…Oh and there’s a food court arc in the middle; hint: expensive but worth every krone!
Wednesday, September 13. My eyes creaked open from their soothing rest as my brain protested, yet again, against waking up at 7:00 AM. Unlike the day prior, however, the serenity of daybreak was kept as my roommates and I silently agreed to follow what our blaring alarms signaled; yet another breakfast feast quite like that of the previous day. Eggs, meats, so on so forth, the law course students came, saw, conquered, and with a hop and a skip left behind Skanderborg.
Upon its new opening in 2004, the once-small Aarhus Art Museum was given a much larger building at the heart of the city to suit its ambitions of achieving international standing. To compliment these changes, the museum was given the name ARoS, which alludes to the Latin word for art, ars, in the municipal name that preceded Aarhus, Aros. Almost two decades after this revitalization campaign, I can attest that these wishes have come true. After a brief tour of select parts of the museum dealing with traditional Danish paintings and philosophical contemporary exhibitions, I decided to go out on the hunt for more pieces to capture this internationalism.
Yet as is often the case with museums (which I will make a post on in the coming weeks!), there is not enough time to explore everything, and as the clock hit 11:58 I flew down the 5 stories from the panorama to the entrance floor, catching the rest of my class with plenty of time to spare. Before long, we were off again, this time to lunch.
Built in an old warehouse with shops staffed from former industrial crates, Aarhus Street Food represents a large variety of food ethnicities and styles, including Jamaican, Nepalese, and a duck burger shop. In my hunt for spicy food, however, none of these would do.
Instead I went to a Thai shop with green curry and, most importantly, rooster-label sriracha sauce (Danish shops only sell goose-label sriracha, which tends to be sweeter and weaker overall, and one of my reasons for hunting down spicy food in the first place). And it did not disappoint. With not a touch of sugar to undermine the inferno atomizing my taste buds, I savored the painful flavor that, as with Captain Ahab, released me of my obsession with spicy food by drowning my senses in its wake.
With some extra money to spare for the day, I decided to take advantage of my newfound liberation to instead seek out something cheaper and milder. The result: some potato and truffle pizza with a liquid tiramisu desert.
Two hours fly by just as they did at the museum, but now it is time for our journey to come to an end. We pile back on the bus, I take my luxury three-seats-in-the-back, and we ride towards our fast-track back to Copenhagen; the Aarhus Ferry connecting to Sjaellands Odde. After waiting a tiny bit for our bus to park in the hull, we clamber into the main cabin (which I initially mistook for being a waiting terminal given the presence of a 7/11 and artisan restaurant onboard, which I forgot to take pictures of for reasons explained below).
As we took off, the sights were nothing short of incredible; the type of awe that no cellphone camera (especially not that of a several-years old LG Stylo 4) could capture in all of its glory.
As I quickly found out, the ocean waves don’t just look majestic in their waviness, they also act the part. Five minutes and a massive headache after departure, I decide to simply go with the flow and bob along with the ship, which actually did help a bit. I even got cozied in and booted up my computer for some gaming, but as with all good things the time I had did not match up with the time I wanted, and 20 minutes earlier than I expected the arrival call signaled everyone to get ready to disembark.
Yet another jaunt and a skip, we were back where we first boarded the bus. We thanked our trusty driver, our travel assistant Zoё, and our professor Ulrik. On the train and metro rides back to Amagerbro I reflected upon all that I had learned and lost myself back into the adventure; the outdoor gym, the food I’ve had along the way, and the places I got to see.
But nothing was quite as relieving as walking back into my own room. No bed is ever as comfortable as the one you’ve been away from.
Thank you for completing this journey with me! Stay tuned for some day-to-day posts on Copenhagen and, a bit after that, some class content!
Henry's European Escapades 
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