Peanut Butter Musings

As I sit here and enjoy the wonderful peanut butter sent from home by my awesome mother, I thought I would fill you in on the recent trip to Copenhagen.

Let me just start out by saying that it is a great city. Not as tourist friendly as Paris or Rome, but just as cool. My class met downtown at 6:00 am on Tuesday to take the bus to Copenhagen. Included in this bus trip was a really cool surprise, a ferry ride. After a quick trip on the bus down to the harbor, we all boarded a ferry. I've ridden on ferry's before, but nothing like this. The trip lasted almost an hour. Since we left so early it was dark the whole time, but it was still very interesting.

The first day in Copenhagen was extremely busy. We met at the International Press Center (IPC) where we talked with a couple international journalists. The IPC is a great place, because any journalist can come and use the facilities free of charge, 24/7. Since they had free internet it kind of became out home base for the trip. Next on the agenda for the day was a visit to the European Environmental Agency (EEA). Let me also say that the focus of our trip was environmental issues, so many of the talks were geared towards that. A woman at the EEA gave a presentation about their agency and answered any questions that we may have had. I've never really been a big environment guy, but it was very interesting to hear everyone talk and broaden my scope on environmental issues. Following that meeting we finally had some free time so we took our luggage to the hostel, not where I stayed. Two hours later we all met at the Ministry of Climate and Energy. Because of ongoing environment talks at the time, we were not able to meet with the Minister, but instead we a met with Denmark's chief negotiator for environmental issues. Since I did my story on Wind Energy, I asked her a few questions concerning that topic. Denmark prides itself for being on the cutting edge of environment issues, so it was cool to listen to the person who makes a lot of that happen. The day that had started at 4:30 am ended with a visit to the Politiken, one of Denmark's largest newspapers. We talked with a reporter there who had spent many years working in Asia. He was a crazy guy, not PC, but very interesting and informative as well.

Lucky enough I talked with Andres Wilken, Chris's good friend, before I came over to Denmark and he told me about his cousin who lived in Copenhagen. I got in contact with Kristina and she graciously allowed me to stay at her apartment while I was in Copenhagen. She was incredibly nice and made me feel right at home. Unfortunately because of her long hours at work we weren't able to see each other very much, but we were able to meet for coffee on Friday before I left. Good conversation, good coffee, great city - that is a pretty killer combination. The picture is this post is her and I. She does architectural design, which should interest Brian, Penny and Charles. I don't think she went to the school Brian did though.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent working on my story and thus it isn't very interesting material for you to read about. I decided to stay an extra day so I could have some time to walk around the city more and check things out. Absolutely beautiful place with great architecture and the longest pedestrian only street in the world. I checked out the Little Mermaid statue on the harbor, for those of you that don't know (which I didn't either) the Little Mermaid was written by Hans Christian Anderson, a Danish hero. The statue is the most visited site in Copenhagen, but was surprisingly small. I was made aware of this fact before I visited, but I still wanted to check it out for myself. Lucky for me, the batteries in my camera were completely dead, but if you haven't seen it before check out a picture online. I basically just spent the day wandering around checking everything out. There is just something really cool to me about wandering around with no plan and just taking everything in. I loved doing that in Rome and Paris.

For those of you out there that like hot dogs, you need to try a Fransk Hotdog, aka French Hotdog. I have no idea why it's called that but there are really good. I had my second one ever Friday in Copenhagen. It's a long, cylindrical bun with a hole in the middle where you put the hot dog. The bun is toasted and there is also a french hotdog dressing, that u put inside the bun. Many of you may know what a "pig in a blanket" is, picture that, but just on a larger scale. Needless to say, it's very good.

I need to run, but now that I'm back from Copenhagen I'll get back into the swing of posting. Hope everyone is doing well!

Also, I want to give a shout-out to Grandma Durban on her 89th birthday. Happy Birthday! If there is a nicer person out there, I challenge you to find them.

Hej hej!