Denmark has some cool public parks that embrace the nature around them. My host family and I went to one called Eghjorten naturlegeplads. Naturlegeplads roughly translates to "Nature playground." The park is right next to a forest, with a group of shelters, fire pits, and fun things to climb and play on. Gnarly trees near the front were ideal for climbing up, with plenty of thick twisting branches. You can see Laura and Mathias comfortably sitting on top the tree in one of the photos above. There's also a sort of obstacle course where you try to keep your balance by walking a few hundred meters on a path made of fallen trees.
We ate a lunch of pølser, Danish hotdogs, with "French" hotdog buns. Instead of being sliced, these buns just have a hole running through the middle for the hot dogs. I introduced the family to Smores as well. Laura had only heard about them on TV. We made them in a Danish style, with an open face, and called them s'morebrød, which sounds like the traditional Danish open-face sandwich called smørrebrød.
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As our ferry sailed through the Oslofjord, I was amazed at the number of cranes scattered throughout downtown Oslo. Cranes are an indicator of investment, and indeed development is happening in Norway. Some of it is sustainable, some is not.
I'll start with the positive. Almost all of Norway's electricity is from hydropower stored in dams on top of mountains.With the highest number of electric vehicles per capita in the world, drivers of electric vehicles are running almost entirely on clean energy. Electric vehicles like the Tesla Model S are so popular in part because charging infrastructure is extensive in Oslo. And what's more, if you buy an electric car you get a tax break that prevents you from paying the extremely high taxes to purchase and own a standard car. Yet at the same time, Norway is still heavily reliant on its oil production in the North Sea. My friends and I discussed this contradiction as we got lost in the city, finding interesting architecture and human sculptures all along the way. We also found burritos, which aren't so easy to come by in Copenhagen. Denmark has hygge, Norway has something called friluftsliv. Literally, this word means fresh air life, and it is used to describe spending time outside in open nature. Our class waited together by a fire for the Northern Lights that never came, but we definitely got a taste of wild, open Norwegian nature. We stayed in cozy little cabins at top of one mountain, and at the base of another. Where are the Faroe Islands? Six months ago I had no idea what, or where, the Faroe Islands were. They're a group of 18 islands (technically a volcanic archipelago) in the middle of the Norwegian Sea, just between Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. Sort of like a mini Hawaii in the Atlantic. The islands are legally under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Denmark, though they have their own government, are not part of the EU, and have a closer connection to Icelandic and Norwegian culture. In fact, it was Norwegian Vikings who took power over the islands around the end of the first millenium, before which it was sparsely populated by Irishmen for a few hundred years. It's a joke that the seasick Vikings couldn't make it all the way to Iceland or Greenland, and so they just stayed on the Faroes to fish and raise sheep. The idea When looking for a travel destination for my weeklong travel break, I wanted a place with unspoiled nature. I thought about Greenland, Svalbard, Norway, and Iceland, but when reading about the Faroe Islands over Christmas, something sparked in me. I got really excited about going, although I thought it might be a crazy idea to go there alone during late winter. I shelved the idea for a while. After being in Copenhagen for a few weeks, I decided to take the leap and buy my plane ticket. Suddenly it became real, and I was excited enough to figure out the logistics of the trip: booking rooms on Airbnb, renting a car, and reading up on the hikes the islands have to offer. If you decide to take to the Faroe Islands, which I highly recommend if you like to experience rugged nature, then there are a few things I learned, sometimes the hard way, during my journey that might help you. Staying in a Faroese home Airbnb is where it's at. I would not have gotten a good feel of Faroese culture if I didn't rent rooms from Faroese people. I stayed in two places during my trip: two nights in the capital city of Tórshavn, and two nights in the northeastern village of Norðragøta. Although the dramatic nature was my biggest selling point for going, the best part of my trip was was drinking coffee and chatting with my Faroese hosts. In Norðragøta, my host was the founder of G! Festival, which is the largest music festival in the Faroe Islands and happens each summer near his home. Jón had great wisdom to share, and told me stories about Faroese weather, history, and politics. He also pointed me towards a few great Faroese music artists, which came in handy on the drive. See the section at the bottom of this post for more on Faroese music. In Tórshavn, I stayed with an architect who was a delight to chat with over a big pot of coffee. In the morning, I saw her leave and figured she was going to work, but then she came back with a bag full of fresh rolls and breakfast food. We had a nice conversation over breakfast. Like many Faroese people, she spent a good amount of time in Denmark where she studied and worked in Copenhagen for over 20 years. Articulating