HATB and the art of the low bridge (Jutland, part 1 of 4)

Yesterday evening, I returned from the first of our two study tours. In under a month, I will be going to Scotland for a week, which I am, of course, thrilled about. However, the past three days have been spent in Western Denmark, which was amazing beyond belief. So many things happened in those three days that I couldn't possibly compress it into one post. So, consider this part 1 of a 4 part series.

Note: many people took awesome photos of the trip, and there was a plan to create a group photo album somewhere on the web. The plan hasn't materialized yet, but I'm going to bring it up in class tomorrow and get people to post their pictures ASAP. Once they do, I'll edit this post to include beautiful pictures that perfectly counterpoint my brilliant prose.

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Thursday, September 10th

We drove four hours across the country from Copenhagen to the region of Jutland. Jutland is the half of Denmark that is actually attached to mainland Europe; most of Denmark consists of islands. Our first stop was the second-largest city in Denmark, Århus, which contains about 300,000 people. The four hours and the 300,000 people gives you some idea of how big Denmark is (i.e. not very big).

Along the highway (E20) we passed by mostly farmland, especially sheep and horses. The scenery was beautiful, and the two main bodies of water we crossed provided an incredible view.

We arrived at Århus (rhymes with door-loose) around 12:30PM, but had some trouble getting to the headquarters of Kaospilots, our first stop. See, Århus is not a very large city, and we were in a Huge-Ass Tour Bus (HATB for short). Our bus driver, a very friendly and very adept Swede, kept having to find alternate routes as our HATB was repeatedly stopped by low bridges. At one point, he actually had to back into a four-way intersection to turn around due to one such bridge. After quite bit of maneuvering, he got us to the headquarters, where there was much fanfare.

I don't know if it's a Scandinavian thing or it's just our group, but we invited the two bus drivers along to just about everything during the study tour, except a couple of the academic workshops. DIS treated them to meals when we went out as a group, and they came with us to all the museums and cultural sites that we visited. The two drivers spent most of the time chatting with each other, but we got to talk with them a bit as well. They both seemed to love life. Our driver was more amused than annoyed by the low bridges, and laughed along with the professor and a few of the students every time we had to turn around.

So, we finally arrived at the Kaospilots HQ. The first thing that stands out about Kaospilots' HQ is the fact that all the buildings are covered in graffiti. Not "I wrote fuck on the bathroom wall 'cause I thought it was funny" graffiti, but serious art. Most of it was made by Kaospilots students, with the blessing of the organization. It was good stuff. More on them in the next post.

-Eli

(credit to my friend Katia for the following picture. There are several buildings with more, equally awesome stuff on them, but this one sums it up).