Googling Aarhus – Then and Now

This is a tale of how Google almost made me change my mind about coming to Aarhus. When it was almost confirmed that I would be coming to Aarhus University to pursue my further studies, I remember googling ‘Aarhus’, to see how the place that was going to be my home for the next few years looked like. I was astonished to see what I saw: very old, crooked houses, streets paved with stones, a guy dressed in medieval attire sitting on a horse cart… And I remember saying to myself, “Are you really sure you want to go and live in this Amish town?”

 

It was only when I landed in Aarhus that I found out that what I saw on Google was actually a small old town within a town – Den Gamle By. And no wonder that there were more pictures of the old town than of the new one: it was more exciting than the ‘boring’ town that surrounded it. 9 years on, now googling Aarhus is a different experience. There are magnificent aerial pictures of Aarhus. There is Aros and its famous Boy. And there are computer simulated drawings of how the new harbour of Aarhus will look like. Now that the old crooked houses and stone-paved streets of Den Gamle By have taken the backstage, the weather can take the centre stage again and scare people from coming to Aarhus!