Aarhus, Denmark

3 – 10 August 2009

I decided to spend a week in Aarhus prior to the world champs to get the tourist fanaticism out of my system by visiting the main tourist attractions and it was also good to orientate myself a bit. It worked out that we were training in the evenings anyway so I had to take things a little easier than usual during the day so as to not be incredibly tired for the sessions. I stayed with fellow freediver Elisabeth Kristofferson, my third wonderful host in a row. I was given my own room so I managed to catch up on some sleep.

Elisabeth was working during the week so I mucked around in town a bit, caught up on a few things that needed doing and generally chilled out. I visited Aarhus cathedral and the Viking museum on the first day, the old cathedral and the “prettiest street in Aarhus” on the second day and wandered the town a bit. I'm not allowed to shop due to budget and luggage weight issues so I'm avoiding them. At our first evening training at the Spanish baths I completely lost count of the number of lengths I had done after I'm informed only 50m. I must have been so relaxed after my sleep in.

On Friday I met Elisabeth after she finished work and we went to the beach. We managed to find a little sand to sit on, but it was definitely a city beach with grass and rocks and lots of people. We went to the local amusement park were we had a picnic and a wine and listened to the live music in the sunshine. I didn't do any rides. I'm trying to be conservative with my body, plus they were expensive. Elisabeth did the scariest rollercoaster where you sit underneath the tracks with your legs hanging free, but it only lasted one minute including the 30s slow climb up.

On Saturday we decided to skip pool training and have a day at the museums with a quick dry training session as a break. We visited the Aros art museum. It's a pretty fantastic building. A brick box on the exterior and very sculptural (reminiscent on Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenhiem) on the inside. There was a wide and interesting variety of art from all eras and in many forms. We spent a few hours there covering the whole museum then went to the old town museum Den Gamble By. It's a little village where they have saved and rebuilt old building from around Denmark. Each one is set up with displays of different trades or styles of living, for example there's a post office, a stable, a tobacanist, a distillery and brewery, a bakery (where they actually sold yummy food), a hat maker, different classes of living & bedrooms, etc. We filled up the afternoon easily – it was a pretty tiring day.

On Sunday morning we finally trained in the pool we'll be using for the World Champs. My dive wasn't great but the distance was, so I was pretty happy to be back where I need to be. We caught a bus up to the Japanese Zen Gardens where we spent the afternoon. It was very beautiful and would be an easy place to just sit for a long time in the sun. We pulled out all the yoga poses we could remember and took photos of ourselves in the beautiful setting. It took us a while to get home as it shut half an hour earlier than we expected and we had to walk quite a way to catch a bus or wait almost an hour. So we walked, complete with dive gear (of course). Why is my dive gear so heavy??? It was a bit of a late night as I had to book my travel and pack before leaving early in the morning to head up to Lysekil for the Nordic Deep freediving competition.

The journey was not as bad as I anticipated, however it did last 12 hours. I had to leave at 7am and catch the local bus to the train station, the train for 3 hours to Fredrikshavn, a taxi to the ferry (as I'd just about killed my back walking the previous time, and it was raining), the ferry for 3.5 hours to Gothenburg, a tram to central station, a quick run through the station to catch the bus to Lysekil. I met Sofia and Jens on the bus so the journey wasn't too boring. There were huge traffic delays and the trip took much longer than expected, but our brilliant bus driver took a scenic route (back road) to skip the queues, then drove on the wrong side of the road for about 5 mins to get us to the ferry at least. We overtook the bus that had left an hour before and there was another bus on the other side to pick people up, but that was our pick up point for the Nordic Deep anyway.