A steady drumbeat and chorus spreading between Bolbro's building blocks. Blue and white dressed cyclists overtaking you on Christmas Møllers Vej. Rituals unfold from beer on the go over sausage carts to parking tricks. Anticipation in the air.

Odense’s parallel world in an otherwise lazy urban landscape for those who are heading to the same place. A Sunday without a tight schedule.

Memories of celebrations of a small handful of silver medals, missed penalty kicks from Hemmingsen and maybe even penalty kick saves from Lars Høgh, if you are old enough.

A fellow next to you says; do you think Bashkim is ready to start? Will it be another one of those days where OB does not deliver when they should?

An impossible Sunday at the moment. The corona has broken up the city in a different way and changed your usual destinations to places you never go. One of my favorite destinations in Odense - Richard Møller Nielsen's Bolbro - Odense Stadium - is gradually becoming a memory in line with the many triumphs and disappointments I have witnessed in the same place.

Whether the same is the case for you, hop on your iron horse and ride quietly through the city to Bolbro and to Odense Stadium, a special corner of Odense that no other Danish city has. A coordinated tale of a working-class neighborhood housing the city's working-class sports; Football. Biking. Ice Hockey. Handball (and the odd one out; athletics).

From experience, I know you can be lucky to find an unlocked gate at the stadium and go around a bit in the stadium pot. Sniff the scent of freshly cut grass (as long as it's still there), tread on slightly Roman candle scorched concrete, run your fingers across territory-marking stickers from local and out-of-town fans. An unfashionable stadium, upgraded here and there since 1941, but still with the charm that makes a trip to the stadium a certain effort when the Danish weather slides in from the west.

Should you not be able to get in the stadium, then take a walk around the sports district, which has changed significantly in the last half to a whole year. There are now polished residential complexes, which turn their backs on the road to the cathedral in the thousands on Gasa, where is an almost completed tram rail with newly created urban spaces at Hauges Plads, Richard Møller Nielsens Plads and the new large tram station in front of the stadium's grandstand.

There is even a green upgrade of Middelfartvej on the way in front of Føtex and for the time being half a sports academy is squeezed into no-man's land between Odense Stadium and Odense Athletics Stadium.

A myriad of changes in a district that is on its way to a new place and which at the same time tells many of our common stories about Odense.

Cronhammars ”Camp Fire”. I don’t know if it’s my favorite place in Odense, per se – it probably isn’t – but it’s on my list of favorites and I’m dearly fond of the sculpture that three years ago suffered through a janky emergency transplantion to Stige Ø, after standing in Munke Mose since 1994. By far Odense’s most interesting sculpture, both in and of itself and in a historic context.

“Camp Fire” was created for the late Odense Tekniske Skole’s 150-year anniversary by Ingvar Cronhammar and was a powerful symbol of the school’s purpose. Now the buildings have been transformed into expensive housing. From working-class pride to privileged luxury.

I loved it best in its original location - like a metallic alien object among light green birch trees and delicate spring flowers. Like a siren in traffic, a splinter in your palm. I worked and lived nearby, so I passed the sculpture at least a couple of times a day. It was a figurative disruption, long before that kind of thing became popular.

Now it stands in a reformed junk yard close to canal waters and open skies. It’s just fine there. But it stands too prettily to really give it its proper due. It’s like it harmonizes too easily with its surroundings. It’s no longer a disturbance, just a detail. Like if you had a skin-colored tattoo. You don’t get far with a unique expression when you start by anonymizing (pacifying!) everything jarring about it.

Really, it fits its new home like a hand in a glove. Among all of the other man-made things camouflaging themselves in an attempt to appear natural. “Camp Fire” is situated on a covered landfill, next to an excavated canal. It doesn’t get more artificial than that. But I think most locals see it as a leisure area, despite the fact that you can plainly see new hills being made over on the opposite shore. Big mountains of garbage, slowly growing and getting shoved around by yellow excavators. Fascinating.

