Monthly Archives: October 2011

Sønderborg – The Little City That Could

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Black smoke and white steam

Sonderborg is the 33rd biggest city in Denmark the 111th biggest country in the world. Not a particular big engine by any means. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in guts.

Like many other places, Sonderborg is seeing its share of an uphill battle in the wake of the recession but in no way has it given up trying to pull itself over the hill.

As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, “I–think–I–can, I–think–I–can.” It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”

— The Little Engine That Could

While Sonderborg is chanting “I think I can” it has embarked on a couple of impressive projects:

Project Zero

In 2009 Sonderborg became the first Danish city to build a Zero+ house, i.e. one that produces more energy than it consumes. This has developed into Project Zero, an ambitious project that aims to make Sonderborg carbon neutral by 2029. This is a fantastic initiative where rather than talking about what is not working, the city is acting to rectify the situation.

Frank Gehry’s Masterplan

“…To create a place where it is worthwile to live, to work and to enjoy our life”. That is what Frank Gehry‘s masterplan for the Sonderborg harbour area aims to achieve. This is the guy who turned Bilbao from backwater to top tourist destination with his Guggenheim museum. The project, if realised, will transform the harbour area into a thriving urban area that includes recreational, cultural, commercial and residential areas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKtunmuw6Q

European Capital of Culture 2017

Every year two European cities are chosen as European cities of culture to celebrate the diversity and cultural ties between European cultures. In 2017 it is Denmark’s turn to nominate a city, and Sonderborg (for the cross-border region of Sonderjylland-Schleswig) is one of only two cities in the running. *Fingers crossed* for Sonderborgs bid! The decision will be known by the end of next year.

So lots of interesting projects in the works. We hope Sonderborg is able to pull the load over the mountain – Choo chooooo!

Electronic Music Festival at Alsion 14th November

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An exciting new cross-border music festival is seeing the light of day this year when DEFINE takes place in Flensburg, Germany and Sonderborg, Denmark. First it’s in Kühlhaus in Flensburg on November 4th and the week after it continues at Alsion on November 12th.

headphone silhouet

The line up doesn’t ring any bells for me, but it sounds like a great idea and I would love to hear some electronic in Alsions grand concert hall.

The two cities are 38km apart but according to Flensborg Avis there will be buses going between the cities for a mere euro 2.50, so it’s easy to take part in both parties.

Read more on the festival website.

Photo by Philippe Put from I Need Air.

Route 1864 – Tales and sounds from the battlefield

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Just west of Sonderborg is Dybbøl Banke the site of one of the most important battles in Danish history. We’ll tell you more about the story some other time. This post is just about a new exhibit about to open.

QR Codes by Dybbøl Banke

Photo: Historiecenter Dybbøl Banke

For the coming Autumn Vacation Rute 1864 will be opened. The route consists of 12 locations where events took place during the Battle of Dybbol. At each location you can listen to a sound piece from an eye witness. To listen you need a smartphone that can read QR codes. An example of one of the sound bites is the Prussian military engineer Ernst Schütze talking about the pontoon bridge that would be used to bring the heavy field guns with horses across the 600 meters wide Alssund.

Rute 1864 opens Friday the 14th of October. For more information (in Danish) visit m.1864.dk or read the story on Facebook.

So far there is no information about what languages the signs and sounds are in, but we will add this information if we figure that out.

99 Things To Do in Sonderborg

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We are getting a bit jumpy about moving to Sonderborg so while we are waiting we thought up a challenge for ourselves. We want to come up with – and do – 99 different things! That can be done, right?

We promise we are not going to jump around all the time but we are a bit excited. We’ve started the list and will create a counter on the page so you can see how we are doing.

Do let us know if you have any ideas for things to do.

Accommodation in Sønderborg

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One of the biggest issues when moving to a new place is, often, finding a place to live. This can be even trickier if you don’t read and speak the local language. Here I’ll try and give some help to navigate the online sites if Danish is an issue in terms of where to look and how the housing market works. I’ll cover private rental and non-profit housing associations as this is what we have been looking for.

This house is actually not in Sonderborg but by Gallehus on the west coast.

A couple of things to be aware of:

  • Most places are let unfurnished – except for student accommodation.
  • Flats and houses are often listed with number of rooms. So a flat listed as having 3 rooms would be equivalent to a British/American 2 bedroom flat.
  • Monthly rent might include some, all or none of the utility bills.
  • Estimated utilities bills might be listed (DK: Acconto forbrug or A/C).
  • Standard deposit is 3 months rent and when you leave it will be used towards redecorating the apartment for the next tenant.
  • Standard notice period for you is 3 months.
  • Private rentals seem to be listed as available immediately or within the next month. Housing association flats seem to be listed 2-3 months before they are available.

Private Rental

We only found two places useful for finding private rentals.

Lokalavisen Sønderborg is a free weekly newspaper that’s accesible online. Have a look here (only in Danish).
If you have the printed edition and flip through to the section called Annoncemarked close to the centre of the paper, the Bolig section is for housing (both rental and owned).

There are loads of websites with rental properties in Denmark but only BoligPortal seemed to have recent ads from Sonderborg. Go to Find Lejebolig, select the southern part of Denmark and put a check next to 6400 Sønderborg. The drawback of this site is that as a tenant it costs dkk 365,- to get access to contact information for rentals.

Non-profit Housing Associations

Common providers of rental properties in Denmark are Housing Associations (DK: Boligforeninger). These are non-profit housing organisations where the people living in an estate pay for the expenses of the building through their rent. Nobody can make a profit from the estate so the rent is set so it exactly covers the cost of running the estate. Vacant flats are rented out based on a waiting list.

In Sonderborg there are three associations; SAB, B42 and SØBO that together manage more than 5000 apartments. SAB is the biggest and this is the one we have experience with and will explain about below. The others should work in similar ways.

In many other parts of Denmark waiting lists at housing associations can be long and you go to the back if you have not been a member for a long time. That is also the case for some estates in Sonderborg, but not everywhere.

  • To get started you first sign up online
  • Then make a bank transfer of the fee of dkk 200 to become an actively searching member and put on the waiting list.
  • Go search for flats, add checks in Sønderborg and Familiebolig and maybe set up limits of size and rent. When you search you will get a list of properties within your limits and you mark all the ones you want to be put on the waiting list for.
  • The waiting game starts now and if you are in the running for an apartment you will get an offer that tells you what number you are in line as well as the details of the flat.

Further information

New in Denmark: Finding a place to live
PDF about how the Housing Associations work

Hej!

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Welcome to the blog Hej Sønderborg! We are Ann and Michael, two new sønderborgensere, moving there in November. Michael is Danish and I (Ann) am from Malta and this will be my first experience of living in Denmark – wish me luck!

Before moving to Sønderborg we lived in London. Being the huge cosmopolitan city that it is we could pretty much find all the information about what is going on at our fingertips. We had a number of favourite ‘things to do’ and community blogs that we particularly enjoyed such as IanVisits, Tired of London Tired of Life and West Hampstead Life. However, we could not find anything similar in English for Sønderborg. We have both had our own blogs before, so we decided to join efforts and start our own!

What can you expect here?

We will mainly use this blog to write about place to see, food to eat and events going on in Sonderborg and the area. Being newcomers to the area we will also write about our thoughts, impressions and practicalities of moving to Sønderborg/Denmark that we hope other people will find useful.

At that we will end this first post. Do let us know if you are out there lurking about and have any ideas or comments. The comments section is open so feel free to throw them at us!