Day 3 in Denmark - 31st August

Today was an awesome day. Really long as well – but great. I initially thought we had to to leave by 8, and so woke up by 6 – but turned out we had to only leave at 9. so spent some time after breakfast just walking around a little bit nearby. The weather was perfect today – sun was out, slightly cloudy skies, but that just added to the beauty. Went to the city hall – was ok, some sort of art exhibition going on in there.



There was a statue of Hans Christian Andersen outside the hall – interestingly, in Copenhagen, they’ve made a lot of stuff, such as statues, spires of buildings etc with copper, which gets oxidized to give it this strange greenish tinge – so looks quite interesting. Walked a little bit on some of the cobbled stone streets – I’m really starting to like those! I’m sure they’re quite bad for cars/bikes – but they certainly look very nice!



We were then picked up at 9 by Sergio, who works for Niras as well. He had a couple of his students with him – one Russian, one French. And he himself is half Italian and half English – so at this point we had a highly international group with everyone representing different countries! We took the train to this town called Roskilde about 30 minutes away. On the way we had quite an interesting conversation – this Sergio dude was quite interesting, very Italian in the way he spoke/behaved! Also seemed very passionate about his work – he’s a specialist in ventilation and air conditioning – at a very philosophical level – actually looking at how one can merge tradition and modernity, use the available knowledge in a useful way, and so on. So we had an interesting talk about knowledge in general, how in spite of its availability, most people don’t tend to use it, why that might be the case, the inertia of people to change, and so on. At Roskilde we saw one of his projects very briefly, where he took us to this office building being renovated, in which he was trying to apply some of his principles. He himself stayed just across the road from there, so he took us through his house very quickly, so we could kind of see what a typical Danish house looked like! It was quite nice and quaint, made of brick all over, but with wooden floors, as seems to be typical in Denmark. Had quite a nice garden, with a small lotus pond and all :)



Then we just walked through the town, which was just awesome – very nice and quiet and kinda cute. We went to this huge cathedral which seems to be the pride of Roskilde – its from the 12th century (!) and actually has the tombs of a lot of the kings and queens of Denmark. It was currently being renovated, so couldn’t see everything – but was very beautiful indeed.



From there a short walk through this most beautiful park – a beauty enhanced by the sunshine shining through the trees onto the greenest grass I’ve ever seen – took us to the harbor, where there was this small Viking museum which we just quickly walked through, as we had to get to the Niras office soon. Saw some Viking boats on display, took some photos, and then we were off. Took a taxi to the main Niras office which was about 45 minutes away. Turned out the taxi driver was from Afghanistan, so we were truly international in that taxi there – 6 people representing 7 different countries from 3 different continents! Didn’t quite expect that in Denmark – especially since none of us was actually from denmark either!! The drive down was quite nice, we drove along the sea for a bit, saw some windmills – for which Denmark is quite famous.



Got to the office by 12, where everyone seemed quite busy getting prepared for the reception. In the central courtyard, a large tent had been set up for the reception, with a stage and all, where a polish band was supposed to perform. We had quick lunch with a couple of people, including the Managing Director of the company, and one of the judges. We got changed into our suits – which we’d carried with us instead of wearing all day – after which a photographer came to do a photo shoot. He took us out into the fields about a 100 yards out of the premises, and spent some time taking photos – felt quite like a model, with the dude insisting on taking tons of photos at what seemed quite weird angles. :)

We got back, and by then it was mostly time to begin. The ceremony was to be in the courtyard in the center, and then right next to it was the cafeteria which had been emptied out and set up with food/drinks for the guests. It was all quite nice, especially this ice sculpture of a swan that had been made to hold some of the bottles of water! Also, very interestingly, they’d made these pretty cool posters using quotes from both our essays which were put up all along the walls – that was really cool, just the way they’d done it. Almost like how you see these framed quotes from famous people in museums/libraries! Very tastefully done as well – all Jacob’s stuff in blue and mine in green. They’d also printed out this small book with both our essays in it, which was to be given out to all the guests attending the reception – and again they followed a similar color format in that. That was really nicely made too.



As guests started arriving – it was largely a lot of Niras clients and customers – the program was kicked off about 2pm with the polish group performing. They were basically a jazz group, didn’t really do polish music as such – just a lot of usual jazz stuff. Had a female vocalist, bass guitar, synth and drums. They were actually really really good. The singer had an awesome voice, and the keyboard player was too good as well.

At about 3, the official part of the ceremony began with the MD making a speech – entirely in Danish, of course. Seemed like it was a pretty funny speech, as the crowd kept laughing all the time – but of course we couldn’t tell anything! Its quite strange being in a place where you don’t speak the major language of the people – half the time I kept expecting the entire crowd to suddenly turns towards us, point at us and start laughing at us or something!



After the speech, one of the judges, Nina Smith, who’s actually a professor at a Danish university, took over and introduced the concept of the essay to the audience, and then announced the winners. Thankfully all this was in English. We both got these huge cheques, the kind one sees in cricket matches being given to the winning team! Looked pretty cool – especially with the amount that was written on them, of course. :)

After that the rest of the evening was mostly informal, with people just mingling around and talking. The music group sang again – it was more like just background music for most people really, as they were trying to talk to each other, but I quite enjoyed the music. After the announcement, of course, everyone knew who we were, and we’d keep getting accosted by people congratulating us. Met quite a few people, some working at Niras, others including the former Danish Ambassador to India, the head of the dept of Civil Engineering at Danish Technical Univ, and so on. Everyone was very nice, very encouraging, and quite keen to make sure we were having a good time in Denmark. In fact all through I’ve just been amazed at the hospitality of the people, especially these people at niras – they’ve just taken such good care of us, right from picking us up at the airport to arranging for every single thing in our schedule, to the extent that till now, 3 days into our stay, we’ve yet to spend a single kroner on anything!

Things started getting wrapped up by about 6, when most people started leaving. I spoke for a while to some of the people in the band, and they were quite nice too – talked a bit about the music scene in Poland, etc. The keyboard player actually turned out to be a classical pianist who did jazz once in a while – which was all the more incredible as he was so good, and I would have thought he was just a jazz pianist.



After that, we changed into regular clothes, and Mille and her boyfriend Mads took us to Tivoli Gardens, one of the premier attractions of Copenhagen. That was quite awesome. Its sort of a theme park, but with a lot more to it – they have quite a few rides and all, but more than that its just the ambience of the place, the lighting, the greenery, the flowers….Was really really awesome. Jacob, Mads and I went on all the rides – they were totally awesome. One quite amazing roller coaster, which did all possible things, including going upside down a couple of times and all. Then this one ride where you side on a chair suspended at the end of a long chain which hangs from this thing that turns around on a tower. That thing then goes all the way up to the top, from where we can get a great view of the city, and then starts rotating pretty fast – so with the centrifugal force, the seats are just pushed outwards, and you’re turning around at what seems like a completely wrong angle! Felt quite interesting. Looking at the city below and the people in front of you, you could actually see how impossible an angle you were at – and its all open, so you can see everything! Not a ride for those scared of heights!



The final ride we did was the best, really – you sit in a chair, attached to this structure that takes you right to the very top of this really tall tower. Once you’re at the top, it just stops and waits there for a bit – sort of like the quiet before the storm. And then – it drops. In fact more than that – you’re actually pretty much PULLED down at an acceleration slightly greater than gravity! That was truly awesome – we were actually levitating in our seats, and the feeling of weightlessness is really really amazing. So the thing just drops till it almost gets to the ground, then bounces up a couple of times before it stops. We actually did that ride twice, back to back – it was just too amazing. That initial fall feels really good – and then as you bounce up and down, its actually quite beautiful!!

We had dinner after that at one of the numerous restaurants in the park – finding vegetarian food everywhere is kind of a problem, so had to make do with this kinda random sandwich with potatoes (which seem to be the staple starch provider in Danish food) and tomatoes and mayo. But followed that up with this slice of fried Camembert cheese with black currant jam – that was really really good!



All in all had a great evening, and got back to the hotel at about 11.30. Mille and Mads are tons of fun – just very nice to hang out with. Again, its just amazing how hospitable these niras people are being to us – as I was telling Jacob, they’re actually paying us to come all the way from the US, so they can be nice to us! I mean, what could be better!!

Tomorrow we’re seeing another of the projects of niras, and then in the afternoon actually doing some sightseeing with Mille and Mads, visiting some Viking ruins and castles – that should be good fun! So more on that later!

Day 2 in Denmark - 30th August

Today’s been quite a jetlagged day. Slept fitfully at night, waking up a couple of times, and finally woke up around 4am. Couldn’t go to sleep after that, just tossed around for a while, then woke up and checked email etc. Finally decided I’d just go running – so left the hotel around 6am with a map and a camera. It was quite beautiful – cloudy, but no rain, thankfully. The darkness had mostly crept away. The streets were quite empty – just the odd car/cyclist/passerby.



I ran for about an hour and a half, and it was quite lovely. Stopped multiple times to take photos, of course – but on the whole must have done about 5-6 miles. Ran through some of the streets where we’re staying, and then over the bridge across the canal to the other, quieter side. That part is quite beautiful, with quite a few of these manmade canals, and lots of greenery all around. Surrounding that are residential areas. All quite peaceful and calm.



I ran along the water for a while, then branched off into the neighborhood of Christiania, which is quite an interesting place. As Wikipedia says, Christiania, also known as Freetown Christiania, is a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 850 residents, covering 34 hectars (85 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital Copenhagen. Christiania has established semi-legal status as an independent community. It was founded in 1971 by a group of hippies who decided to take over an area of abandoned military barracks! The people in Christiania have developed their own set of rules, completely independent of the Danish government. The rules forbid stealing, guns, bulletproof vests and hard drugs. Driving a car is also not allowed. A total of 132 cars are, however, owned by Christiania residents and need to be parked in the surrounding streets. It’s a really interesting place – like a world in itself. The houses look very different, as do the streets. Its like walking in some old world village. I saw some pretty antique things, as well as a horse barn. Very quaint indeed. I guess it says a lot about the Danes when you think about how they’ve just allowed the town to exist as it does, without paying taxes etc to the government, and making their own rules. Very interesting indeed.



I ran back through some other parts, stopping fewer times for photos on the way back. Got back, showered, changed, and then went down to have breakfast, which is part of the hotel deal. Had a good breakfast – some bread, cheese, Danishes (how can one NOT have a Danish for breakfast in Denmark!), some fruit and yogurt, and juice. Pretty decent stuff. Then Mille came to pick us up around 9am, and we drove up to the Niras complex, which is about half an hour outside Copenhagen. The drive was quite beautiful – very very green as soon as you get out of the city. Its quite amazing to see the shade of green against the grey sky – something u hardly see in California, where everything is mostly brown except for the couple of months after it rains. The lush green vegetation we saw here was quite amazing.

At Niras, the morning was mostly spent meeting different people, and getting introduced to some of the wide variety of projects they work on. Its basically an engineering consultancy – so they do a lot of technical work. We got to hear about some of their projects in demolition of buildings etc, safety work, crash testing/modeling, environmental stuff, IT, and so on. Was pretty cool meeting so many different people working on such different things, and all together under the same umbrella. We also had a very interesting conversation with Henrik whom we’d met yesterday, about Niras’s history, and then about knowledge, and what it really meant – the dichotomy between knowledge and information which many people don’t seem to realize, how knowledge is about people while information is about facts and computers, and how one can transfer knowledge from one person to another in an organization through something like a mentorship program. It was all quite thought provoking.

From there we were taken to the Danish Technical University by someone called Dora. We first had lunch there at the main canteen, which is quite different from, say, the Tressider student union in Stanford – almost more like an undergrad dining hall. There was some weird food there, but I managed to get something that was almost like veg fried rice and spring rolls.

We then went to the Environmental studies dept, where a meeting had been set up with one of the division heads. Basically denmark is huge on renewable energy – wind, solar etc, and now a lot of research being done on biogas, bio-ethanol etc. so that was kind of the focus of what we saw there. Got some idea of some of their work, including some cool stuff such as a microbial fuel cell – where micro-organisms are actually used to generate a potential difference across a set of electrodes and make it work like a fuel cell! All very interesting…kind of random as nothing was even vaguely related to work either Jacob or I are doing – I think they kind of misunderstood exactly what we were working in! so it was a lil out of place. But ok, I guess….

Of course by this time I was fighting jetlag, with bouts of sleepiness coming increasingly frequently! Especially in the car on the way back, it was all I could do to stay awake!



From there we were taken to one of Niras’s biggest projects today, and this was totally the piece de resistance of the day – this is a huge construction project to set up what will be one of Europe’s premium concert halls. The whole setup is just completely amazing – the kind of engineering going on is too good. They showed us mockups of the concert hall, which is pretty modernistically designed. They’ve designed it in such a way that the entire structure is essentially floating, and held up by just 3 staircases around its periphery! They also showed us scaled mockups of the interior, which are used to test the acoustics, and make sure one can hear the sound well at every point. The concert hall in itself is set up such that the main stage is at the center, and seating is all around it, unlike the traditional sort of system where the stage is up front. Seating capacity is 1800. All the walls and panels are carefully designed, taking into account the reflection of sound , direction of reflection, amount of absorption and so on. The central canopy is made up of several panels, each of which is adjustable, so as to allow fine tuning of the sound experience! Very cool indeed!

There are also several smaller studios, for different kinds of settings – rhythms, choirs, instruments etc. They’ve thought of everything – sliding panels exposing different kinds of wall surfaces so as to provide everything from a very soft to a very hard surface, which would have drastically different absorption characteristics.



Construction of course is still very much happening, and will probably take another couple of years at least to finish. We got to go right to the top in one of those elevators you see at construction sites, and from there got a wonderful view of the entire city and surrounding area. You could even see the sea, and across it, in the distant horizon, the mainland of Sweden!



After that we came back, rested for a couple of hours – I tried hard not to fall asleep! - and then went out for dinner with 4 of the young crowd from niras. Dinner was ok – quite a nice restaurant in a more young part of the town, frequented by a lot of copenhagen’s younger people. Got a taste of Danish beer which apparently is supposed to be quite the thing to have – it was ok, I guess.  The two girls in the group, Anna and Christine were pretty talkative, but the 2 guys, Mario and Thomas hardly spoke – so it was just a little weird! So not quite sure what THAT was all about. But whatever, got a decent dinner, and now am just looking to crash. Quite exhausted after the day – its been a long one.



Tomorrow, of course, is the main reception where the prizes are officially awarded. More about that later…..

Day 1 in Denmark - 29th August

Its been quite a day. After all the confusion with the flights – with the Chicago flight getting delayed, being put on the Seattle flight instead, and then the flight from Seattle to Copenhagen getting delayed – we finally made it! I met Jacob – the other prize winner, who also happens to be from Stanford, coincidentally – on the flight. We ultimately got into Copenhagen about an hour and a half late. Getting through the airport was the easiest ever – we filled out no customs forms, had to do nothing literally, and just show our passport at one point to someone – talk about increased security nowadays everywhere! Seems like anyone can get into Denmark with ridiculous ease.

Mille – the person from Niras I’ve been in touch with all this while - was there at the airport to pick us up. She’s really nice, and like all Danes, quite fluent in English – so communication at least wont be a problem. That cant really be said about road signs etc, though – everything is in Danish. And there are some weird looking characters in the script – one that looks like a ø, which is pronounced in some even more weird way… Lots of guttural sounds, with "oo"s and "llluuu"s and god knows what else.....danish is not for me, I guess.

One of the first things you notice as you get off the plane from the US is the vastly different mix of automobiles on the road. Almost all are European – lots of Benzes and BMWs (all taxis are Mercs, btw!), tons of cars u never see in the US – French ones like Peugeot and Citroen, Fiats, Alfa Romeos – and even the Jap cars look different! Lots of smaller cars, unlike the US. And of course, finally i'm back in a place where people use sensible units like kilometres and litres!! So that was a big first impression.

Oh the weather – its been raining ever since we got here! Varying from a light drizzle to an almost monsoon-like heavy rain! Apparently they’ve been getting a lot of rainfall here. Just hope it doesn’t stay like this the rest of the week – would really spoil things!



The parts of the city we drove through were typically European – old brick buildings, sloping roofs, lots of spires and so on – just the picture one has of Europe. The hotel we’re staying in, on the other hand, is quite modernistic – rooms aren’t too big, but space is used very well, and everything is reasonably decent.

So we got to the hotel around 4pm, showered etc, and then at 5pm there was this reported from this Danish paper called the Engineering Weekly who’d come to interview us both (ahem!). Went off quite well – asked us mostly usual stuff, how we got to know about it, how much effort we spent on it, contrasts between our two essays etc. Unfortunately its only published in Danish - so unlikely we'll understand anything of it when its published. We were also joint in the middle by Henrik, one of the other people at Niras - Director of Development, apparently - and spent some more time talking to him and Mille after the reporter left. Just general stuff – the anniversary celebrations, the schedule, Niras in general, and so on. Was quite nice.




Then we took off to go to the DHL annual relay which Niras takes part in every year – this is a huge event in which many many companies across denmark take part, by sending teams for the relay. As many as 80000 were taking part this year, spread over 4 days!! So it was quite crazy! Was held in a huge park called Faelledparken, where companies had set up tents – so we got into the Niras tent, which was filled with runners and supporters, all excited and talking. Met some more of the people from the company, and everybody seemed to think we’d done a great job…. Got some dinner later – mostly bread and cheese and the likes…Bread was awesome, it must be said. As was the cheese. And some pretty good chocolate as well as cake to go. The funny thing of course was that though everyone speaks english, they still talk to each other in Danish - so every once in a while we'd run into someone who'd ask us something in Danish, which of course would be completely incomprehensible - then we'd go through the entire rigmarole of explaining who we were, why we were here etc, and once they figured out we were the prizewinners from US, all would be forgiven.

The evening ended with some cool fireworks celebrating the end of the races for the day. Was still raining all through, so by now everything was muddy and mucky – so not the best thing, I guess. We were dropped back at the hotel, and will now be picked up tomorrow morning at 9.

More tomorrow….quite jetlagged now, and dying to get some sleep… :)