The two weeks after that:

This one pertains to September 18th through October 2:

The first event of note was my site visit to Carlsberg's brewery site.  Again, it was with my Livability in the Modern City class.  We didn't actually tour the brewery, though -- we toured the old, related industrial brewery sector surrounding the current brewery, and analyzed some of the redevelopment strategies used to keep the area inhabited and lively.  I've got a few pictures, and I'll explain what happened through those.  Unfortunately, I forgot to write down directions to the meeting point and was about 20 minutes late, so I'm missing a few good sites.  Oops.

This first one is of an old warehouse that was converted into a Tony Hawk-esque sort of a place, where the local kids can all gather and hang out, instead of committing crimes.  It's a pretty cool concept, and they've got a lot of events, and sometimes a food truck!  So it's quite awesome.

This is the outdoor section of the Tony Hawk fun-house, and it's got all sorts of feng-shui or something, as you can tell by the orange bars all over the place. 

THIS is the cool part!  Or, at least, the part I thought was cool.  They took an old gas station, which was super LAME, and made it super AWESOME instead!  See, it's now covered in ropes.  Ropes are SUPER COOL.

Especially since they don't all go to the ground, so they're only accessible if you do LATERAL ACTION!  Oh yeah, and the whole thing is meant to be climbed on. 

It's meant to be free-form and adaptable to its users' whims, so you can tie knots in the ropes, and tie them all together, and put random things in it, it's SO COOL! I neglected to photograph these, but there was a traffic cone, a picnic table, and some other business, all floatin' around in the ropes. 

The coolest part about it, I think, is the Donkey Kong vibe it gave out (remember the whole swinging from ropes business?  Yeah, that happened, timidly.  It's scary.  And awesome.


Anyways, on to the night of... September 23rd!   It was a Friday, and we had a buddy network gathering.  We decided to go to Lousiana, a world-famous modern art museum that just happens to be in Humlebaek!  That's where I live!  It was kinda shameful that I hadn't been there yet (except for class the day before, but that barely counted; we only had an hour and a half), so I was excited to go.

Pictures are not really permitted, but I daringly bootlegged a few through the intense Danish security, all the same.  They had an exhibit there called "Living" -- it was all about different cultural living spaces,and both urban and rural livability.  Here's a link to the website, in case you're interested: http://www.louisiana.dk/uk/Menu/Exhibitions/LIVING
 

 They had a section on Burning Man festival (if you don't know it, look it up -- it's cool).  This was my favorite bit though, a giant structure made entirely of 2x4s and some nails.  They burned it.

Here's a treehouse -- at least, sort of.  I love the cantilevered bit (that hanging thinger off to the right), but I wish the architect/designer had been more creative with the bottom half of it; who uses stairs to get up to a treehouse these days?

We also had dinner at the museum, which was awesome because it's top-class food, and super expensive -- except the buddy network paid for it.  So that was awesome.  Yeah. 


NEXT SUBJECT.

This one's about a class field trip.  For my Copenhagen: History and Contemporary Issues class, we explored a few different sections of the city on... I think the 27th of September?  (Aw crap, that means I'm nearly a month behind on the whole blogging thing...)

Following the theme for this blog, I'll post pictures and explain a few of them.  Hopefully that'll get the gist of it down.

These are called Nyboder  -- "New Booths" -- and were built under Christian IV to help entice young men to enter the navy.  They were going through a pretty big series of wars with Sweden at the time, and needed to recruit people to stay in for more than just a summer or two; they needed professionals.  Now, the Danish navy doesn't inhabit them quite so much, and they're largely open to the public to rent out.  If I come back...

The two-story Nyboder are actually replacements, built a few decades later to accommodate the even larger navy.  There's only one original left -- this one. 

BASTIONS!  This is a bastioned rampart, which is pretty freakin' awesome.  >45 degree angles, almost impossible to scale under fire.  Oh yeah, it's an early modern defense system.

