Day 5 in Denmark - 2nd September

I cant believe that our last official day in Denmark is over! Man, its been quite a whirlwind trip. So much happening – and so much fun. Way too awesome, really….

Today began pretty early – I’d slept very early last night – around 9 – so woke up by 5 today, which was good. I wanted to go for a long run today anyway, so left around 5.45-6, and ran for about 2.5 hours. I stopped a few times to take photos and all, so all in all was probably only around 12-13 miles or so. I ran mostly along the trail I’d ran partly on the other day – but this continued right along till the very end. It was pretty awesome, got really interesting after about halfway down it – quite thickly forested in parts, and almost like running on some out of the way hiking trail. I knew all along that just to my left, maybe 50m away, there was the main town with buildings and all – but there might well have not been, for all that one could see! After a while, though, there were quite a few interesting looking shacks by the trail, right at the water – find it hard to believe that people actually live there, but seems like they do!!!


I caught a pretty gorgeous sunrise, as it slowly got light and dawn crept in. Saw the clouds get progressively more and more golden and radiant, and finally the sun came out for a very very short time – and then disappeared back into the clouds again! But even that briefest of appearances was worth it!


Once I got off the trail, I was in a part of the city I wasn’t familiar with, somewhere which seemed to be near the harbor. I ran along for a bit, trying to find a way to continue through, but didn’t seem like there was one. I kept ending up at dead ends with water all around me.  But I did manage to see some very interesting stuff – an old Viking ship, what looked like a military ship, and even this old submarine that seemed to have been just left there on the dock!!! Was quite surprised to see that, I can tell you!

Anyway, at a point I figured I might as well turn back, so ran all the way back, this time not really stopping to take photos. Got back to the hotel by something like 8.30 or so. Then I showered, and went down to have a HUGE breakfast – was starving by then after the run! So that felt good.

After that I actually came back to the room and just slept for another hour and a half or so….that felt good!! Very relaxing – and very needed!


Jacob meanwhile had actually decided to take the train across to Sweden, just to see it for a little bit! He got back around 1, and after that we decided to go take the canal tour in Copenhagen, which was supposed to be quite good! One of the former kings of Denmark decided he quite loved the canals in Amsterdam, and so Copenhagen should have one too – so he made a bunch of them. Gives the city a completely different feel!


We wandered around for a while, and then got to the place where the 1 hour tour began. It was really good value for money – very pleasant, and one actually got to see quite a lot. I actually saw the submarine again from a distance, and found out that it was now actually converted into a naval museum, and was in fact the last submarine in the Danish navy! The Danes, btw, seem to convert every building into a museum – cant even begin to remember how many of them the guide on the boat mentioned!!


The boat also went to the Little Mermaid, Copenhagen’s most famous landmark – the statue of Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid, seated on a rock on a rocky beach. Its actually a pretty small statue – but for some reason has become really famous and everyone who comes to Copenhagen comes to see it!


The canal tour took us through quite a few parts of the city, and we even got to see some of the really modern buildings, such as the city opera house, and this huge building that had been converted into the world’s largest indoor golf course! And then of course there was the usual share of palaces and old buildings, and churches and museums….


After the tour we walked around for a bit around the city center, and boy, was it busy! In fact I’ve never seen such crowds outside India! It was just crazy! Seems like Saturday is the day to go shopping – there were literally THRONGS around the shopping area. Huge crowds of people – quite amazing to see!


After that we got back to the hotel and changed into suits for the evening’s dinner-dance party. Mille and Mads picked us up around 4.45, and then we went to the party, which was being held at the Radisson. This party was huge, and was in fact the main celebration of the 50th anniversary. It was only for niras employees and spouses – so overall there were some 700 people there!! It was quite packed when we got there, and for some time we just hung around, talking to the occasional person who’d come by to talk to us! After that everyone was escorted into this huge concert hall – I don’t know what that was doing in a hotel! – about a size of a large movie theater in the US. There on stage they had some sort of skit about Niras, with songs and dances and all, all done by a few of the employees. Seemed like it was pretty entertaining, judging by the reactions of the crowd. Of course, as it was all in Danish, we had no clue what it was about! There was this one section though, where they were making fun of English, which we kind of got – recently apparently there’s been a move in niras to introduce English as the official language of communication, and most people seem to have opposed that! So they had to make fun of it in the skit, of course….

