Cristmas Card from Denmark

A new Christmas card from Danhostel Ribe  as a tribute to our beautiful town and as one of the last celebrations of Ribe’s 1300 year anniversary this year.
It’s really been a fantastic year and we have had many happy guests visiting us.

The picture is from the poetic footpath over Ribe River from the hostel to Ribe old town. The bench is just one of Ribe’s many benches where the Ribe citizens sit and enjoy our beautiful town while they discuss important matters when the weather is a little warmer.
The photographer is Gudrun Rishede, who has also made the hostel’s postcards Vadehavskort and all the Ribe and Wadden Sea National Park photos that you can enjoy at the hostel.

The Christmas card can be seen/bought at Danhostel Ribe from now.

Julekort fra Danmarks ældste by. Resume på dansk:

Danhostel Ribes julekort viser gangstien over Ribe å fra vandrehjemmet til den gamle by og én af Ribes mange bænke, hvor ripenserne nyder den smukke by og diskuterer stort og småt, når vejret er lidt varmere. Postkortet er fotograferet af Gudrun Rishede, som også har fotograferet vores andre postkort ”Vadehavskort” og alle de mange fotos fra Ribe og Nationalpark Vadehavet, der har sørget for vandrehjemmets helt en egen stemning.

Julekortene kan ses/købes på Danhostel Ribe fra nu af.

Danhostel Ribe's Winter View

Our hostel, Danhostel Ribe, has been using Facebook (-and this hostel blog) for more than a year now, but we still feel like newcomers. We are still learning – we are still experimenting – how can we engage our customers and potential guests in the best way through social media?

We are very thankful for so many facebook friends wanting to follow us – more than twice as many as any other Danish hostel. Therefore we have decided to thank our facebook friends by giving them an accommodation offer: ½ price accommodation  until 19^th December. We can’t wait to see how many will accept this offer – and will we have newcomers?

We know we can offer them some wonderful days in Denmark’s oldest town. Our nice hostel Christmas elves are welcoming our guests and Ribe is so beautiful when the old town is decorated for Christmas.

We hope this will make us wiser. Because we still don’t know if our facebook friends want news from the hostel, from the town, from green travelling  or from a little of all? Do they want offers, photos or a little of all?

Danhostel Ribe Facebook

Take a look on our Facebook. How do you think we use the social media to have just as many friends as the big hotels

The first animation festival in Denmark is made as a tribute to animation film and to two of the grand old men within animation film: Børge Ring (89) and Kaj Pindal (83). Both of them born in Denmark and both of them turning up in Ribe not only to be celebrated but also to inspire other film animators coming to Ribe to show off their creations, get inspired and create networks.
Kaj Pindal and Børge Ring are fellow animators and lifelong friends. Oscar winner Børge Ring writes to Kaj Pindal´s 80th birthday “We are buddies and we are soul brothers”.
The festival is for everyone. Young and old will have the possibility to see both some rare and some famous animation films and meet the animators.

Ribe Animation Festival 2010 from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

Børge Ring was nominated to an Oscar in 1978 and was rewarded with an Oscar in 1986 for his animation short film “Anna & Bella”. He has also been involved in the early Asterix films as well as ‘The Pink Panther’ cartoons, and the Danish Viking ‘Valhalla’ cartoons
For Børge Ring, who has lived and worked in Holland a big part of his life, it will be a return to his birth town, since he was born in our street in Ribe, 50 meters from Danhostel Ribe, 89 years ago.
Here you can see Børge Ring´s Oscar winner: Anna & Bella

Kaj Pindal has lived in Canada for many years. He is also an award-winning animator.
He worked together with Børge Ring on – among others - the movies Karate Kids (dangers of AIDS) and Goldtooth (drug abuse). Animation films that succeed in telling about serious problems in an easy understandable way. Goldtooth won the Unicef Meena Prize 1996.

You can meet the 82-year old Kaj Pindal Friday the 12th November from 3 pm to 6 pm at the hostel. He will be showing selected films and tell about his life with animated cartoons. Among others he will show parts of his latest film series “Peep and the Big Wide World” for which he received an EMMY in 2005 as the best animation Children’s Tv Programme in the USA.
Friday evening animators from everywhere will meet at the hostel to present their films and enjoy networking.
You are also invited to watch examples of the latest films and meet some of the new talented animators behind them.
This was only a little part of the program. Other parts will take place at Brorsonsminde, Bispegade school, the Viking Museum, Taarnborg and other places in Ribe. See the entire program here: Animation Festival
The Animation Festival is at the same time part of Ribe’s 1300 Year Anniversary Celebrations

Danhostel Ribe is Eco-labeled with Green Key and mentioned among Best Green Hotels

Danhostel Ribe congratulates The Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers for having been named the greenest hotel in the world by the travel and tourist organization Skaal International.

