxurious 9 days or so and was called off to go to Denmark. This didn’t really surprise me, since the travel was business, not pleasure. People asked me in the US: Did you tour Europe at all? My answer always is that no, I do that for my job. And even now that my trip around the world is over, I plan to keep up the blog. Just to point out – my Finnworld goes on and so do my various travels. I plan to do a little sneak peaks on the places I visit, just to keep records on my travels and hopefully pop up some interesting things to those who keep on reading from a point of view of a Finn.

So today I’m in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is one of the biggest towns in Denmark and it’s on the mainland of it, not in the island like Copenhagen. To get to Aarhus from Jyväskylä where I live, I have to take three very small plane rides, Jyväskylä to Helsinki, Helsinki to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Aarhus. And then a bus for fortyfive minutes. This took the better part of my Sunday to be honest.

I have only been to Copenhagen before in all of Denmark, and even there I was as a kid, visiting Legoland as you can expect. Denmark is slightly like everywhere else in the Nordic countries, we have had a pact even before the European Union, that we can travel between our countries as we please… But just being here now, the whole idea of the Nordic Countries feels slightly like a gang of swedish-speaking friends where Finland has always been a little left out of the club. Certainly we would have never even been invited in unless we would have been a part of Sweden for such a long time and having a swedish speaking minority still attached.

As you know, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are very similar languages. As a Finn, I am made to learn Swedish in Schools. It’s not optional in Finland, you do it or you fail basic education. And no one fails in Finland. This week, I have once again been feeling blessed that I come from a small country with a weird language that doesn’t comply with almost any other – this forced me as well as all Finns, to learn various of languages in School. I have studied Swedish, English, French, Spannish, Estonian, Japanese and small amount of Italian. Even if I wouldn’t be comfortable in more than couple of them, it means I can read signs and get around Europe without much difficulty.

You would think that one survives somewhere like in Denmark with just English, right? Yes, everyone speaks it, but try to get a local bus and bus fare and where to get off… It suddenly becomes more complicated. Swedish is similar yes, but it’s not instant understanding of what is going on, I am telling you.

Aarhus seems like a nice enough University town, with a big campus area spread around the harbor. There is an old town, which means medieval buildings, looking pretty much the same as others in central Europe… Of course all have their own details, but in the end, they have the same European quality attached to them. European night skies also have the same blue going on somehow. I swear the blue of the magic hour in US or in Asia is different. In Japan, everything is kind of purple-pink, in US it’s a strong violet color. In Europe, it’s a dark blue night. All beautiful, but all different to me.

What irritates me of certain countries in Europe like Denmark, is that they have to be so god damn special NOT to switch into using euros, even now that they are EU members. Sweden and UK both belong to this club of stupidity and they have paid dearly in the economical crisis and value of their own currency going down. Not to even mention Iceland. DKK the Danish Kronor is also a very hard currency to convert, now in November 2009, 100DKKs is 13 euros. So take one zero off and add 30% to the price. I have to say that I like dollars (USD, AUD and CAD) much better, since they just need for me to give myself a 40-30% discount. Which I can much better live with. My hotel receptionist told me that my bus to the campus was going to cost 180DKK. Of course he made a small error in his english and meant ‘18′. But this is why I now have 500DKK extra, which I’ll turn back to euros, probably loosing something like 20% of the value in the process. What can I say, life is a bitch today. Perhaps a better way of getting my moneys worth would be to just covert those kronas into Gin.

But overall, I am complaining about nothing in Scandinavia. It’s like travelling back home. My  recommendation for a hotel if you ever need to stay in the Nordic countries is Scandic. It’s slightly less expensive than the Radisson SAS (which of course is posher and more luxurious), and it’s always top class. Even if the receptionist can make small mistakes.

I am flying back home tomorrow, but on my way I’ll pass fields and flat land as well as windmills of old and new kinds. That’s what Denmark is for you. For me of course, it’s the land that Hamlet lived in and somehow taking my bus from Aarhus airport to Aarhus reminded me a lot of the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet. I wonder if I should treat myself with that from Amazon for Christmas… Perhaps so:)

At the last point I would add that who ever designed the lighting sceme of the pedestrial main road… had the same pattern as the ones in my home town. Just see for yourself…