After that we went down to dinner, where everyone had been placed at particular tables. Very formal affair indeed! Thankfully we were placed at a table where we knew quite a few people – mille, mads, henrik…. Henrik’s girlfriend , Mette (I don’t think she was his wife – they were both pretty old, but someone mentioned how they’d gotten together about 3 years ago – so I don’t think she was his wife. This whole non-marrying thing seems to be quite common in denmark, btw) was seated next to me, and we ended up having quite an interesting conversation on my essay – she had the broad idea about it though she hadn’t read it yet – and we talked a lot about the concept, and philosophy behind it. She seemed to be a slightly religious woman as well (unlike most Danes!), and actually had a lot to say herself to add to what I said. So that was pretty interesting.


The dinner itself was really interesting – very formal, and very European! Starting with the appetizer (accompanied by white wine), and then the main course (accompanied by red wine), then the dessert (accompanied by a dessert wine), and ending with coffee and a liquer/cognac. Different sets of forks/knives used for everything, and each course pretty much beginning with some kind of toast – and lots of others in the middle too! I don’t think I’ve ever sat through such a long dinner – it lasted some 2.5 hours!!! But one didn’t really feel the passage of time!!

After dinner and short speech by the MD, there was some entertainment with this stand up comedian who’s apparently one of the most famous in denmark. Of course, again, we understood nothing, but he must have been REALLY funny, for he had the entire crowd in splits all through. Wish there were a way to have subtitles or something for these things….:)


After that there was live music, and the dancing began. We of course mostly just sat around, talking to people occasionally, and taking regular breaks to go out and breathe the fresh air. I think by the end of this trip I’m going to become a cigarette addict – just with breathing in all the smoke around the place! With people in the US so strict about not smoking in public – and the number of smokers being less in general – this is quite a new experience, where people just smoke wherever and whenever they want to. Noxious fumes all around……

There was a lot of dancing happening, and it seemed like it wasn’t stopping anytime soon! At one point, one of the ladies somehow convinced me and Jacob to actually join her on the dance floor – separately of course. So we both took our turns at making fools of ourselves dancing. She said we were ok, but of course she was just polite. After that she talked to us for a while, telling us about how she’d visited India many years ago with her husband, and seen quite a few places…..

Also had an interesting conversation with Rikke, a very nice woman from niras whom we’d met before at the company, about life in denmark – particularly married life. Seems like the divorce rate in denmark is really high – she didn’t know figures, but she said it was quite high! So we talked a while about why that was the case, the sort of desire of the modern generation to shy away from getting bored, and using divorce as an escape route. Her husband too is apparently the child of a divorce, and she mentioned how much it could affect the children. So that was a pretty interesting conversation. I guess kind of proves the point of some of the things I wrote in the essay – when the fundamental objectives of our actions, really are skewed, then this is kind of what results. And so in a society like denmark’s, where everyone is supposed to be so happy, and standards of living are supposedly so high, you still have a huge section of the population that’s going through these things every day, and ending up single and lonely….. Pretty thought provoking, huh? I wonder how much of an indicator of social standards, values etc divorce rates are…. I suspect a fairly good one – there’s a lot that can be said about people just based on that, I think, the sort of attitude they have, the thinking with which they get into relationships, etc.

At about 1.45 or so, Jacob and I decided to take a taxi back to the hotel – the party was still going quite strong, so we figured we wouldn’t wait to the end. So we said our goodbyes to everyone – I might meet mille when I get back from my travels to Copenhagen, but she said she might be really busy that day – so said goodbye anyway. That was quite sad – this has just been an awesome week, and full credit to her for having put together such a great program for us, and organizing everything so well. It was just phenomenal…

So that ends our official stay in denmark…tomorrow we both leave on our own ways – jacob back to the US, and me on to, hopefully, many more exciting and amazing things in Scandinavia….