the difference between the Faroes and Denmark, she used the word "dramatic" to describe the Faroese landscape and culture. It's hard to reduce something as complex as culture to a single word. Nevertheless, the roughness of the cliffs, the waterfalls turned upside down by the wind, and the timbre of Eivør's electronic folk ballads did evoke intense feelings. Johanna is planning to move to a small city soon where she's thinking of building her own house with a shipping container. I hope she does and that she rents a room there. Renting a car and getting around Most of the cars in Europe have manual transmissions, including Faroe Islands. Manuals are not the only option but they're the gentlest on the wallet and it made the trip even more of an adventure to get experience with a manual. The road systems in the Faroes underwent a recent expansion, so even remote villages are well connected with nice roads. There are a few things that made it different, though. Some of the smaller roads and tunnels are one lane but allow two-way traffic. How is this possible? asked the frightened Zade as a truck approached him in a tunnel. You see, there are passing places every ~100 meters, where you pull over to yield to the cars with right of way. Right of way is typically well marked by signs before the tunnel, but you should always yield to large vehicles, since they are too large to pull over. Additionally, uphill traffic has right of way. Failing to find first gear several times was an exercise in coping with embarrassment, but all in all, I think renting a car was well worth it. I got to see so much more of the islands than I would have otherwise. The public transportation system is surprisingly extensive, but the buses between villages simply don't come frequently enough during the winter to give you much freedom. The weather There's a saying that if you want to don't like the weather while you're on the Faroe Islands, just wait twenty minutes and the weather will change. This is barely an exaggeration. I saw rain, snow, freezing rain, fog, and wind, oh the wind... The Faroe Islands greeted me with 40mph winds. My rain jacket whipped like a flag in a hurricane. The rain droplets literally stung my face. I stumbled with each gust. The wind was not nearly this bad the whole time, but gusts on the mountains could frequently get up to 20 meters/second at this time of year, even if just for a few seconds. The winds are not nearly so bad in the summer. It's a great idea to download the app called Windy. It gives very accurate local hourly forecasts for wind speeds and gusts, along with temperature and tides. Definitely download the app and check your destinations before heading out just so you know what to expect. Make sure to also bring layers. The Faroe Islands never really get too cold; in late February it was normally around 2 to 5 degrees C (high 30s Fahrenheit). But layers are good because the wind chill can be brutal at times, while sometimes you might want to shed layers during a long hike. One more pro tip: waterproof gear. My waterproof rain jacket and backpack cover were life savers on hikes. Make sure you also have waterproof shoes or boots. I underestimated the importance of this, and within the first kilometer of my hike, my hiking boots were completely saturated with cool (luckily not cold) water. Eating Faroese Food The most famous of Faroese restaurants is called KOKS. It just got a Michelin star recently. Unfortunately KOKS is closed on Monday when I was there, so I wasn't able to make it. But that was no reason to be sad. There's a group of four restaurants in the heart of Tórshavn that each articulate Faroese cuisine in different ways. Ræst, for example, features traditional dried and fermented lamb and fish. I heard that the food is the most authentic of all restaurants here, but that some of the pungent flavors can be hard to get used to. Try Barbara to get full from the world-renowned Faroese fish. Aarstova prepares Faroese foods using a French cooking tradition. I went to Aarstova since it was the only one I could reserve a dinner for one on a Monday night. They each have online booking. I started my five course meal with a gin and tonic. It started out with While Aarstova was great, it's not something I could eat every day. A five course meal costs 750DKK, around $100. For day to day eating, I bought ingredients at a grocery store. They had some great smoked salmon which I put on top of rugbrød, Danish rye bread. I took these sandwiches with me on drives, and also took some chocolate, granola, and a thermos of hot tea with me on hikes. Listening to Faroese music Each July the Faroe Islands has its largest music festival in the town of Gota. I was fortunate enough to stay with the founder and chair of the G! Festival at his home in Gota for two nights. He introduced me to some of the Faroe's best artists, including Eivør. I downloaded her album and then played it on repeat as I drove around the islands. She started out singing more traditional Faroese and Icelandic ballads, then transitioned to a more modern pop vibe, singing in English. Last year she came out with two albums, Bridges and Slør. The latter is a mesmerizing album where she reconnects with her folk roots, singing only in Faroese yet incorporating a dark electronic feel. She describes the recurring themes of this album to be "wanderlust and the longing for freedom," making it the right kind of music to soak in as you wind around the dramatic rocky slopes, passing waterfalls and rough blue seas. How to get 4G LTE literally everywhere, affordably.
