Back to the Grind

Returning to Denmark after spending an entire week hopping from hotel to hotel and visiting cleantech companies every day was definitely a relief; by the very end of the study tour I had started falling asleep on public transportation and I was more than ready for a break. I had become accustomed to Copenhagen's culture, atmosphere, geography, and transit system - so my return seemed like a homecoming of sorts. 

The first weekend back passed in a flash, however; not only did I have plenty of work to catch up on, I also tried to fit in a bit of sightseeing. On Saturday, after I got up early and starting work on a paper with Albert at Paludan, we both went on a tour of the main factory of Carlsberg (Denmark's oldest and most esteemed brewery). The tour wasn't quite what we had expected, but it was cool nonetheless; we got to see the world's largest collection of unopened beer bottles from around the globe, went through a museum chronicling Carlsberg's history, got a glance at the processes of malting and brewing, saw the Carlsberg founder's personal sculpture garden, and visited the stables nearby. We also happened to see a couple girls from our class (named Nicole and Krista) after the tour. After chatting with them for a while, we headed back downtown to see if any shops were open (sadly they weren't), and headed back to Hoffmans. Later in the night, everyone from Hoffmans went out and chilled downtown for a while, but Jared, Courtney, and I all felt hella tired and quickly called it a night.

The following day, I spent the majority of my time working on my Statkraft paper at Paludan; I happened to see Sara, Eszter, Albert, and Kelsey there too, who were all working on papers as well. Later in the night, I went back to my place to get some reading done for the next day's class, made dinner, and crashed.

Boats in the Copenhagen Canals

The next day was very eventful; we spent the entire class period working on a group exercise that modeled the European energy and emissions situation using Lego bricks (which was fitting, since Lego was founded in Denmark and is still the main toy company there today). The objective of the exercise was to reconstruct the European energy grid to reduce both emissions and energy consumption by the year 2020. However, my group (which represented Southern Europe) did pretty poorly since we put way too much emphasis on reducing energy consumption form heating costs rather than from transportation - but it was a learning experience, after all. The exercise ran from 10 AM until 6 PM though (or 10:00 through 18:00 in European time), which killed most of the time I could have spent on sightseeing or getting other work done. After class I did explore the city and got some window-shopping done with Albert and Kelsey; after that, I wrote up some postcards to friends back in the States, then headed back to Hoffmans to get dinner and do some work.

The Rundetårn ("Round Tower") in Copenhagen

Tuesday was spent entirely at a field study to a lab called Risø, which is Denmark's National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy. A number of the people in the class didn't show up for the field study, however, because they didn't get the memo from our instructor about where to meet. We first received a few lectures by Ph.D. students interning at Risø, who explained to us about what sort of projects they were working on. The primary focus of most of the research was the development of resistant fuel cells that could convert existing hydrocarbon fuel into electrical energy in a more sustainable way than by existing methods. One of the students, originally from Germany, gave an excellent presentation that everyone in the class enjoyed (although the girls in the class were also captivated by the guy's charm and good looks). Afterward, a few Risø workers gave us a tour of the labs and afterward showed us a house they had built that was closely monitored by computers to provide the greatest energy efficiency. They also showed us a number of renewable-energy-producing windmills, ranging from early models built in the 90s to the most recently developed windmill technology. After we all returned, I went and visited Christianshavn with Albert, Philip, Alec, and a few others from our class; then, after getting some work done back at the kollegium, I went over to Keops (Alec's kollegium) to wish him a happy birthday. His girlfriend had baked a cake (which was delicious), but sadly nobody else showed up since Keops was a bit out of the way. The two of us hung out for a bit, then while waiting for the night bus to pick me up I met a Middle-Eastern foreign exchange student who had come to Copenhagen to work on his thesis. I helped him get his bearings, he thanked me profusely, and I finally returned to Hoffmans.

A Windmill at Risø