Day 4 in Denmark - 1st September

Today, as usual, was awesome again. Really tiring day – but very very interesting. To start out with, we actually visited this place called House of Prince – which (surprise, surprise), is Denmark’s only cigarette manufacturer!!! Initially I wasn’t even sure why this was on our programme – rather dubious, sending us to visit a cigarette manufacturing plant. But I must admit that on the whole it was actually quite interesting – moral issues about cigarettes aside. Niras had been helping them with some of their automation in the production line, batch identification etc. So we first met one of the managers there who gave us an overview of things. After that we were taken through the entire plant, and basically saw the entire production process – from the leaf to the cigarette boxes!

The tobacco leaves are originally stored in compacted form, as huge blocks. They’re then put through a bunch of different kinds of processes, moisturizing, drying adding flavor, etc. They’re then stored for a while in a storage area. These boxes of tobacco are then taken to the cigarette production area, where stuff like the paper and filters come from other places. We even saw how the filters were produced and transported to this area through tubes. There are then these very cool machines that put everything together, wrap up the cigarettes, but them in small boxes, but each of these in larger boxes, then put a bunch of these boxes within a carton which is then sent off on the assembly line to the main storage area. It was just quite fascinating seeing the way the entire assembly line worked, with very little human intervention – basically just to make sure there was a supply of raw materials such as paper. Otherwise, everything was fully automated!

And oh, as we signed in to enter the building, we each got a complimentary box of cigarettes  Have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Any takers????

Its interesting, though, how security in general seems to be such a low priority in denmark – its like they haven’t heard of the concept at all. Right from the moment we got off at the airport, people don’t really care wht you do, where you go….We walk around Niras like we own the place, and noone cares at all. We walk all over the cigarette factory taking photos, and noone cares again. I guess they just don’t believe in heavy security levels – and in general nobody exploits that.

From there we went to the Niras office again where we had lunch with Mille and a few other people – by now I was starting to feel that I actually knew a lot of people in Niras – recognized lots of faces, even remembered some names!

Post lunch we hung around for a while as Mille had some work to wrap up, after which we took off for our afternoon excursion with her and Mads (her boyfriend – look back at yesterday’s writeup). We left around 1.30 or so, I think. The day was quite awesome again – pretty cloudy, but no rain, and the occasional hint of sunshine. Just perfect with all the greenery around to provide us some amazing contrast and color.


We drove around a lot, and got to see some real Danish countryside. It was just so awesome – pictures/words cannot really bring that out. For one, everything is just so GREEN – its almost surreal, the kind of green it is. Just so lush and deep. Never seen a green like that. And its there everywhere, vast tracts of land with just the greenest, thickest, most lush grass ever. They drove us through some small Danish villages, very quaint and nice. Everything is just too pretty – picture perfect, really.


Finally after some time, we got to our main destination for the day – Kronborg castle. This is one of the most famous castles in Denmark, made in the 16th century, and is actually the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet as well, who supposedly lived here! The castle is situated right at the sea, and across from there you can see Sweden very clearly. Its kinda weird having other countries so close! And again, I think it was good that it was cloudy – just made the colors of the castle that much more intense, and set it off really well.


Again, in this castle, the use of copper to provide the green effect is very interesting. The castle itself is huge, and surrounded by 3 moats (filled with crocodiles and piranhas gnashing their teeth to get at you, of course) ! So you pass through multiple gates to get to the main castle. In the center is a HUGE courtyard, from where you can go to different areas of the castle. We first walked through the royal chambers, which were quite magnificent. In general the construction of these castles is quite different from what we tend to see in palaces and fortresses in India. One major difference is the use of wood – though the walls are all made of brick/stone, the floors are all made of wood! This seems to be quite a typical Danish thing. And of course the sort of architectural concepts used are pretty different too – the design of windows, doors and so on.


Some of the main chambers had paintings all over the ceiling which looked quite incredible. In general there were tons of really nice renaissance paintings, Belgian tapestries and carpets and so on. And of course, from multiple windows you just to look out, and there was Sweden!!

We also walked briefly through the castle chapel, which was actually kind of small – I believe a lot of this stuff was destroyed in a fire in the 17th century (I think), and had to be rebuilt.


The most exciting part was walking through the dungeons – or rather, what are known as casemates, where the soldiers used to be stationed. They’re not deep down below the ground like dungeons, but are kind of just under the ground, with small windows here and there to provide some light. But in general they’re completely dark, and lit up artificially. One could get lost quite easily in these – but they’d blocked some of the routes, and put up arrows so it wasn’t so difficult to get around. It was very very cool and damp in there – so got the complete dungeon feel.


We got out of the dungeons and just hung out in the courtyard for a while. One just didn’t feel like leaving the castle – it was just too gorgeous. In addition, it was interesting to see the strange mix caused by modern intervention in this old castle – how in the middle of a ceiling somewhere you’d see a smoke alarm, or electric bulbs put up in places, and so on. Of course we made enough jokes about all of these things….:)


We walked down into the courtyard, and past it to the sea – quite beautiful again. Took some pictures of Sweden! Then we walked back, and into the main town of Helsingør. Really beautiful and quaint town. I’m just totally in love by now with these cobbled stone roads – why cant the rest of the world have them! The main downtown area was like a picture – bustling, tons of shops, but still the old world feel to them. Stone really makes such a difference! We walked around quite a bit, and then had ice cream at this place which mille said was really good – she’d grown up pretty close to this place, and apparently they used to come to this ice cream parlor specifically to have ice cream here regularly. It was one of those small places hidden away in some side street – but was quite awesome. Of course the ice cream parlor was as old as everything else – established in 1922 or something!


We walked back to the car – I must admit I was quite sad to be leaving the place. Was starting to a drizzle a little, so got into the car soon. We then drove around some more, and went to these old 13th century ruins at one place – there were just a couple of walls left of this pretty old castle! Surrounding the ruins were crowds of sheep! Was pretty cool.


We then drove back to Copenhagen along a different route, all along the sea. It was really really beautiful – and we saw tons of the most amazing houses, right on the coast. As expected, they all costed a bomb, of course – of the order of 15-20 million kroner, at least, Mille said. That’s about 3-4 million $. There were even some houses that looked like palaces themselves – I don’t even want to know how much they cost.

I was actually really sleepy on the way back – it was like 8pm, but was just so tired! Was half asleep all the way back! So decided to just sleep early that night, then wake up early and go running – probably do a long run. Then relax the entire day tomorrow, maybe go on a canal tour, and then there’s the dinner-dance party tomorrow night, which should be fun.