The jury deciding who will be Denmark’s European Capital of Culture 2017 is making the decision tomorrow, Friday at around 4pm.

Before that 4 members of the jury visited the two contestants; Aarhus and Sønderborg. Yesterday it was Aarhus, today it was Sønderborg.

The jury had spent the night at Dyvig Badehotel and they started their tour by visiting Danfoss, the biggest employer of the area, where they met with Jørgen Mads Clausen, and some of the local Danish politicians as well as Torsten Albig the Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein. Read more about that in Der Nordschleswiger (in German).

After that they took the bus with museums director Peter Dragsbo who told them about the area’s history, architecture and culture.

The bus took them to the art centre Augustiana where they met with 40 German and Danish artists and discussed the local art scene.

Lunch was had on the good ship of Shalimar where they talked to local people, including Ann, so I’m sure they were well entertained 🙂

And when they returned to port the BMX guys from Flensburg were practicing their jumps for Sonderborg Culture Night tomorrow:

They moved on to the former shelter now known as X-Bunker to hear about the projects that take place there. By now they had to be coffee thirsty so at Rønhave Plads they were offered a real Sønderjysk Kaffebord with too many cakes to try.

From here they moved on to Dybbøl Banke and on to Alsion where they met and heard the symphony orchestra practice.

And that was it for the visit for the jury to Sonderborg. Tomorrow it’s on to the big finale in the Ministry of Culture in Copenhagen where both cities will have a last attempt at swaying the jury to honour their home town with the title of European Capital of Culture.

Sonderborg is sending a small team to Copenhagen to present and amongst the mayor, artistic director and cultural director is Ann, to tell her story of how she moved to Sonderborg! How cool is that?

I went to see this small delegation off at Sonderborg Airport where the new local airline DAT had been kind enough to sponsor the flights for all the delegation.

Cross your fingers for them doing well and go see the declaration of the winner Friday at 4pm at Town Hall Square.

Picture of boat by Chistian Have. The first two pictures in this post are used without permission from the photographers – I’m in the process of asking the rights holders.