Congratulations Copenhagen Marathoners!

Today 8373 people participated in the Copenhagen marathon, including my friends Sam and Stine, who both finished in under 4 hours! Good job girls! The picture above is taken from my friend Elisa's apartment on Østerbrogade. Later I went on a run of my own (although far from marathon-length) and admired the many ducklings on the lakes.

And congratulations also to my sister, who just graduated from law school at the University of Minnesota! Good job Anne!

Down with Hitler

This inscription, "ned med Hitler" (down with Hitler) is scratched into one of the windows in the stairwell of my building. I wonder if it's real? (Well, I suppose in a sense it's obviously real, but I wonder if it dates back to WWII...)

The spring students have finals this week and then leave this weekend, but I don't get much of a break because the first session summer students then arrive the following Friday -- so things are busy as always at work. BUT, I just had a fantastic 3-day weekend, filled with beaches (one bougie one, Bellevue, north of the city, and one giant one on Amager, east of the city), parks, a picnic, and a party. A perfect relaxing break since things have been so crazy at work lately. The weather has been amazing, sunny and warm, sometimes even what I would call hot, which is unusual for Copenhagen (so much so that they don't even have a word for it...) Today was cooler again, but still sunny. Not complaining!

Bornholm is beautiful

I've now been 3 times, and each time it takes my breath away. No time to write now, but check out the photos (see link on the left). So pretty. Here's one more, of Gudhjem, the town where we stayed:
It's also been beautiful out lately, and on that note I'm going to try to get out of here soon and go enjoy it!

Europe hates going to work

Evidence:
1. All the days off I've been getting lately (big prayer day, christ skytravelday, and next up 2nd pinsedag (May 12th, 2nd Whitmonday, whatever that means)).
2. Sweden is closed on June 6th for Sweden day, or something like that. No visits possible for our students.
3. Recent dialogue with someone at a Primary Care Trust in London: "Oh, Pamela's on vacation right now; can you call back on Thursday?" Me: "No, I won't be in the office on Thursday; it's a Danish holiday. I'll call on Friday". When I called again today, I got to speak to Pamela. Her: "Yes, I can ask around, but I'm about to go to Spain and then Monday is a bank holiday, so I won't get to it until later next week".

Actually, I rather like it. Although other people's excessive vacation is annoying when you're trying to get in touch with them, I like having my own excessive vacation time. Plus, I think America puts too much value on work ethic. Who decided that having your work be your life is a virtue?

Off to Bornholm tonight!

Kristi Himmelfartsdag

Today I didn't have to work, as it is ascension day (aka kristi himmelfartsdag, christ skytravelday, christ heavenjourneyday, etc.) Coincidentally, this also happens to be May 1st, which is international workers' day and means, in Copenhagen, that everyone assembles in a big park called Fælledparken to drink beer, listen to music, drink beer, play games, ride rides, drink beer, etc. On my way there, I passed an anarchist demonstration (peacefully overseen by police). The park is also right next to the national stadium, which added to the antics as there was a big game today (brøndby-esbjerg), so there were lots of fans out in their team colors either celebrating or commiserating. It's hard to describe the scale of events like this -- it seems like everyone in the city and suburbs is there, even though it was raining earlier in the day so everybody is covered in mud. People bring there babies, who wander around among all the people drinking and smoking joints. We wandered around, listened to some music at the anti-fascism stage, left to get some food, came back and spent some time watching a game in which grown men tried to knock each other off of a kind of balance beam thing with pillows, wandered around more and eventually left. Sometimes I just think Denmark is so weird...

Updates

Well, it's once again been a while -- my excuse it that I've been really busy at work (and still am, but I'm nevertheless taking a few minutes for a quick post), and really nice outside, which, combined with my unreliable internet access at home, cuts down on my blogging time.

Anyway, last weekend I went to Oslo, which was really nice. See pic taken from the ship as we came in through the fjord. We got in at 9.30 in the morning, and had to be back on the boat to return to Copenhagen by 4.30, so we didn't have a ton of time, but we did manage to walk across town (it's really not that big) to the famous Vigeland sculpture park, where there are lots and lots of statues in a big beautiful park (some of them are really weird, with naked people fighting or, in the one below, kicking babies. There's also a big obelisk thing made up of naked bodies). Then we walked back into the center of town and went to the national gallery, where we saw (among a lot of other things) Munch's The Scream.
We had really nice weather, which held out all week long in Copenhagen too -- pretty amazing to have a full week of sunshine! So I've been spending a lot of time hanging around in the parks, going on bike rides or runs, etc, when I'm not working (which I'm doing a lot lately -- planning for the new summer programs is proving difficult...)
On Tuesday of this week I also went to two interesting talks sponsored by DIS. The first was a panel discussion about the Muhammed cartoon crisis, in which two journalists, a professor of a class called "Muslims in the west", and a representive from Dansk Islamisk Trossamfund, a Muslim organization, gave their views on the issue. Then right after that I went to another talk by the Danish minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, about climate change. Copenhagen is hosting the international climate conference in 2009, and it's interesting to hear about some of the initiatives they've taken -- for example, using trash incineration as heating for homes, which gets rid of garbage and saves energy at the same time. She also talked about the option that Danish businesses have to get financial incentives by investing in environmental improvements for a business in the developing world, which can make a bigger difference than putting the same amount of money into upgrades in their own business (if it's already pretty "good", environmentally). Seems like there are lots of good ideas out there -- I wish that other bigger countries (cough cough, UNITED STATES) with a bigger impact in the world would behave in a similar way.
Anyway, must get back to work!

Tillykke, Margrethe!

Today is Queen Margrethe II's 68th birthday. This means that there were Danish flags flying all over the city, even two on the front of every city bus! I took an early lunch to go and see her greet the masses from the balcony of Amalienborg palace at noon -- as you can see below, it was packed, but we still managed to get a good spot right under the balcony. In the picture above you can see (left to right): Prince Henrik, royal consort to Her Majesty; Prince Felix and Prince Nikolai; Queen Margrethe; her son Prince Joachim (Felix and Nikolai's dad); and his fiancé, Marie. On the far left you can also see the royal dog -- I don't know its name :) Unfortunately the crown prince and princess and their two babies weren't there -- I don't know why. Basically, the event begins with the changing of the guard, after which the queen and co come out and wave to the masses. Then they go away and everybody chants "Margrethe, Margrethe, kom nu frem -- ellers går vi aldrig hjem!" (Margrethe, Margrethe, come out now -- otherwise we'll never go home!). This makes everybody come back out a few more times. Everybody waves their Danish flags and there's lots of good cheer and patriotism. It's pretty cute. America should have more traditions like that.

Another thing that's making headlines now is that certain public services employees (nurses, midwives, home care workers, and some day care workers) are on strike, which is a big deal since there is nobody to take care of kids, old people, and sick people. So hopefully it won't go on too long! We'll see. Today was the first day of the strike, and I saw lots of people picketing on my way to work and to the palace. Not on my way home from work though -- guess even striking workers only work a 37-hour workweek here!