According to DR1
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2010/05/05/05202246.htm
La Marie and her Joachim will on Saturday 8. May hand over the award for being the most blooming village. An award being handed out for the first time. The award will be presented to the village of Bregninge on the picturesque island of Ærø.
The award is actually meant as an appreciation for being the most enterprising village in regards to attractting newcommers, businesses and so on. The opposite in fact of what is happening these years in many areas of DK. - People are leaving. Businesses move out to the cities. Youths move away and stay away when they have completed their education. That leaves the old, people on social welfare and those who didn't get an education and not much more.
As such many villages have gone into hibernation with many empty houses, nothing to do, no future.
Some villages have as such lost their status as a village because the population has dropped. They now consists of two houses, a farm, a barn, an outhouse and a shed for chickens. Roughly speaking of course.
Some villages have been working hard to reverse that development and a few succeed. Like Bregninge.
So all sorts of people will turn up at this event, because the issue of the rural parts of Denmark being depopulated is very much a political issue right now. We will be lucky if we will even get a glimpse of M&J for all the politicians who will be very eager to be seen.
Bregninge is located on an island south of Funen among the most idyllic and scenic places in Denmark. A number of Danish versions of what the Germans call Heimatfilms were made there. It's about two hours by car from Schackenborg.
Schackenborg is located in Tønder municipality which face the same problems with depopulations as other parts of rural Denmark.
It's quite natural, I think, that Joachim will deal with this. He lives in such an area and he specialise in commerce and enterprise.
Denmark now basically consists of the greater Copenhagen area. The entire east coast of Jutland that has evolved into a kind of mini-Ruhr gebiet and the city of Esbjerg which deals with off-shore industry.
The city of Aalborg in the north in in serios danger of being forgotten. Odense on the island of Funen is a place you pass through while driving to or from Copenhagen/eastern Jutland.
Everything else? A few cows, industrial farms, semi-abandoned villages, windmill parks and colonies of summer cottages. That's development...
His eyes are fabulous.
