Copin' with Environmental Issues

Aside from being one of the happiest nations on Earth, Denmark also is one of the most environmentally friendly. When you first land in Copenhagen, one of the most salient things you can see from the air is a series of wind turbines anchored off the coast. These turbines (which can easily be seen from other areas of the city too) send a blatant message to anyone who might not know: "Copenhagen is going green." This environmental consciousness can also be seen in other, more subtle aspects of Danish culture too. For example, most buildings don't have extensive air conditioning; rather, most Danes conserve energy by opening large windows and doors designed to provide ventilation to their homes. I've also heard from other students that the city of Copenhagen is planning to completely redesign their energy and fuel system in the next decade or two; even now, electric cars like the Tesla Roadster are becoming pretty popular in European countries, and the Danes hopes to capitalize on this by being proactive and updating their energy and fuel infrastructure early. All of this provides a perfect background for the class that I'll be taking the second session - Sustainable Technology and Culture.

On Tuesday, I went to my first class of the Session 2; as it turned out, I knew a few people in the class (including Sam, a guy from my last class named Christof, and a girl I had met earlier named Ellen) - which was a relief to know, since I wouldn't have such a hard time matching names with faces again. The material we covered during the lecture, though - corporate social responsibility, or CSR - was a bit over my head since I hadn't taken the CSR class from the previous session, while those who had taken that class seemed much more confident and knowledgeable about the material. After class, I met a guy from Massachusetts named Albert who was also living in my kollegium; Sam and I showed him around the city for a while, then I went back to Sam's kollegium and chatted with him while Albert went back to Hoffmans. After a little while, we all went to a Turkish buffet downtown with the rest of our class; I ended up meeting a few people (including a guy named Max and a Canadian girl named Kelsey), and a group of us (me, Sam, Albert, Kelsey, Max, and Christof) all tried heading to a bar to see one of Sam's friends play some live music. However, we couldn't find the place so we all sat down at a small hole-in-the-wall cafe and chatted for a while before we parted ways. After heading back to Hoffmans, I read for a while and went to bed.

Windmills Off the Coast in Copenhagen

Wednesday's schedule was about as jam-packed as Tuesday's; after sitting through our daily class lecture, our class went on a trip to a Danish alternative living arrangement called Hyldespjældet. At first, I thought it would be akin to a commune, but when we arrived I found that it actually had very good living arrangements that were even better kept than many of the apartments and kollegiums I had seen around the city. The man who showed us around the facilities told us all about the sustainable practices that the residents kept; they ranged from a communal chicken pen (which was the first program to be instituted there) to storage of urine in underground tanks in place of using an unsanitary sewer system to growing plants on the roofs of buildings to increase the buildings' durability and increase greenspace. One house in Hyldespjældet was run completely on solar energy, which I found fascinating. After the class returned from the trip utterly exhausted, I went with Albert, Max, and two other guys from our class named Jason and Dominic to start work on an upcoming class project. Then, we all went to a DIS-sponsored dinner at a local restaurant called Riz Raz, and from there Albert and I went to visit people from our class and my Positive Psych class at Gronjords before heading over to a DIS-sponsored social event at the DIS Studenterhusen, or Student House. We all headed back after a while to crash at Hoffmans.

Our Guide Showing the Class Sustainable Housing in Hyldespjældet

On Thursday, I woke up early and felt terrible; my allergies had been growing steadily worse over the past week, and that morning I could barely breathe through my nose. I decided to get some extra sleep, but slept through my alarm and ended up arriving to class late due to heavy traffic. When I arrived, I apologized profusely to the instructor, but she was very understanding and even suggested some steps I might take to find better allergy medications while in Denmark. As it turned out, I didn't miss much - only part of a guest lecture that the main instructor had scheduled only because she had a doctor's appointment earlier that day. After lunch, I went with a group of other students (Sam, a girl from Hoffmans named Ivy, and another guy named Wilson) to visit LiqTech, a cleantech company that we'd chosen to present on and write a paper about. As we learned, LiqTech produces silicon carbide filters for diesel engines and liquid waste treatment. We met with the founder and CEO of the company, Lasse Andreassen, and got the chance to talk to him about the history of LiqTech, its products, the sustainable practices it uses, and the demand for its goods and services. He then gave us a tour of LiqTech's facilities; the company was actually much smaller than we had thought. Afterward, we returned to our kollegiums, and I got a lot of grocery shopping done before cooking dinner, reading, and heading in for the night.