A few days ago I was walking through Aarhus, alone and with my bike. It was the first time I saw the city on a Sunday mid-day and it seemed magic. I can’t explain exactly why, but I had that feeling of coming-spring, a good superstition about something great about to happen, be it merely a gorgeous flower about to burst into bloom, a beautiful child about to be born, or maybe the sun about to show up after such a large skipping…it was all that emotion and joy that the butterflies in your stomach give you, that make you melty, cheesy, creamy, warm, no matter how North you roam and how hard the wind blows going up on Viborgvej.
The seagulls choiring with the cathedral’s bells to announce the middle of the day, the couple cycling hand in hand, the bearded man savouring a shaworma, the sexy Danish girls wearing tights looking more humane than ever, the father walking his three angel-looking children or the one carrying his young boy on his tall shoulders, the woman wearing red-and blue moccasins and looking so hippie that she almost didn’t seem Danish. The small pebbled streets with narrow entrances and low roofs, the fairytale street with colourful houses, where you don’t know from which door to expect Hansel and Gretel coming out chewing gingerbread, the seven stones in Molleparken that have something from Stonehenge. And the list could go on and on with beautiful things that I usually don’t see on the days when I like to believe that I do important activities and that there’s no time. What a waste I can be sometimes!
I will let you discover the small street. It is colourful and lively during daytime, mysterious in a childish way at night. And you can be sure that there’s no witch hiding inside the candy houses, because the windows are clear and with no curtains. So small, yet so open and warm, they’ll almost fool you into believing that Denmark is like this.