The more green accommodation we get in Denmark the better. And the more focus we get on sustainable accommodation the better. At Danhostel Ribe we can learn from Crowne Plaza –  can they also learn from us? Maybe there are things we just should do different because Crowne Plaza is a hotel and Danhostel Ribe a hostel?

 But if you as a tourist would prefer to:

• get sustainable accommodation in Denmark’s oldest and best preserved town in the middle of the Wadden Sea National Park instead of in the middle of the busy city Copenhagen
• get cheap green accommodation because you travel on a low budget
• stay at a environmentally friendly hostel instead of a hotel
• get accommodation on the West Coast instead of the east coast of Denmark

Well, then you have the possibility to stay at Danhostel Ribe. You can read all Danhostel Ribe’s environmental policy on this link: Environmental policy at Danhostel Ribe.  Danhostel Ribe is Eco-labeled with Green Key and mentioned among Best Green Hotels. Danhostel Ribe cooperates with INNOTOUR  for education, research and business development in tourism. It is dedicated to innovation.

HRH Prince Joachim inaugurates the Wadden Sea National Park  Friday 16th October 2010

AND if you come to Ribe this Friday, you can participate in the inauguration of the Wadden Sea National Park just outside the hostel at 12 o’clock. The Wadden Sea National Park is Denmark’s third, biggest and wettest national park. HRH Prince Joachim will inaugurate the National Park and also Karen Ellemann, the Danish minister of Environment will be there. From 10.30am to 2.30pm it´s possible to join different activities and study local wadden sea products, enjoy Rod Sinclair quintet play the new National Park Song, watch the shepherd and his dog work, listen to the local stories about storm surges and pirates - and much more. Welcome.

Eco-labeled Danhostel Ribe, National Park, and Ribe Old town

Danhostel Ribe had the pleasure of Claus Meyer and his crew staying at the hostel for several days
while they were filming this program in Ribe and the Wadden Sea. Some of the program was filmed on the meadow just outside the hostel with Ribe Cathedral and the River as background. In this trailer you can see the view from the hostel (06:59-7:01), and on the film photo over this text you can see Claus Meyer on Ribe River – with the Cathedral on the right side  (06:37- 06:59) (the hostel is situated on the left side of the river)

 
The last programs in the Scandinavian Cooking program were shown in more than 60 countries all over the world.
Probably these new programs with world premiere in 2010 will be shown in even more countries, because Nordic food has been even more popular since in 2010 the Danish gourmet restaurant NOMA with the chef René Redzepi and 2 Michelin stars  – and chef Claus Meyer as one of the co-owners – won the unofficial “world championship” for restaurants “the San Pellegrino Awards”. It is the first time a Danish restaurant wins the price in the magazine ahead of restaurants as Spain’s El Bulli and Britain’s The Fat Duck. To help elect the best restaurant in the world were 806 chefs, gastronomers and food reviewers.
The other chefs in the cooking series are Andreas Viestad, one of Norway’s most famous TV-chefs and a respected food writer and Tina Nordstrom, who is by far Sweden’s most celebrated TV-chef.
We hope you will enjoy the trailer – though it is in Danish – but if we find it in English we will let you know. And if YOU find out before us please let us know

If you don’t know: NOMA means Nordisk Mad (Nordic food)
Enjoy this new  film from  NOMA, the world’s best restaurant 2010 (this one is in English…) – and read about the Food Snob’s visits at NOMA 

29th of May. Guided tour in the Photo Exhibition “My Ribe and Wadden Sea” by Gudrun Rishede

29th of May we – and many others in Ribe and Denmark – focus on “Tourism Day”. We do it by giving a free guided tour in the Photo Exhibition from 11am to 12am.
At the same time it will be possible to see the facilities of the hostel, rooms, common facilities, sports hall and conference facilities – or discuss our work with sustainable tourism. See also the invitation on our facebook 
The photos are all photographed by me, Gudrun Rishede – one of the writers on this blog and married to the manager of Danhostel Ribe, Jens Philipsen. I have photographed since I was child, and have through the years sold photos to among others: Danish Tourist Board, Ribe Tourist Board, Norden – Nordic Council of Ministers, Pilotprojekt Nationalpark Vadehavet and Ribe Viking Centre.
I have also made postcards from the local area, Vadehavskort (Wadden Sea Post Cards), which are sold from the hostel, Ribe Tourist board, Ribe Viking Museum and a few other places in the Wadden Sea area. I have also been honoured to be artist of the month in Ribe Art Club a couple of years ago and have one of my photos shown at Ribe Art Museum the winter 2009/10.

On this video you can see him win the Danish Championship (DM) in indoor rock climbing in Danhostel Ribe’s sports hall Ribehallen.
It was great to see all the brilliant climbers.  This was the first time the Danish Championship took place in Southwest Jutland – but hopefully it will be back again, now that we have finally got one of the best walls in Denmark.

