Skanderborg Fest + more

I'm just two days away from my 7 month anniversary in Denmark. How time flies!

I was home just a few days from Belgium before I went to Skanderborg Festival.

Skanderborg Festival is the 2nd biggest festival in Denmark, and is called Danmark's Smukkest Festival, or, in english, Denmark's Most Beautiful Festival. It's in a town just 10 kilometres from here, located in beech forest around the town. The camping sites are on football (soccer) fields and the stages are located around the forest in various little clearings and up and down little hills. It's a very "hyggelig" (cosy, warm, nice, friendly, happy) festival, and the atmosphere is very very warm. That may be helped a little by the sheer amount of alcohol consumed by party-ready Danes, but it was I beleive, at least in part, due to the surroundings of the festival. The festival is watched over by an ancient Danish troll, Gunthler, who is a drunken, non-pants wearing, partying troll who apparently roamed the woods many years ago.

I was camping with about 10 people, mainly from my class, along with Camilla, a friend from Argentina. Our days were spent sleeping in, checking the schedule to see which good bands to see in the afternoon, hitting up the festival for the afternoon, grabbing some dinner from a stall or eating rugbroed and tuna at the tent. Then we would see the bigger bands at night time.

The main stage:


Classmates:


Lenny Kravitz, a definite highlight!


Exchange students:


An installation/bar in the festival:






A map of Africa made entirely from empty beer cans:




It was a brilliant class bonding week, and I got to know a whole bunch of Danish bands that I'd never heard of but are really good. It's rather strange to be at a festival when a classic Danish band is playing a classic Danish song and the whole crowd knows all the words, bar you. However, I could sing along well enough to Franz Ferdinard and Eric Clapton.

This weeks project has been to check out the library and borrow cds from all the Danish bands to listen to more of their music.

School went back on Wednesday, and it was awesome to see the class again. Some people I haven't seen since before Euro-Tour, right back in mid-May. It's really cool to come back and to be able to now understand the classes. I can actually participate in things and help a little which is, for now, quite a nice novelty! After not doing so much serious study for such a long time, it's a nice change.

New exchange students arrived at Silkeborg this week from about 10 different countries. I'm trying to learn the names to 15 different faces and getting to know and showing around people, like my "oldies" did with me when I came 7 months ago.
I took a few of them out, along with some other oldies, to Silkeborg on Friday night to a big fireworks/city party as a bonding/icecream eating activity.

Louis from Dominican Republic, Megan from NZ and Andrea from Italy.


Live jazz and masses of people in the town:




Laser light show:


Local oldies:


And that's that. School is all that's on in the near future. I'll be changing families, rather reluctantly, at the end of August. But I'm sure things will be sweet there too, just like my other two families. I've been playing a lot of piano here, writing and learning tunes borrowed from Silkeborg library, and I'm going to miss that.

NOTE: I've just found out I won't be changing families until the 1st of October. And have also just discovered that there is a free place on the language school trip to Tunisia! (13th-19th October.)

Love to all, Daniel