European Capital of Culture – Following the Wanderlust

It’s been four years since I lived in Aarhus. In June of 2014, I packed up my dorm room, tied my suitcase to my bike, and started the next chapter of my life in Hamburg. Since then I’ve only been back twice, primarily to visit the few remaining friends I have in Denmark, but also to take a trip down memory lane.

Selfie in front of the art museum Aros in Aarhus, Denmark, topped by the interactive exhibit "Your Rainbow Panorama."

Sandwiched between a canceled train journey and a grueling 7-hour bus ride, I spent just over 24 hours in Aarhus last weekend. It was Pride Weekend, and my Danish friends who have since moved away from Aarhus were back in town to see the parade. I jumped at the opportunity to see them again in one place and booked a train north.

Continue reading “A weekend in Aarhus, a pride parade, and some thoughts on impermanence” →

After more than a year away from Denmark, I took a weekend trip away from Hamburg to visit my friends in Aarhus.

Aarhus has changed, and it hasn’t. After a 4-and-a-half hour train ride due north, I found myself downtown in a city which I had once called my home. It was a surreal feeling, with everything at once so strange and so familiar.

Downtown Aarhus. The gray clock tower in the middle is City Hall.

The EU has designated Aarhus the European Capital of Culture for the calendar year 2017, which means the city will be organizing a series of cultural events in order to draw visitors and make a name for itself.

According to Wikipedia, Preparing a European Capital of Culture can be an opportunity for the city to generate considerable cultural, social and economic benefits and it can help foster urban regeneration, change the city’s image and raise its visibility and profile on an international scale.

You know what another word for “urban regeneration” is? Gentrification. And the gentrification was hard to miss.

Continue reading “Geography lessons, gentrification and unexploded ordinances: a weekend in Aarhus” →