It's been an action-packed week here at the Summertime Ranch. Two days after my arrival I was treated to a visit by a buddy of mine from my halcyon Aarhus days, and we promptly took off on a roadtrip together.
Among the highlights:
Penguins (cute!), albatrosses (huge!), geologically mysterious glacier-rocks (round!) and a colony of sea lions (whiskers!) on the beaches north of Dunedin;
A trip to Milford Sound, which is actually not a sound but a fjord and features the verticalest fucking scenery I've ever seen;
Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki (yes, it sounds exactly like 'bukkake'; no, that never stops being funny), two glacier-fed stopoffs in the middle of the South Island's interior, which has roughly the population of a homecoming dance;
We frosted it off with a big night out in Christchurch, a 300,000-strong minipolis on the west coast. None of the shenanigans were documented (they sell Red Bull and Jaegermeister together here. That's not fair.), though that's probably for the best. One sleepy bus ride later, I'm back in Dunedin; laid back; with my mind on my dissertation and my dissertation on my mind.
]]>In my 18 months of Copenhagening, I had almost forgotten how much I love Aarhus. A mini-reunion of some old friends put me on the Trans-Denmark Railroad last weekend for the first time in almost a year, and I spent most of the weekend marvelling at what a great college town Aarhus is. Sure, it takes a little more effort to find the awesome than it does in Copenhagen, but it's there if you really want it. And besides, any city of 200,000 people that includes 90,000 students can't be all bad.
Yesterday, in a fit of tourist-showing-around, we borrowed a car (thanks Lasse!) and drove to Denmark’s verticalest attraction, Møns Klimt.
We were varying shades of hung over from the previous night’s utterly baffling rave, but managed to exit the vehicle and wander around under the chalk cliffs for a few hours before taking the REM express back to Copenhagen. Realizations:
Bands I ended up seeing this year:
Arcade Fire
LCD Soundsystem
Band Ane (plinky!)
The National
The Flaming Lips (costumey!)
Oh No Ono
Loney, Dear
A Hawk and a Hacksaw (hammer dulcimey!)
The Who (elderly!)
Goose
Bonde Do Role
Grizzly Bear (Seattley!)
DJ Diplo
Tiesto (throbby!)
Beirut
Suspekt
Electrelane (pretty!)
Arctic Monkeys (acne!)
Wilco
Pelican (needlessly headbangy!)
Muse
Laurent Garnier
Basement Jaxx (Simply! The! Best!)
Background: The first proper festival day was the wettest Roskilde day ever. From sunrise to sunset it rained. And we're not talking some light sprinkle shit. I mean RAIN. The festival grounds, which were already a mudpit from previous days' drizzles, became a full-on lake. The grass Holocaust covered every flat surface between Sweden and the Netherlands in two inches of mud, and created ponds of brown/yellow goo around every vertical surface.
I lasted until around 10 pm Thursday night before I gave up and went back to Copenhagen. I realized I was in way over my head when I stuck my hands in my pockets and they overflowed like a fat guy getting into a bathtub.
I returned to the festival Saturday to find wet ground, dry skies and rejuvenated festivalgoers. I knew the festival was back on track when I saw my first passed-out dude, outside the spaghetti bowl stand, using a paper plate as a pillow.
Highlight of the festival: Weepingly singing along to the following song, which is by far the best thing I've heard in 2007:
Also, I saw this band alone, and no one believes me that it rocked. How can you NOT want to dance Belgianly when you hear this?
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So the last few days here have been in the 80s, which for Denmark is the downright bayou. This, combined with the 11 pm sunsets, means that of the last 48 waking hours, I've spent roughly 47 of them outside. Here's a few pics from the first sprint of Danish summer.