Day 22
Leen did a great job planning our food, so we need to restock after breakfast.
As Varde is the nearest city at 9 kilometers distance, we will go there by bike. With no touristic plans or preparations before we started, we’ll see as we go along.
We left at a quarter past ten, hoping that we would drop into the city, do some quick shopping, and be back before noon.
By the way, when I stepped out of our BnB, the weather app stated joyfully that it was 11° Celsius with a real feel temperature of seven degrees on the same measuring scale. Welcome summer!
But off we go. We’ll bike ourselves warm to Varde. We have a slight headwind, so it’s a good warm-up for our muscles.
When we first entered the city, it didn’t look much different from an ordinary Danish city.
And then we arrived at the market square.
It contains the usual suspects: a church, a city hall, and a noble statue (or is it a statue of a noble person?).
The Old Town Hall of Varde (Varde gamle rådhus) was built in 1872, but then it was abandoned in 1976, as happens with lots of old city halls. The buildings were later repurposed to serve as a library.
The noble one is King Frederick VII of Denmark, the last absolute monarch, and he has a goatee (not so relevant, but the helmet hides it a little). The monument was unveiled in 1855 and depicted the king with a copy of the Danish constitution in his hand. He was the one who created the constitution. Being an absolute monarch, there was probably not much debate on the content, I presume. But he established a Danish parliament and made the country a constitutional monarchy, so you could say that the first steps toward democracy were made.
Up till now nothing special. Okay I try to build it up a bit, bare with me.
As we further investigated the town square, we stumbled upon one statue after another. Modern statues by modern artists. (Some examples are below, but there were many more, almost a city version of Middelheim, though now I might have gone a bridge too far.)
It is only the tip of an iceberg. If you are intrigued, you can see more on kunstivarde.dk (it also has English and Dutch versions!).
Another part of this art journey in Varde was the discovery of two immense wall paintings.
I was so delighted, as this style is very much in the direction of what I like to make. The artist is Otto Frello, a Danish painter, graphic artist, cartoonist, and illustrator from Varde. The wall paintings were made based on his work and during his lifetime. He died at the age of 91 in 2015.
There was even a museum dedicated to him and his work, but you can picture my disappointment when it was closed during our stay in Varde. That’s life, probably. You win some, you lose some.
So, time for some lunch. We went for lunch in the oldest building in the city. And yes, I bumped my head on the very low door frame.
In the afternoon, we went shopping and did some zigzagging, thanks to Garmin, through the city. We got some nice kanelstang that we could eat as a late fika when we returned to the bnb.
The rest of the day we spent reading and writing and enjoying doing nothing.
Day 21
I am not going to elaborate too much. It was all planning and writing, so nothing spectacular. But I wanted to share with you the route for the coming days.
And you can see we are planning to camp a few times in Denmark already. The weather was not too favorable for our old bones till now, but we will straighten our spines and jump, as I must admit that there’s also a bit of cold feet at play, as we have a bit of a romantic view on the camping part of our journey.
But if we need to jump, we’ll jump.
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