Ribe Klatreklub (Ribe Climbing Club) did an excellent job both before and during the Championship and we only met satisfied climbers and visitors.
Rikke Kristensen from Ribe Klatreklub took a lot of good pictures, some of them you can see on our facebook – some of them are placed in the start and the end of this video and later you will also see them in magazines  and books about rock climbing

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Women: Mette Thomsen, Københavns Klatreklub, winner rock climbing senior women 2010

Water organ show at the river outside Danhostel Ribe

Water organ show at the river outside the hostel
A beautiful and very special sight could be seen at the river outside the hostel’s windows the 2nd and third April. It was a gift from the fire brigade in Güstrow, Ribe’s twin town in Germany. Together with the fire brigade of Visselhövede they have given Ribe a fantastic water organ show for birthday present because of Ribe’s 1300 year anniversary. It was an explosion of water, colours and music and the height of the fountain followed the music. The show was performed by fire men craftsmen (not computers). The water organ was placed on the hostel’s side of the river and pumped 1000 liters of water from the river per minute for the show…an alternative occupation for fire men, when they are not putting out fires.
Hundreds of Ribe citizens and tourists came to see the beautiful show, and at Danhostel Ribe we have been very safe these Eastern days because the hostel has been swarming with fire men.
Ribe’s fire brigade has also showed the development of Ribe fire brigade the last 120 years in a procession though Ribe and it has been possible to visit them at the fire station and on the meadow outside the hostel.

Here you can enjoy the show broadcasted by Danish Television TVSyd

 
And here you can see one of Ribe fire brigade’s old beautiful vehicles

Ribe fire brigade

Ribe's night watch man ready for historical walk from Danhostel Ribe, Earth Hour 2010

captured beheaded pirates, the death story of Denmark’s beloved queen Dagmar, fatal floods, and fires. Not imagination but a journey through the fantastic and true history of Ribe, Denmark’s and Scandinavia’s oldest town, that this year celebrates its 1300 anniversary.

At 8.30pm. on the 27th March when Ribe’s street lamps are turned off because of Earth Hour 2010, we invite you to meet us outside the dark hostel, Danhostel Ribe. From here Ribe’s night watch men will guide us safely with their lanterns and spiked maces as protection through Ribe town.
Ribe’s medieval night town watchmen had several duties like to prevent carelessness with fire, lookout for floods, follow drunken Ribe citizens home to bed, and separate street fighters. Every hour they would sing a verse of the watchman’s tune to mark the hours and keep themselves awake, but on the 27th March they will just guide us and tell us some of the fantastic 1300 year history of Ribe.

Nowadays Ribe’s watch men can be followed on their route through the old, winding and cobblestoned streets of Ribe every evening from 1st of May until 15th of September, but Ribe’s hostel (Danhostel Ribe), and Gammelt Præg (Ribe  Town Preservation Organization), think this is a great way to mark Ribe’s 1300 year anniversary and Earth Hour, since also Esbjerg municipality has decided  to raise awareness about climate change, and therefore has decided to turn out the street lights in  Ribe this hour, which will give the historical town walk its finishing touch.
Everyone is welcome and it is free of charge. If you want to sleep at the hostel of course we have a very good offer for this evening and the rest of the Easter holidays. Look Here:

Earth Hour and Easter offer at Danhostel Ribe

P.S. also the sunset will be “dark” in Ribe – since we have the most beautiful “Black Sun” at the time (migration starlings dancing air ballet in the sunset), and it is possible to go on tour with the rangers from Vadehavscentret before you go with the night watchmen.

Earth Hour is a global event organized by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) to raise awareness about threat of global warming.
Danhostel Ribe has for many years been labeled as an eco-friendly hostel and worked with sustainable tourism in many ways. At the hostel we are aware that we are probably not reducing CO2 emissions by taking part in this action and that we don’t save the earth by turning out the lights for one hour, but we think it is a nice way  to raise awareness about climate change together with people all around the world.

WWF Denmark (World Wildlife Fund – Verdensnaturfonden i Danmark) and TrygFonden recommends the event in Ribe on this link and in news mails, and press releases. You can also register your own climate event on Earth Hour evening if you follow the link.
If you don’t visit us or join or arrange an event in your own town – we hope you will remember to turn out the light yourself in your home.

Earth Hour 2010
Earth Hour started in Australia in 2007. More than 2.2 million people in Sydney turned off the light. All ready in 2008 Earth Hour became global and 370 towns in 35 countries turned off the light and made it the biggest climate campaign ever. Danhostel Ribe and Esbjerg municipality have participated since 2008.

Here you can see a short documentary on Earth Hour from 2007 up to 2010:

Find out more about Earth Hour, sign up, etc : Panda.org

Danhostel Ribe on INNOTOUR