Here's the sorta schematic view of Kastellet.  It was built on the northern end of the recently-expanded walls of Copenhagen (you can see the wall in #7 and 8 on the map here), and intended as a refuge of last resort. The basic idea is that every point along the wall can be covered by only a few men.  Note the red dot and the dotted line on the schematic -- you can do that.  It's clever business.

Here's the gate!  It corresponds to #22 and #18; I'm standing on 22, and looking at 18.

The view from within the defenses; if you look, you can see a sort of earthen ramp -- that's the musket/rifle/whatever firing platform, which also helped roll cannon up to the cannon points.  This shot, by the way, is a north-facing look at #19.

The gate up close!  Cool things about this gate include: the Romanesque bust at the top (an attempt by Frederik III to recall the 'peak' of civilization); the pediment (that triangle-looking form); and the royal crest of Frederik III, right under the bust.  The fortress was begun, by the way, but Christian IV, but was completed and renovated by F3.

The parade grounds! 

Standing on top of #19 now, here's a view of the gate.  You'll notice that there are actually two sections, or levels, to the bastion face.  Even cooler, there's an indentation  between the two; this was a spot for defenders to crouch behind while firing.

Again from #19, this is a directly south-facing view, featuring what's called a Ravelin.  These are defenses placed opposite the curtain wall (the small, straight wall between the wedge-shaped bastions); the intent is to block long-range cannon fire, as well as provide yet another physical barrier and defense point.

Finally, we went to Amaliensborg Palace.  Originally built by members of the nobility, Amalienborg was borrowed by the royal family after a fire in their palace.  They eventually decided they didn't really want to give it back, so they just kinda stayed on.  It's actually a collection of 4 palaces, all arranged geometrically around the square.  The picture here is of the changing of the guard, and you can see the Crown Prince's building in the background. 

We got to tour the currently unoccupied building, which the Queen apparently uses for parties sometimes.  It was amazing.  But cameras weren't allowed.  So that's all you get to hear -- it was amazing.  And... yeah.


NEXT SUBJECT AGAIN! (on October 1)

We've got us one more thing to talk about, yes we do.  This one was a random trip up to Helsingør!  For those of you who aren't Danish, that's a city 3 stops north of me on the regional train, or about 10 kilometers by bike.  We biked, by the way -- straight up the coastal road; it was beautiful. There are a few pictures below:

We ran into this on the way out: it's a harbor protection device (blanking on the word for it right now) that the clever Danes had turned into a major attraction.  They flattened it out and put a bunch of smaller stones on the shore-side half.  The result was a very walkable, novel mini-park.  So basically, the coolest thing. 

The Danes are never content to let something like this be: they added to it.  They've got a stronger culture of... public participation?  -meaning they interact more with their environments.  This also translates into a much looser graffiti policy -- while it is still a crime in most areas, they've learned to accept the attractive ones (done by actual, talented graffiti artists), and focus on removing the 'tags' instead.  I'm told they, on occasion, actually hire accomplished artists to decorate some public facades. 

 What better way to fit in, than adding one yourself?  Mine's the one in the foreground.

 Oh, and here I am at the end of the harbor protection thingy.  Just finished waving at the dude in the boat.

I'm on a bastion!

Here's the castle -- called Kronborg Slot -- from the bastioned wall.   Interesting thing about this castle, it's actually quite famous!  Turns out some English playwright wrote a play about some guy seeing a ghost and, eventually killing his uncle the King.  That play (which happens to be Shakespeare's Hamlet) was based in this castle.  Woah.

Last picture!  Inside the castle walls, in a courtyard, sits this gem of a man.  He's creepin'.


Thus ends that two week period.  Lots of fun things in there.  I'll hopefully get around to posting about my trip to London soon -- we'll see.  Haj haj!  

That week right after my short study tour:

If you happen to check this periodically but don't subscribe or get my reminder email, make sure to catch the post from earlier today -- it's on my short study tour, and is quite fascinating. 

As the title may have warned you, I'm writing now about the week after the short study tour.  The next post will be about the week after that, then the week after that, and finally there'll be (probably posting sometime next January, given my record) one about the long study tour. 

On Monday, I went on a site visit for one of my classes, Livability in the Modern City.  We went to a place called Amager Strand -- Amager is the island it's on, and Strand is the word for beach.  We went to a beach.  The island of Amager is a fairly large island, hosting the eastern parts of Copenhagen, as well as the airport.  There's some natural area as well, and of course the beach.  It was a pretty interesting site, since it was re-developed from some fairly unfortunate-looking abandoned industrial land, into a particularly 'livable' public space.  Here are some pictures:

The beach actually is two -- one being safely harbored, and the other open to the sea.   The outer beach was created by the city using a whole bunch of extra dirt they found lying around in the attic one day.  The inner water is popular with kayakers, and the outer one seems to be well-used by windsurfers.  It was cold and windy with a hint of rain, though, so few people were out. 

 Note the bike racks -- they're designed to be reminiscent of barbed wire. 

This building here explains the barbed wire look -- it's intended to be a reminder of WWII.  This is a beach house, but looks a heck of a lot like a concrete war bunker.  

There's a big natural beach area to the north. 

Further south, it slowly begins to appear -- as our guide so excitedly pointed out --  a bit like Miami Beach.  This is in the transition.  Somehow I managed to avoid getting a single picture of that area, though.  You're not missing all that much -- it's mostly just a beach with well-manicured grass behind it. 

There are cars allowed on the Miami Beach portion, but not the other part.  There are two bridges over to the second bit, but only the south bridge has allows for cars; the other is for bikes and runners/walkers, only. 


This next one doesn't have any pictures associated with it; my Buddy Network toured an area of town where, if you try to take a picture, they'll grab your camera and smash it.  It's called the Freetown Christiania, and it's an abandoned naval base.  Now, however, it's used for exactly the opposite thing -- a bunch of hippie squatters took it over 40 years ago.  It's a really cool place with a bunch of history, and if you want to know more, I suggest using Wikipedia.  Disclaimer: if you don't like reading about drugs, I'd perhaps avoid that; they've got a street devoted to the sale of cannabis.  They do, however, have strong prohibition on the sale of any other drug, so it's nice to see they're conscientious about it. 

I really like my buddy network.  We've gone on a couple other outings, as well -- I'll post about those later.  The concept is that a group of DIS students get paired with a group of young Danes, and we get to know each other and the city through their eyes.  It's a really cool concept, made even cooler by the budget they give us -- for 25 total members, they've given us about $2000.  But more on them later. 

This basically concludes the exciting things for the week.  A whole bunch of other things happened, and they were all awesome, but the past 6 weeks are kind of blending together, so I couldn't possibly tell you what all I did each week. 

I think the main point is this: Denmark is awesome, I'm really loving my time here, I've got awesome American and Danish friend-peoples here (holla!), and I'm even more excited for the next few months!

Copenhagen? Who needs that, anyways?

Travels!  Those are more fun than sitting in a kitchen doing homework, right?

I went on a trip, see.  Left last-last(-last?) Thursday morning (the 8th. Wow, I've slacked pretty hard at posting this) at the absurd hour of 0600.  Of course, first I had to commute into the city by train.  I met up with my class at Frue Plads (a square), and went west by bus. 

Our first stop was to Energinet, the Danish electricity and natural gas transmission provider, where we learned about Denmark's pushes for reduced pollution and increased renewable production.  It was an incredible experience, for two reasons.  The first was that Denmark has not only admitted that renewable production is feasible, but has actually gone ahead and said: we're gonna go ahead and make as much of that as possible, and integrate our energy production and consumption to make it AWESOME.  Well, relatively so.
^This right here, this is going to count as an in-depth analysis for the time being.  If I get bored sometime, I'll write an actual one about Danish energy policy.  It's not all roses and teacups, you know.  Until then, this will have to do. 

Anyways, this was also a really good introduction to the Danish workplace; it was, in every way, awesome.  Here's where they work:

So it's basically incredible.  I mean, the light, the windows, the large common space on the ground floor... 

Oh yeah, and here's an image from their third floor.  They've got free meals at lunch, free coffee from the most gourmet automatic machine ever, and a foosball table for... whenever they get bored?  Side note: I stole these pictures from the internet, since I forgot my camera on this stop. 

Next we went to the west coast! The west coast of Denmark, that is.  I've included a helpful diagram, because Denmark is a fairly confusing country.

This picture probably bears some explanation, I think.  The blue circlysquiggly bit is Copenhagen!  The grey line is the travel line!  It's highly accurate.  The greenish/yellowish color is our first stop at the energy dudes.  I drew the next part wrong, we actually went to the red circle, then the orange circle.  The orange circle is Lemvig, a small town in a protected natural harbor in that kinda-lake thing. Next, we went to the red circle (not to be confused with the red smiley face, which is mostly just there for fun), which is the lighthouse and the North Sea.  Then, we went to Århus (the pink circle), where we spent our second night.  Finally, we went to the purple squigglies, which was the eco-village.  We then journeyed south, then east, back to Copenhagen.

The big island is called Jutland, pronounced with a 'y'.  I live on Zealand. The one in the middle is Fynn, or something like that, I can't remember. 

So after the trip to the Energinet.dk, we left and headed for Lemvig.  In Lemvig, we went to a small, local museum.  It was similar to that really small one right near the library -- so basically a rummage sale with some signs about the items' history.  The village is on the water, so there was a great view once we climbed the hills (glacial zone, so it's not totally flat).

 

 Here's the view from Lemvig -- that's a part of the Danish countryside you're seeing there.  It's not too exciting, except for that it looks almost like it's floating.  Magic, probably.

We left Lemvig without too much regret, and made our way to the real coast!  Pictures here:

This last one is from the top of the lighthouse.  It was beautiful. 

After the lighthouse, we departed for our hostel for the night.  Thing was, it wasn't a hostel.  We're really not sure what it was, but it was probably a bed and breakfast -- a nice one.  We had half an hour to get settled in, then we headed down to dinner.

I've never eaten so well, seriously.  I neglected to bring my camera down to the main building, so I'll not try to get too in-depth about the food -- words cannot do it justice, anyways.  There was pickled herring on rye, caviar, a perch-like fried fish, salmon, and... I think there was another type of fish, but I can't remember for certain.  There was also the most amazing pork roast -- I think they broiled the fatty outer layer to make it really really crunchy, almost like bacon.  It was amazing.  And some chicken, and a few salads, too.  For dessert there was some sort of a fluffy goodness, with drizzled chocolate.  Amazing.  Oh, and they gave us free beers (only 2, and I'm sorry again, Patrick, but they were Carlsbergs), too. 

After that, some of us went out and had a bonfire.  But first we explored along the edge of the lake, into what turned out to be a bog.  It was pretty great, but a bit gross, too -- it was on the edge of a cattle pasture, so we're really not sure what we were stepping in. 

The next morning, we woke up and had a gourmet breakfast.  Again, the food was amazing.  I was introduced to Danish honey, which I'm pretty sure is whipped.  I've been repeatedly assured, however, that it's just a different color and consistency because their flowers are cooler than ours.  Whatever.

After breakfast, we went for a short walk - to some old Norse burial mounds!  I'm not sure whether -- as it is with the Indian burial mounds in the States -- it's offensive to climb them, but we did anyways.  Anne (our temporary travel professor) assured us it was ok, so we went with it.  Here's a picture! 

Wait, that was two.  Oops!  The first is a view of one of the mounds, and the second is a view of the lake from one of the mounds.  Amazingly clear day, too -- there's often a low mist or fog, so this was a nice break. 

After, we went to the Folkecenter for Renewable Energy, which is a state-supported renewables research facility.  They mostly do prototype testing and verification, but they've got some research and educational things, too.  The whole time, I was sitting there thinking "please, oh please, mention externalities or policy-based initiatives, or really anything that doesn't rely on yet another technology", but they kept on with the technology focus.  They played on the cost of energy, too -- another mistake, I think.  For the Danes, the cost of energy production hardly matters at all, since more than half of the final price is an added tax.  I suppose I can't blame them too much, though; it is a renewables research facility, after all.  They've got other places to talk about policy.  Oh! and here's a link, in case you're interested: http://www.folkecenter.dk/en/

I'm going to post a bunch of pictures now, and try to not explain them too much.  It's 9:03pm here on the second of October (probably daylight savings time, too, though I'm not really sure), and I'm leaving for London in the morning, and I still haven't packed.  So really, I should keep this shorter.

Pictures:

 Can't resist a comment on this one:  This is the only American turbine they've got right now (they accept prototypes from across the world), and it's the only turbine that they actually had to shut down.  Apparently it's just too loud, and was pissing off the neighbors.  The funny part?  It's also about 1/8 the diameter of some of the bigger, quieter ones.  And it produces 1/64th the energy (power increases with the cube of swept area, see).  Well done, America.

 Fan van!  Well, kind of.  To the extreme disappointment of the 10-year old in me (I totally had this idea when I was ten, by the way), it turns out the concept doesn't actually work.  I maintain, however, that my design would have worked -- it only impeded airflow that was already impeded by the car itself.  So really, you tell me who's smarter.

Algae!  They've also got carp growing down there; they form a symbiotic relationship, with the only inputs being some aeration and the sun.  

We left the Folkecenter that afternoon, and headed to the water, where we kayaked for an hour.  Then, we team-built for another hour, so that was fun too!  After this, we were understandably rather exhausted, and so we departed for our hostel. 

The hostel was just outside of Århus, the second-largest city in the country.  We went in to town to have dinner, then headed to the bars.  Yay, cultural immersion!  After a few hours, we headed back to the hostel to sleep. 

In the morning, we had a cultural visit, unrelated to the Sustainability course -- we went to ARos Museum.  It's a modern art museum, and had some really strange stuff.  See:

I've never really understood modern art.  Also, he's apparently not actually scared -- if you go around to see his mouth, he's smiling slyly.  So who knows what that's all about.

BUT there was something much, much more interesting to me (read: cooler).  An artist named Olafur Eliasson was commissioned to fill a floor of the building, as well as the roof.  He did so with some pretty sweet magic.  Here's pictures.

 From the outside:

A different exhibit than the one visible, actually -- this one's a large room in the interior of the building,  filled with some of that vegetable smoke.  Different sections are lit by directed, differently colored lights, so there are areas of solid color (see above), and areas of blended color.  You can scarcely see 2 feet in front of you, so it's a pretty private experience; you can wander around, flail your arms, do whatever you need to do, and the other 10 people in the room won't see you!  Pretty cool.

Lit glass disks,  swaying and making rad shadows.

Same thing here:

Here's the crowning achievement: Your Rainbow Panorama.   As you saw in the first picture of this set, it's on top of the building, and is basically a huge circle with differently colored glass panes.  Beautiful from the outside, but absolutely sublime from within.  Following are a few pictures that I particularly liked:

After the museum, we headed to our final stop: an eco-village called Økologisk Andelssamfund Hjortshøj.  We got a tour of the village, learned a bit of its history, and pined after a few of the yet-unclaimed housing plots.  They've got a farm, communal living, and a bunch of productive perma-culture (fruit trees, mostly).  Most surprising were the fig trees that a few of them had growing in their well-insulated and south-facing, but unheated three-season rooms.  I had never thought you'd be able to grow them so far north, even inside. 

We helped them out for a while by pulling weeds.  It was hard work, but rather satisfying; we ended up with massive piles of weeds, so it was a very tangible outcome.  In return, they offered us some absolutely fantastic cake, as well as some cookies, bread, and jams -- all of it homemade.  I think the most controversial (read: parent-angering) thing I ate was the bread, which had a good 30 different grains in it -- including hemp seed.  Woah, woah, I know -- illegal and all.  But it's actually not; hemp seed is really quite healthy and has none of the illegal bits in it, so it's all good.

And finally, I've reached the end.  I sure do hope you enjoyed reading this, or at least quit reading long ago -- if you didn't do either of those things, I sincerely apologize.  Unless you skipped to the end -- that's just uncool, dude. 

I'll post one or two more before I head for London, hoping to cover everything between this and that.