Odense’s 7 meter deep canal from 1806 is another candidate on my list. Almost 5 kilometers dug out by about 200 canal workers over a period of 8 years, using only shovels and wheel barrows – as the story goes. Absurd. I’m glad there were some brave politicians – it was apparently a suggestion by a clerk of the diocese by the name of Friedrich Buchwald – who insisted on developing the city’s infrastructure, although I suppose there also wasn’t as much resistance in the form of editorials by suburban drivers back then. If there had been, we probably just would have gotten another lane on the old gravel road out to the Fjord. It’s a fantastic example of how the city has always evolved with and for the times, for “eternal stillness is death!” as Hans V. Kaalund writes in his famous song.

A lot has happened in Munke Mose since this writer was a kid in the 90’s. Back then it was a bit of a swamp filled with drunks, German Shepherds, and squatters, but today the leather vests and military boots have been swapped out with lattes and running shoes.

Maybe that sounds like a bit of a boring development, but there is no doubt that more people are actually enjoying the park than ever before. And the sheer volume of beer being drunk is certainly still copious, despite the fact that the proof has fallen in inverse proportion to the rising gentrification.

The closing of the night owl bar, Havhesten, on Ny Vestergade doubtlessly played an important part in the area’s improvement, but the establishment of the so-called fish ladder also made a significant contribution to the rampant beautification.

The fish ladder in Munke Mose was established all the way back in 2006 to ensure the fish could travel unimpeded through Odense Å. But a forced closure of bars and restaurants was what it took for yours truly to actually make the journey down, take a seat with a beer in hand and take a ‘people bath’, as Kierkegaard called it when he deigned to move among the masses. It was during last year’s lockdown, when the weather was much better than it is now. Or at least, that’s how I remember it in the golden glow of memory.

I definitely recall the happy, free moments where I would set myself down on the stairs, usually on the right side by the boat rental, and enjoy the afternoon sun, a couple of IPA’s and the pleasant sound of a rushing stream mixed with the murmur of conversation blended into a kind of restorative meditation track. A balm for the nervous system.

These zen moments were sometimes interrupted by other lone loafers or fishing enthusiasts who would strike up a bit of conversation in exactly the same way as always happens when you sit alone at a bar (one of the reasons I was there in the first place was that you couldn’t sit at a bar anywhere.) So we shot the shit about the wind and weather and the fish in the river. Perfectly in the spirit of the place.

These days you still can’t sit down at a bar, but you can always rest on the stairs, drift away with a beer in your hand and forget yourself for a while. And that’s what I recommend to everyone as soon as the weather allows. Happy dissociation. Let calm descend upon you by the fish ladder.

Since Café Sølle opened its doors in Nedergade 18 in the autumn, the street's reputation as a small Parisian pocket in Midtown has only grown stronger. On a sunny Saturday in April, the street is filled with small gatherings, spread out on the stairwells to the crooked old houses, they sit and drink draft beer or coffee in the sunshine. On the nice side of the street of course.

The Café is owned by Koffi Boys, the brothers Mads and Jonas who, as Odense's answer to Mary Kate & Ashley, won our hearts with their portable coffee cart for festivals, at Mosen or at the Sunday flea market at the Harbour. I‘ve always been happy to see the coffee cart and the blonde curls, and I’m about to forgive them for cutting their hair. But I can forgive them everything when they make coffee the way they do and since they now also have a place where they serve homemade cardamom rolls, my knees are chronically soft.

The cardamom roll is the cinnamon roll's hip cousin, and I‘ve for a long time been forced to stick to the Kvickly baker's one which is quite acceptable but also nothing in comparison with Sølle’s. Here there are bites, burnt edges and taste for the money. Each roll is its own little raison d'être. It's home baking, oh happiness!

On Saturdays, the café serves draft beer and when you sit on a step and drink them with newly-tested, long-haired friends you haven't seen in a long time, it's hard not to give in. And normalcy seems closer, because a few meters away on the next step there is a bubble you do not know (yet). We toast once again with our friends and those we don’t know and we have needed that for a very long time.