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I may be pushing it with the title, but we’re close - the way I see it . Because we can really create a special Odense, with only a little effort. If we all take part in it together.

We have all visited or heard about cities that are, for some reason, very special. Venice's gondolas, Siena's narrow streets, New York's skyscrapers, Paris's boulevards, Amsterdam's channels, Copenhagen's bikes, Sydney’s harbor, Havana's pastel-colored houses ... Okay, you got it, right?

There are also cities that have succeeded in changing their own history. From Bilbao's heavy industry to its cultural and lively atmosphere with the Guggenheim Museum, and from Bordeaux's transformation from "La Belle au Bois Dormant" (Sleeping Beauty) to the world's largest UNESCO-listed urban area.

But what is or can be Odense's special story, which is based on what Odense already is and looks forward to being in the future?

For me, the answer is easy: green.

A city where the bees swarm and the birds sing because each opportunity to make it greener is seized.

A city where everyone can see trees and lush greenery from their window.

Where the urban spaces are cultivated by urban farmers and playful children.

Where the roads' verges are all sown with flowers.

Where the asphalt is interrupted by wild meadow flowers in surprising places.

Where the greens of the river are drawn up to the city's shopping streets.

Where the flower festival is not just an annual display of houseplants, but an exploratorium demonstrating how the city can be greener and where most of the building's facades are covered with greenery,

and where small pockets of green oases can be found everywhere.

Travelogues from the 19th-century describe Odense as a very special green city. Ask 10 odenseans what is special about Odense, and 8 of them will answer the city's green lungs and Odense Å. And, as it’s not enough, we know now that green is insanely healthy, can fight climate change and save biodiversity and ... even ... is crucial to where people decide to live.

And can you imagine the day when making the city greener becomes a nation-wide movement we all take responsibility for? When we plant urban trees in a street on a good weekend; when every companies plant a forest section or climbing plants in front of their front walls; when we remove the sidewalks to sow and plant? When we throw flower seeds into construction sites? When we make green areas to drink the morning coffee and the Friday beer - not in our backyards and back gardens, but in our front yards and on the sidewalk?

I can see it happening today. Fortunately, others can too. Odense Municipality has given us the opportunity to make sidewalks gardens and green facades. Leave the tight rules and measuring tape behind - a place for wildness created by the odenseans themselves. See for yourself: https://www.odense.dk/brug-byen/fritid-og-udeliv/kopi-of-fortovshaver.

You can get good starting tips and free seeds for you to start greening your own city area on Flakhaven / Klosterbakken during next week's flower festival.

On Thursday, August 15th from 17.00 to 20.00.

On Friday, August 16th from 11:00 to 19:00.

On Saturday, August 17th from 11:00 to 16:00.

On Sunday, August 18th from 11:00 to 16:00.

English minimalism pioneers meet Funen's varied music landscape when the English band Ex-Easter Island Head, together with up to 20 local musicians, performs a piece composed for the occasion for the first and only time at Teater Momentum.

It sounds like an impossible ordeal, and therefore an obvious late summer project to plunge into for Casper Schärfe from Momentum and Mads Behrend from the music library.

At first meeting with Ex-Easter Island Head, many will probably remember last year’s Momentum's two concerts with Sonic Youth’s guitarist Thurston Moore. Like him, they also explore what sounds can be produced on string instruments in alternative ways.

However, where Thurston Moore often disappears far into deep water in noise’s parallel universes, Ex-Easter Island Head produces more sonorous minimalist sounds that may have the same meditative qualities as Steve Reich's modern classical compositions.

The local musicians have been able to sign up through an open call, and it‘s going to be exciting to see what a piece produced in such a short time can be.

Ex-Easter Island Head is in Odense for a whole week and, in addition to the concert at Momentum, can already be discovered on Monday evening during a pop-up garden party at Jonas Torstensen on Kragsbjergvej 27 and on Tuesday evening at the Music Library.

For many, the Filipino minority in Denmark is probably a hidden group, which is associated with cheap childcare and obedient labor or issues about power and inequality in jobs, depending on community position and perspective.

But Denmark has been looking for Filipino workers for many years now. First of all as guest workers, when there was a shortage in the Danish labor force in the 60-70s, and when the Philippine president Marcos wanted to export the discontent of the population and attract financial subsidies from abroad.

Afterwards as political refugees, scientists and artists, etc.. Some even came as wives for Danish men. Filipino associations and communities followed, as well as homesickness and the absence of those who stayed behind, and perhaps questions about how to find a place between their own communities and larger Danish communities.

Author and journalist Nina Trige Andersen has decided to collect both the individual and collective history of the Filipinos in Denmark, collection conveyed through the picture-illustrated lecture "A Philippine history of Denmark ".

I think it's going to be a rare glimpse into a history and a culture that you hear very little about, and you will probably sit between a Filipino au pair on the one hand and a first-generation Filipino factory worker on the other.

To let your legs revolve over soft Funen hills. To roll through Funen’s late summer’s landscapes painted in burnt orange, golden brown grain and rain-wet dark green. Watching the sun sparkle on the sea by the coasts from small, winding country roads.

Bicycle riders have been doing this for more than 120 years during the Fyen Rundt cycling race, making it the world's third oldest cycling race, surpassed only by two of the cycle sport monuments - Liége-Bastogne-Liége and Milan-Torino.

On Sunday, the 2019 edition of the Fyen Rundt will be run, the finishing line being at Odense Cykelbane, where the race ends with a lap, so you can see the riders passing by several times. Last year, Mads Pedersen won in his DM jersey, and this year three pro-continental teams are set up, including Team Riwal Readynez, which is based in Odense, and right now the best bid for a Danish cycling team to participate in the Danish Tour de France- starting in 2021.

Should you wish to climb the soft Funen hills yourself, you can do the 65, 100 or 180 km exercise run on the same day. Read more here: https://fyenrundt.com/#ruter and remember that the last day for registration is August 16th.