Festuge

Every August we have Festuge here in Aarhus.  It's a week of festive activities in the city--concerts and beer, mostly, with occasional sausages, circuses, and free face-painting or yoga.  I think it's meant to attract tourists and make the locals not so sad about the end of summer.  (You'll see from the pictures that Festuge pretty much always heralds the end of summer sunshine).

Anyway, it's enough of an event that we take pictures, but not enough of an event that we have ever blogged about it before.  But.  But but but.  The very best thing about Festuge has always been a little something called "Hop med Os!" (Hop with Us!)-- a small park filled to the brim with bouncy castles and overexcited children.  B and I like it so much that we always go watch the little kids there and plotted and planned when C would be big enough to go. 

This year she was!  Obviously we took more pictures of C hopping than of four previous years of Festuge all together, but that's OK since it got us to blog about this unique aspect of Danish culture and our life abroad.

Happy (extremely belated) Festuge!  God fornøjelse!

In 2012 and 2013 the city made a giant park in the middle of town.

As you can see, the park is right in front of ARoS museum, so the rainbow affords an excellent view of the festivities.

A view of the "water labyrinth" from 2014.  It's green because we're in the rainbow.

Did I mention there was beer?

View from the rainbow in 2012.  Hop med Os is just alongside the Musikhuset.

Hoppers!

Me and my favorite hopper.

OK, make that my TWO favorite hoppers!

Also the boldest slider in town.

Hey!  Let's go hop some more!

December 17--Advent at ADAFT 2013!

Tonight B and his parents are enjoying a holiday choral concert at Vor Frue Kirke (Our Lady's Church--yes, it's Protestant) downtown.  We went together a couple years ago and it was really lovely.

Here's the church.  See the steeple?

Now open the doors and see all the people!  OK, it's the choir.  I couldn't resist.

December 14th--Advent at ADAFT!

We'll be going to a concert of Handel's "Messiah" soon, just like we did last year. Well, not just like last year, since this year we'll hear it in the Concert Hall, and last year we heard it at Domkirken. That's the big cathedral here in Aarhus; it's about 800 years old. It's beautiful, but somewhat drafty.

We want you to have the same experience we had. So, open your windows, open the link below in a new tab, and look at the pictures of the cathedral's interior!

Handel's Messiah--Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion