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!