{"id":4647,"date":"2025-05-09T15:32:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T14:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4647"},"modified":"2025-05-09T15:55:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T14:55:58","slug":"week-17-aarhus-and-brussels","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4647","title":{"rendered":"Week 17: Aarhus and Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent the first part of the week in my hometown Aarhus in Denmark, followed by a brief business trip to Brussels before flying home. <\/p>\n

17_1<\/strong>
\nI arrived in Aarhus by bus from Copenhagen on Sunday afternoon. Lars met me at the bus station, and then we went to his place where he prepared a delicious pizza dinner for us:
\n\"DSF0422\"<\/p>\n

17_2<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0421\"<\/p>\n

17_3<\/strong>
\nReady to enjoy:
\n\"DSF0423\"<\/p>\n

17_4<\/strong>
\nEarly Monday morning I went for a short walk in Lars’s neighbourhood in central Aarhus. I have always like the decorations that Lars’s next-door neighbours have outside their front door:
\n\"DSF0424\"<\/p>\n

17_5<\/strong>
\nDiscarded art, Anholtsgade:
\n\"DSF0426\"<\/p>\n

17_6<\/strong>
\nLars’s two daughters have by now provided him with five grandchildren. Lars spends a lot of time with them. The artwork here is by them, obviously something Lars nurtures:
\n\"DSF0440\"<\/p>\n

17_7<\/strong>
\nLars shows off the newly installed ceramics oven in his basement:
\n\"DSF0438\"<\/p>\n

17_8<\/strong>
\nOne of the Lars’s neighbours has a cat, here surveying his territory:
\n\"DSF0442\"<\/p>\n

17_9<\/strong>
\nLars and I have been close friends for almost 50 years. One of the passions we share is cycling. I bought a bicycle in Denmark back in 2012, which I keep at his place, so that when I visit we can go for rides together. And so we did on Monday morning, on nice country roads like this one:
\n\"1040854\"<\/p>\n

17_10<\/strong>
\nLars, kind of posing:
\n\"1040855\"<\/p>\n

17_11<\/strong>
\nA typical eastern Jutland landscape. This is truly my land:
\n\"1040851\"<\/p>\n

17_12<\/strong>
\nIn the afternoon, we walked to the ARoS modern art museum. On the way, we passed this disgusting place, a true abomination in the same league as pineapple on pizza:
\n\"DSF0446\"<\/p>\n

17_13<\/strong>
\nA strange sticker–it says “eat crisp bread in bed”:
\n\"DSF0493\"<\/p>\n

17_14<\/strong>
\nAt ARoS, we saw a wonderful exhibition called “Picasso, Mir\u00c3\u00b3, L\u00c3\u00a9ger and the Many Voices of Modernism”:
\n\"DSF0456\"<\/p>\n

17_15<\/strong>
\nContemplating a painting by Bernard Buffet:
\n\"DSF0479\"<\/p>\n

17_16<\/strong>
\nOn Tuesday morning we headed out on our bicycles again, with the weather a lot nicer than the previous day:
\n\"1040865\"<\/p>\n

17_17<\/strong>
\nWe stopped so that I could photograph this quintessential spring landscape in Jutland, a field of rapeseed:
\n\"1040863\"<\/p>\n

17_18<\/strong>
\nOn the way home, we stopped in the suburb Brabrand, west of Aarhus, where Lars grew up. This is Brabrand Church and the cemetery where Lars’s father is buried:
\n\"1040867\"<\/p>\n

17_19<\/strong>
\nThe cemetery is located in beautiful surroundings, on the shore of Brabrand Lake:
\n\"1040869\"<\/p>\n

17_20<\/strong>
\nOn Tuesday afternoon I met with two of my primary school classmates for a drink at a caf\u00c3\u00a9 in the centre. This is Lone, who was the pretty girl of the class when we were in 7th grade:
\n\"DSF0494\"<\/p>\n

17_21<\/strong>
\nLene, who was also in the same class in primary school, and later we also went to the same high school:
\n\"DSF0495\"<\/p>\n

17_22<\/strong>
\nEarly Wednesday morning I took the bus back to Copenhagen and flew to Brussels where I was giving a talk at an event Thursday morning. For once, I was not staying in the EU quarter; my talk was at an event organised by the Belgian ministry of the economy, located near the Rogier metro station on the outskirts of the centre. As always on such occasions, I went to my hotel, hung the suit in the closet, and ventured out to enjoy the city. My hotel was on Boulevard Adolphe Max, a broad thoroughfare with some ornate buildings like this one:
\n\"DSF0502\"<\/p>\n

