All Packed Up Again

All packed up again and ready to go to Seattle for my interview tomorrow. Leaving tonight, will be back Saturday. I've prepared a talk and practiced it yesterday for my lab groupies, got some good feedback and now it's awesome spectacular and includes a halftime show with ponies and acrobats. I'll be back when I'm back!

Home Sweet Home!

My fully clothed (kung-fu) coworker and I made it home safe and sound on Friday night, 6:00 Minneapolis time (1 am Copenhagen time). I managed to fight off my jetlag and stay up until a whopping 9:30 pm, slept well through the night, got up and taught a spin class early Sat morning, trashed out our apartment completely in an amazingly short amount of time, then crashed sometime Sat afternoon. I feel much better today, although my apetite is still pretty screwed up. I have to pull myself together and get ready for my next trip - my big interview in Seattle. I leave Thursday night, and have to prepare a talk to give Friday morning. I also have to read up on this guy's research, as well as my own, so I can sound as brainy as possible during my interview. Soon I have to get my jetlagged butt into the lab because I have to meet with a couple of undergrads this week that I'll be supervising. I can't remember for the life of me what projects I was planning to have them do a month ago when I agreed to take them so I need to get refreshed and get ready. Meanwhile, I still have the rest of the holiday weekend to get over my jetlag, get caught up on the laundry, clean up all the trash I've scattered everywhere, and get caught up on my blogging.

Blogging first.

Below are two things I've been meaning to do since I got back: the List Of Unimportant Differences Between Copenhagen and Minneapolis, and a few select pictures from our trip. Have fun! Oh, and thanks for your continued enthusiasm for my blog, it keeps me inspired to document my fantastic adventures.

Unimportant Differences b/w Copenhagen and Minneapolis

You've been wondering about it, so here it is:

J-Funk and Kung-Fu Co-worker's List of Ways Copenhagen is Unimportantly Different from Minneapolis.

1. There are NO SUV's (although at the end of the trip we did see a few along a fancy wide road in a hoity-toity neighborhood).

2. Most of the escalators are flat.

3. The toilets flush in all sorts of weird ways, sometimes not immediately obvious and sometimes with several options.

4. Traffic lights turn yellow AFTER red (and again after green)

5. The red 'don't walk' signals never flash - they just go from green to red and you better hope you're safely on the sidewalk when it happens.

6. Bicycle riders are more hazardous to pedestrians than cars.

7. It costs $10 for an ounce of herring, 3 raw onion loops and half a slice of buttered bread, and $3 for a small bottle of water. It was the best herring I ever had though.

8. Hotel rooms are the size of a closet, generally don't have private toilets, and showers can be free-standing and anywhere.

9. Horse tack is sold at the grocery store in the middle of the city - this includes all the goods; bridles, full-seat breeches, saddle pads, polo wraps, boots, etc. I was in heaven. Apparently horses go grocery shopping in Copenhagen as often as people.

10. Almost everything closes at 6 pm on weeknights, 3 pm on Saturdays and all day Sunday. If you want something to do during those times, you go to Sweden.

11. All the street names are unpronouncable, even when a native speaker says it very slowly several times, and therefore immediately forgottable. This makes it impossible to navigate without a map open at all times.

12. Doors going into buildings PUSH instead of PULL. This can be particularly embarrassing, especially when it takes three tries to get buzzed into your hotel because you were improperly operating the door.

13. Two trains going in opposite directions can miraculously end up in the same place; one train going in one direction can miraculously end up in two different places. I'm totally serious on this one, both things happened to us.

Select Scandinavia Pictures

My dad found out that the term 'mobroll' is for posting pictures as you're traveling - I couldn't do this because I didn't bring my computer with me, in fact I was lucky to figure out how to recharge my camera while we were there, but now that I'm home I'm going to pick a few out and put them up so there's no doubt I was there.

First the hotel. This is actually our second room in Copenhagen, that had a private bathroom, so unfortunately I don't have a picture of the free-standing shower that totally freaked me out. The first room was about the same size though so you get an idea of how small it was (the picture is taken from outside the doorway, standing as far back as I could get). Despite the small rooms, the hotel was very comfy and nice, with beautiful curtains and attentive service and a fabulous breakfast buffet (featuring the usual smorrebrod - open faced sandwiches). The beds were also made all nice when we got there, but it was dark so I had to take the pictures in the morning after we had messed everything up. My fully-clothed co-worker throws some wild parties, despite being fully clothed. She knows kung-fu you know.

Next, the peacock in the Frederickberg garden. I could show you pictures of the garden, which was a spectacularly groomed piece of work, but the peacock was what really got me excited. It was just hanging out, taking a break, perfectly relaxed and happy to have his picture taken. That's what I want to be in my next life, a peacock in the Frederickberg garden.

Below the peacock is the Copenhagen public library. The new part is right on the canal and has huge windows that look out over the canal (and the outside is made of imported marble, so it looks spectacular from the water). The new part is attached directly onto the remodeled old part, so you can't tell the difference from the inside. This picture was taken from the old part, looking out over the canal past the weird straight escalators that take you from the first floor to the second. Man, if we had libraries like this in the states our literacy rate would be a whole ten points higher (like Denmark's!).

I have a few pictures of the Fredericksberg castle (in Hellrod), and all of them are spectacular because everything in and around the castle was spectacular - a novice photographer's dream come true. The first is of the back of the castle, taken from the castle gardens which are past the moat. The front of the castle was equally spectacular but I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole dazzling spectacle in one frame. The second is of the Great Hall, which has been redone to look like it did before it was destroyed by fire in the 1600's. Tapestries on the wall were remade, the musician's stage (black, in the middle right) was recarved and rehung, etc. It was breathtaking. The Fredericksberg castle, like many great old buildings in Denmark, was commissioned by King Christian IV, who also commissioned the Kronberg castle in Helsingor (near our hotel during the conference). Both castles were of similar architecture, except the Fredericksberg castle was turned into a museum in the 1800's and restored, and is also a little bit bigger. The Kronberg castle still has a Great Hall, but it isn't nearly as dazzling although it still is huge, covered with old georgeous pictures, and has impressive architecture, tile, and ornamentation. It is still rented out for large events although I wouldn't think it would be all that great because it smells a little like very old mold.

I can't help but post a picture of one of several grey ducks we saw. In Minnesota, natives have a weird version of the old 'duck duck goose' we used to play as kids - they for some reason call it 'duck duck grey duck.' I have always been a little confused by this strange deviation but I think this picture explains it. You see, THEY HAVE GREY DUCKS in Scandinavia, and I've got a photo to proove it.

Below the grey duck is a picture of a viking ship from the Viking Ship museum in Roskilde. On the left side of the picture, though you can't see it, the windows look out over the Roskilde Fjord where the ships were recovered. They recovered five, and this is one of the smaller ones.

Last, but not least, is a picture of the famous Nyhavn "New Port" canal in Copenhagen. It was the center of all shipping into Copenhagen and is a prime piece of real estate filled with old wooden ships and spectacular waterfront housing. One of the houses is the former home of the famous H.C. Anderson fairy tale writer. This picture is taken from the canal during a canal boat tour we took on our last day before the conference.

Malmo Mia

For our last day in Europe we took the train over to Sweden, which is about a 30 min train ride from Copenhagen. First we had to get from Helsingor, where the conference is, to Copenhagen, drop off our luggage, then get back on the train to Sweden luggage-free, so it actually took a little while and we didn't make it to Malmo until early afternoon. Malmo is the town closest to Copenhagen that is right on the Oresund part of the Atlantic ocean between the two cities. It's a beautiful town and we had a spectacular time looking at the Malmo castle (built by Christian II, way earlier than the other two castles we looked at), shopping in the much less busy pedestrian malls, and visiting the parks. Like Copenhagen, Malmo had a spectacular public library, and both libraries boasted an older-than-the-USA part with a modern and huge addition added onto it. We were amazed.

A friend of mine, who posts here frequently as austinboy, is originally from Sweden and sent us some recommendations for our journey there. He recommended: cheese in a tube from the grocery store, blood pudding (real blood), candy, chocolate, pizza, kebab, cake and cheesecake. Noticeably, no places to go or see were included on his list. While we nixed the tube cheese and blood pudding, and were already full on candy, chocolate, cake and cheesecake from our stay at the fabulous hotel during the Enterococci meeting, we did try Swedish pizza and it was very good. I think they have a major advantage over us on their pizza because their cheese is so heavenly. They also put some interesting things on it like shrimp and mussels.

Pictures:
Malmo Castle









Pedestrian Mall












Windmill in the castle park

My aunt the star

My aunt, who is a famous clarinetist in a bluegrass/klezmer band called the Klezmer Mountain Boys, has started a message board on her website for postings about her adventures at home (in NYC) and away. I will be checking it regularly to get updates on her glamorous life of stardom. If you stop by be sure to post and let her know it's getting looked at.

Enterococci, enterococci, everywhere!!

Despite the tragedies associated with hurricane Katrina, we had a fantastic time at the enterococcus meeting this week. Our hotel was amazing (picture at left, the Kornberg castle made famous by Shakespeare's Hamlet can be seen in the very distant background, upper left), and we had a high-class seaside room and were fed like kings. The science was also very good and I learned a great deal. We finished the conference with a bus trip to the Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen and had a three-course feast at the NIMB restaurant. The Tivoli is an amusement park right in the center of the city, and the restaraunt, which is in the Tivoli, was one of the fanciest I've ever been to and provided us with a full staff of waiters and waitresses, a different kind of wine with each course and increasingly yummy and beautiful plates of food. We got back to the hotel at 1:15 am, drunk and wired, and completely pleased with the whole show.