I sat next to a Faroese man named Hans on the plane. No big surprise that he was Faroese - I was one of the only non-Faroese people onboard. He could tell that I was obviously not a local- perhaps because he had never seen me before, or perhaps because of the broken Danish I used to respond to the Faroese flight attendant. We got to talking, and he asked the names of my hosts and quickly searched them on Facebook. "Oh yeah, I know Jón... Oh yeah, I know Terji." With just 50,000 people on the Faroe Islands, the people are quite well connected. It was really helpful to talk to Hans before touching down and being on my own. He works for a telecom company in the Faroes, and he convinced me to buy a SIM card. I was a bit skeptical since he has vested interests in Faroese telecom, but it was actually great advice. A Faroese SIM card costs a mere 100 DKK (about $15) with 1GB data and more than enough talk and text preloaded. This is great value for money, considering my Danish service with TDC would have cost a whopping 18DKK per Megabyte for data roaming. In fact, during my first few minutes after touching down on the islands, I used my phone to load a webpage in an attempt to quickly teach myself to drive a manual car. My phone loaded 6MB of data, costing me about $15 for that one web page... So yeah, buying an SIM card is totally worth it, especially because the 4G LTE coverage is impeccable on the islands. While hiking at the top of one of the highest peaks on the islands, I could still send Snapchats. Aarhus was just voted the Cultural Capital of Europe 2017 by the European Union. My host dad is a native of this city, situated on the east coast of Jutland (mainland Denmark). He and the rest of the family lived there for some years before moving to Zealand (the island Copenhagen is on). This weekend I got a "speed tour" of the city. Going alone, I never would have been able to see much of the city, but my host family knew exactly where to go and how to get around. Here are some essential places to hit up in Aarhus. Aarhus Botanical GardensJust a quick walk from the Old Town (Den Gamle By), and it's free! Great architecture, awesome treehouse, lots of exotic plants, and fish that eat your dead skin. Den Gamle By (Old Town)A quick walk down the hill through the outdoor botanical gardens takes you to the Old Town. There is an entrance fee for adults, but students get a discount. This part of the city is split into sections from different eras, including the 17th century, the 1920s, and the 1970s, as if everything was frozen in time. Warning: there are some wax figures in a few buildings that scared me to death, so be on your toes. Dokk1 (Aarhus Public Library)The new public library and culture center is built mostly in concrete, yet it doesn't have the same cold feeling as its brutalist cousins. It really feels designed for people, and is meant for doing a lot for than just reading. There are playgrounds inside and out, an air hockey table, an electronic soccer court, great ramps for accessibility, and lots of natural light. Every corner of the place has something to play with or climb on. ARoS Kunstmuseum (Art Museum)Aarhus was once called Aros during the early Viking era. Now, Aros is the name of the contemporary art museum. The building has a famous circular rainbow walkway, "Your Rainbow Panorama" on the roof, an incredible experience to walk through. The lower level exhibition features huge sculptures: a helicopter, a chandelier, a gun, an armchair, all scaled up and constructed from common items like plastic cutlery, feathers, rotary phones, clothes irons, and pills. Åboulevarden (Canal Boulevard)In the city center is a quaint walking street called Åboulevard running along the canal, with foot bridges, nice public spaces, and bars, restaurants, and cafes all over. The area is cozy during summer, I hear, when it's warmer and livelier. I still thought it was worth a few photos, and I enjoyed the Italian food and beer we had there. Moesgaard Museum As we drove out of Aarhus and to the south, we entered a hilly forest. My host family calls this forest their old back yard, because they used to live right at the edge of it. As we drove on, a clearing of grass emerged, exposing a tall hill. Built into the hill is a concrete building, blending in to the surroundings with its grassy, sloped roof. The Moesgaard Museum is a newly built museum of human archaeology and ethnography. It's all about humans and our evolution over time. The main hall inside features a staircase with a progression of human ancestors, with Lucy the Australopithecus at the top, and Homo sapiens (us) at the bottom. The exhibits included one on the Stone Age, the Vikings, war, and one of the world's best preserved bog bodies.
Sometimes learning theory in class can leave me needing something more. It's hard for things to really make an impression on me if I can't visualize it. Renewable energy was one of those things I've heard about and learned about over the last few years, but there was still a lot left to the imagination. Last week while our Core Course visited Ærø, we got up close and personal with renewable energy projects, including a wind farm and district heating plants that use solar energy and biomass. The wind farm was my favorite part. I've only seen wind turbines in pictures or from a distance in a car or plane. This time we drove right up to the base of the turbine and went inside. Ærø is a windy island, and these turbines were placed on the coastline where wind speeds allow the turbines to reach their max capacity. Being beneath one as it turns is both intimidating and incredible. The three wings of the turbine are each 40 meters (over 120 feet) long and they make hauntingly muted whoosh as the wind pushes them around. What I found most interesting about this particular wind farm is that they are owned by citizens of the island. When the farm was developed, community members could invest in the idea by buying shares of the farm. Electricity consumers pay their bills to a local utility, and the utility pays the shareholders each month for as long as the windmill is standing (expected to be at least 20 years). The project pays back in 8 years, so for the next 12+ years shareholders receive a profit. It was also amazing to see solar energy being used to heat homes. This was done via district heating, a system employed in dense areas where a single, large community furnace supplies hot water to its its customers for use in radiators and water heaters. District heating is very common in Denmark, especially in cities. About 60% of home have district heating. It also exists in the US, but almost exclusively for large commercial buildings in urban centers.