17_23<\/strong>
\nAs I walked along the boulevard, I came across a “pav\u00c3\u00a9 de memoire”, one of the many reminders scattered around Brussels of Jewish people who once lived there:
\n\"DSF0501\"<\/p>\n

17_24<\/strong>
\nI was in search of a suitable watering hole at this point, not difficult in the centre of Brussels. I chose this bar on Rue Saint-Michel, called Le Corbeau. I had never visited it before, but I liked it very much and so now I have yet another place on my list of Brussels favourites:
\n\"DSF0505\"<\/p>\n

17_25<\/strong>
\nTo make it a complete Belgium experience, the Li\u00c3\u00a8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00c3\u00a8ge bicycle race was on the TV:
\n\"DSF0504\"<\/p>\n

17_26<\/strong>
\nBrussels is a city that is constantly being renovated. This building on Place de Brouck\u00c3\u00a8re is definitely a fixer-upper:
\n\"DSF0506\"<\/p>\n

17_27<\/strong>
\nA portrait, Place de Brouck\u00c3\u00a8re:
\n\"DSF0507\"<\/p>\n

17_28<\/strong>
\nOne of those urban details I always enjoy finding:
\n\"DSF0508\"<\/p>\n

17_29<\/strong>
\nI finished Wednesday with dinner at the house of my French cousin Nicole who lives in Brussels with her husband who has worked for the EU his whole career. Nicole lives near Parc Cinquantenaire with its magnificent Triumphal Arch:
\n\"DSF0509\"<\/p>\n

17_30<\/strong>
\nI woke up Thursday morning to a soggy city, and it was going to be like that all day. This is a detail of my hotel balcony:
\n\"DSF0511\"<\/p>\n

17_31<\/strong>
\nAcross the street from my hotel there was a building with rather atypical decorations for Brussels (there is a Western shop on the ground floor):
\n\"DSF0510\"<\/p>\n

17_32<\/strong>
\nI walked the 600-700 meters to the ministry where I was giving my talk, stopping for coffee on Place Rogier which has a very impressive metro station:
\n\"DSF0515\"<\/p>\n

17_33<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0513\"<\/p>\n

17_34<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0514\"<\/p>\n

17_35<\/strong>
\nI was done with my presentation by noon, and my flight home departed around 9 p.m., so I had the rest of the day in Brussels. I had arranged to meet for lunch with Romy, my ex-trainee who is now studying at the prestigious College of Europe in Bruges. Bruges is about 1 hour by train from Brussels, and we had agreed to meet at the Central Station. I always find the vestibule of that station impressive, with its memorial to railroad workers killed during the world wars:
\n\"DSF0517\"<\/p>\n

17_36<\/strong>
\nRomy arrived and we walked to Grand’ Place to have lunch at ‘t Kelderke, probably the most traditional restaurant in Brussels:
\n\"DSF0520\"<\/p>\n

17_37<\/strong>
\nGrand’ Place is always beautiful and always crowded, even in the rain:
\n\"DSF0522\"<\/p>\n

17_38<\/strong>
\nRomy loves posing for photos:
\n\"DSF0523\"<\/p>\n

17_39<\/strong>
\nI walked with Romy to the Central Station, we said goodbye and she took the train back to Bruges. I decided that walking around in the rain, particularly while still wearing a suit from the morning’s event, was not how I wanted to spend the few hours before my flight, so I decided to go to a small office we have in the EU quarter (just 3 people to look after our relations with the central EU institutions in Brussels) and work there for the rest of the afternoon. Our office is located next to the Schuman roundabout, heart of the EU quarter, and now it too was under renovation:
\n\"DSF0527\"<\/p>\n

17_40<\/strong>
\nI arrived back in Alicante around midnight, and on Friday morning, I was back on the beach with Mochi, while enjoying the early morning light:
\n\"DSF0530\"<\/p>\n

17_41<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0528\"<\/p>\n

17_42<\/strong>
\n\"DSF0531\"<\/p>\n

More images from Aarhus, including more of the art from the exhibition at ARoS, can be seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the first part of the week in my hometown Aarhus in Denmark, followed by a brief business trip to Brussels before flying home. 17_1 I arrived in Aarhus by bus from Copenhagen on Sunday afternoon. Lars met me at the bus station, and then we went to his place where he prepared a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4543,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4647"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4647"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4654,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4647\/revisions\/4654"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}