This district heating plant is special because it heats water with solar radiation, through a vast array of solar collectors. Solar collectors look at first like electric solar panels, but instead of producing electricity, they pass water through heated plates to make it warm. This heat is then transferred to homes and other buildings across the nearby town through underground pipes. Since Denmark doesn't receive that much sun in the winter, hot water collected in the summer is stored in HUGE tanks (tens of millions of liters), and the heat is used throughout the year. Even now in February, water in these tanks is still warm from summer! Heat loss is about 25%. Solar covers around 50-55% of total heat demand throughout the year. The rest of the demand is supplied by burning wood chips (see the mountain of wood chips in the photo above), and a small proportion is created using a geothermal heat pump, which transfers heat from the ground. Last week was Core Course Week. That means instead of having class like usual, we spent the entire week with our primary course. My core course is Sustainable Development in Northern Europe. Fittingly, we experienced examples of sustainable development across Copenhagen. Later in the week we travelled to Ærø, a beautiful island in the Southwest of Denmark. Ærø has some inspiring projects and initiatives, not to mention amazing landscapes. There, we toured an Organic Farm and saw a number of renewable energy projects. But back to Copenhagen. Here are a few quick takeaways:
So each Wednesday at DIS, we don't have class. Well, not in the classroom, at least. Wednesday is Field Visit day, which means our classes take visits to relevant sites around the Copenhagen area.
One of my classes is called Business Strategies in the Transition towards a Sustainable Economy. In class, we discuss what it would take to grow the economy without exploiting the environment beyond its boundaries. We talk about opportunities for businesses to create value with less environmental impact. This week our class visited Unilever Danmark AS, the Danish branch of Unilever, a global company with a huge number of brands, including Dove, Axe, Lipton, Hellman's, Ben & Jerry's, Knorr, and the list goes on. The company has a good environmental track record, many thanks to CEO Paul Polman, who has put sustainability at the center of the company's strategy. The company has set high standards for its many suppliers across the world, and is working on initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use all while continuing to deliver growth. During our visit, we heard a presentation from Henrico Drent, Managing Director at Unilever Denmark A/S. Here are some interesting points that came out of the presentation and our Q&A session with Henrico:
In the weeks before I left for Copenhagen, I experienced a bit of anxiety about spending four months in Denmark. Would I get along with my host family? Would they like me? How would the commute actually be? Would I like the food? Would I still be happy with my choice to stay in a homestay?
But as my host family met me at the airport, a huge wave washed away my anxiety, revealing my excitement. It was hard to sit through a 20 minute arrival presentation knowing my host family was outside waiting. I couldn't wait to start getting to know them. We took the Regional Train from the airport and up the coast to the small town of Snekkersten where my host family lives. It's a cute little town next to Helsingør, which is where Shakespeare's Hamlet takes place (as I was quickly informed my my host mom's father). The house is close to the Øresund, the body of water between Denmark and Sweden, and in fact Helsingør is the closest point between the two countries, just a 20 minute ferry ride away! There are two children in the family, Mathias who is 11, and Laura who is 13. I'm impressed by how well they can all speak English. Before today, Mathias was quite shy around me. Last night my host mom told me that he talks about me in Danish when I'm not around, but that he waits to know people before opening up, and the language barrier was perhaps making this process slower. Things changed today, though. This morning after breakfast the kids and I played in the living room. This was the first time we were all really silly together, and it made a difference both in my relationship with the kids and in Mathias' confidence speaking English. My host dad said that today Mathias was talking to him in English while they were alone! I guess these living room wars will have to become a weekly thing. I am confident that I have made the right decision by choosing the homestay. Not only do I get to fully experience Danish culture, but I get to be an older brother for the next four months. I will miss Pittsburgh. It’s nice being so close to home, having my friends nearby, and also just having some incredible restaurants at arm’s reach. I know Copenhagen is the epicenter of New Nordic Cuisine, and is the home to the World’s Best Restaurant, but since spending $300 on a 15-course meal is not the most financially sound decision for me to make, and since I’ve grown so fond of Pittsburgh food, I decided to take one last trip to one of the Burgh’s finest, and most affordable, places to grab a quick lunch. Las Palmas, a cool little taco stand in South Oakland, has amazing meat tacos along with a cart offering tons of toppings. This time, I got steak and chorizo tacos, and topped them both with avocado sauce (a creamier version of guac), hot salsa, cilantro, and lime. Until next time, Las Palmas. |
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